- Joined
- Nov 27, 2018
- Location
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
If you can find a book about Qannah Parker it is an interesting life, preceding Ten Bears. The Parkers were waylaid by two tribes, one was Comanche that took Qannah as a young boy and the other tribe took his sister Cynthia. They killed about 4 to 8 members of their immediate family. Their history is written.I always enjoy the discussion of Civil War movies at CWT and like a lot of you I have a real fondness for the Outlaw Josey Wales, the fictional story of a Confederae soldier who loses everything in the War, and then looks west to fnd a new life.
I never looked for historical versimilitude in the movie because, well, that's not the point. I was surprosed then to learn last week that the movie character of Ten Bears, the Comanche chief who makes peace with Josey, was a real historical figure. My son recommended the book The Comanche Empire and I started reading last week. Turns out Ten Bears was an important Comanche leader during the Civil War and that there is even an extensive documentary record of his life.
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The movie scene with Ten Bears is, of course, fictional, but the man had an interesting, if tragic, life. His efforts to maintain Comanche freedom and independence were ultimately doomed to failure but he had some successes before his death in 1872.
Since this is a CWT thread, it must be mentioned that the Comanche were guilty of enslaving other human beings, although they never attempted to build a society based on the mass enslavement of Africans. I haven't found any part of the book that talks about whether Ten Bears owned slaves, or not.
Lubliner.