Heritage, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1987 Page: 21

Quanah's birth in the late 1840s, the Comanches
were near the peak of their
power, possessing most of the Texas Hill
Country and all of the land northward to
the central Rocky Mountains. From west
to east Comancherfa extended from the
arid mountains of the Trans-Pecos to
southwestern Oklahoma and north central
Texas. It was a land rich in game, and
the carnivorous Comanches defended
Comancherfa from Apaches, Utes, and
other Indian tribes. When the Anglos arrived
in Comancheria, they were met
with the same terrifying attacks as had
the Spanish, Mexicans, and Indian enemies
before them. That the People survived
an almost continual warfare from
1860 to 1875, when the United States
Army put five columns of cavalry in the
field to harass the Comanches, is a tribute
to the man who reigned as supreme war
leader of the fierce nomads. However, in
1875, because of his sense of responsibility
to the noncombatants of his hungry
band, Quanah chose to lay down his
lance and shield and follow the white
man's road. It was a decision based not
upon intellect alone but also on signs
from his quest for direction from the spirit
world. According to Wayne Parker of
Ralls, Texas, who recounted what Quanah

Quanah aided the big cattlemen of Northwest Texas in leasing the vast range of the reservation for
grazing. Chief Parker's reward was a magnificent twelve-room house, built in the mid-1880s by Burk
Burnett and other cattlemen in the region.

had told his grandfather, in the spring
of 1875 the young war chief went out
quietly from his West Texas camp and
climbed a large mesa above the floor of
Blanco Canyon, east of Lubbock. With a
buffalo robe drawn over his head, the
principal war leader of the People prayed
to the Great Spirit for guidance and a
sign to show him the way. Down in the
canyon below the mesa, a lobo turned his
head toward Quanah and howled. The
wolf paused a moment and trotted off to
the northeast direction of Fort Sill. Soon
afterwards a large eagle dived at Quanah
from high in the sky. The bird then flew
northeast toward Fort Sill. These were
signs from the Great Spirit, and Quanah
obeyed.
Upon reaching the reservation at Fort
Sill in the summer of 1875, Quanah met
face to face his old adversary, Colonel
Randal S. Mackenzie, commander of
one of the five columns sent by General
Sheridan to force the Comanches on to
the reservation near Fort Sill, Indian Territory.
As a fighter himself, Mackenzie,
who suffered six wounds in Civil War
battles, understood the heartache of the
Indians in whom the desire to fight con

tinued to beat. In his sympathy, the General,
as his men referred to him, strongly
urged his superiors to make certain that
the Indians were fed. To help the Indians
sustain themselves, Mackenzie, after observing
the nonnomadic Navahos, sought
to make shepherds and weavers of the Comanches
in the tradition of their sedentary
neighbors. But sheep did not thrive
among the predators, both human and
animal, on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache
Reservation in southwestern Indian Territory
in the 1870s. So Mackenzie tried
another approach: cattle raising. Slowly
the Indians, and Quanah in particular,
adapted to ranching and began to learn
the concepts of the work ethic, which the
People largely rejected, and private enterprise,
which they slowly embraced.
Quanah's astute mind quickly grasped
the benefits the People would derive from
cattle ranching, prompting Mackenzie to
conclude that Quanah was the man to
lead the Comanches. An important factor
that led Mackenzie and Indian agent
P. B. Hunt to choose Quanah as the
foremost chief of the Comanches was
Quanah's large following among them.
Also, Quanah had raided and lived with
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