re: Empire of the Summer Moon, anyone read it?

I did, 30 years ago when much of it it was written by Larry McMurtry.

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They were ruthless long before the buffalo hunters started exterminating the bufflalo

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I was just coming here to point this out. They were horribly barbaric to other Indians too. Not to mention the Mexicans….They weren't this way out of vengeance for the buffalo.

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I was just coming here to point this out. They were horribly barbaric to other Indians too. Not to mention the Mexicans….They weren't this way out of vengeance for the buffalo.

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It's fascinating to think that the Comanche were equal with the Texas Rangers until the evolution of the Colt six shooter, which would give the Rangers a huge advantage over the Comanche.

Fantastic book, and a true representation of the brutality that occurred surrounding the Indian Wars. Would love a series that stayed true to the book, but nobody has produced a series like this that showed the savagery of the Natives and instead always show them as some kind of fictional hippie commune.

I just finished listening to the audio book on a long drive last week. It was a really good book. Seemed to me the author did a good job of presenting the history in an accurate, unbiased way.

The book lays out how the Commanche were the best on horseback of any of the tribes and the fact they were able to terrorize the Apache and take territory from them tells you all you need to know about how fierce they were as warriors.

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A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

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Loved it! Read it twice.

Yes, great book

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if buffalo were the basis for your entire existence, you would do whatever it takes to get the rid of the people doing this.

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You are really reaching to excuse their absolutely inexcusable behavior. The basis for their existence was murdering whoever they found, raping their women (and sometimes their men), taking children as hostages (if they didn’t rape, torture, and kill them too), and stealing their possessions rather than making their own or acquiring them through honest means. They were a culture based around warfare and rape and stealing. Buffalo were a distant second to this.

I believe a movie is in the works. Enjoyed the read. Fascinating to me to think about how young our country is and what our ancestors experienced not that long ago.