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The Last Comanche Chief. The Life and Times of Quanah Parker. By Bill Neeley. New York: John Wiley & Sons,1996. ISBN 0-471-11722-6. Map. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xii, 276. $16.95.
Of those who experienced the transformation of Southern Plains Indian life in the late nineteenth century, few proved more important than Quanah Parker. The son of a Comanche father and a captive white mother, Quanah inherited a world that radically altered what it meant to be Comanche between his birth at mid-century and his death in 1911.
Neeley's discussion of the transition comes in two sections. The first chronicles the rapidly changing circumstances on the Southern Plains after 1830. Beset by Texas Rangers, federal troops, cattlemen, and settlers, Comanches waged a determined campaign...