Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Anyone looking for balanced, well researched portrait of 18th century life on the southern plains should pass on this one. If you're looking for grandiose fiction in the best traditions of the dime store novel, then look no further. Mr. Gwynne is clearly not one to let the truth get in the way of a good story. What immediately struck me about this book and even made me chuckle out loud several times throughout was Mr. Gwynne's grandiose claims on behalf of the Comanche and his excessive use of superlatives. The book is overflowing with words like "the most", "the greatest", etc. with little or no historical fact to back them up. "The most influential tribe in American history" might be a stretch when even your average American college history major couldn't name a single Comanche war chief (while your average 5th grader can tell you who Sitting Bull and Squanto were). The San Saba massacre was the greatest military setback the Spaniards suffered in the New World!? With 8 Spanish lives lost, Mr. Gwynne, San Saba is barely a footnote in the long history of royal New World thrashings the Spanish received at the hands of various enemies. The list of over-inflated claims and historical inaccuracies goes on and on. One can hardly go more than a few pages without some insignificant Comanche raid reputedly changing the course of human history. I am by no means trying to diminish the role the Comanches played in the history of the west. The Comanches were truly one of history's great raider cultures and their martial prowess spoke for itself. However, martial prowess alone does not an empire make. In fact the concept of 'empire' in the Anglo-American sense was completely alien to the Plains Indian. By painting the Comanche nation as something that it was not, Mr. Gwynne does a great disservice to the rich Plains Indian culture and the true story of the Comanches. This brings me to my final point in critiquing this laughable piece of "non-fiction". Mr. Gwynne graphically portrays the atrocities committed by the Comanches which is not a problem in and of itself. Most modern historians have moved away from the portrayal of Native Americans as barbarous heathens. They have also rejected the apologist myth of the noble savage in favor of a more culturally and historically relativistic view of Native Americans that includes unflattering accounts of the extreme brutality of Native American warfare. Mr. Gwynne, however, takes a much more outmoded approach when describing Comanche violence. Mr. Gwynne asserts that Native Americans were caught in a kind of cultural developmental time warp as a result of their late migration across the Bering Strait. Mr. Gwynne claims that Native Americans lacked the morally civilizing benefits of Christ, Martin Luther, etc. As a result, Mr. Gwynne paints a picture of a backward, morally bereft, ultra-violent society with virtually no culturally redeeming qualities other than military proficiency. At best Mr. Gwynne's views on the Comanches are uninformed, outdated, and culturally biased. At worst... well, let's just give Mr. Gwynne the benefit of the doubt and assume his simplistic approach to Native American culture in this melodramatic and wildly inaccurate tale is intended solely for the entertainment of the reader. For my part, I'll stick to Sergio Leone for a fantasy version of the old west.