LASALLE COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL JUNIOR SUMMER READING 2013 SOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT BOOK: Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche’s, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.G. Gwynne ISBN: 13: 978-1416591061 Kindle Availability: $10.38 OBJECTIVE: Students will read Empire of the Summer Moon by S.G. Gwynne to begin to familiarize themselves with the complex issue of Native Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Students will analyze the rise of the Comanche in the history of Texas as well as the United States, by looking at the culture of the Plains to show the essential conflict between the white and Indian culture. The student will look at the brutal conflict between the Comanche’s and other Indian tribes as well as the white men. The student will also get a better understanding of geographic, political, and military forces that allowed the Comanche’s to dominate the Texas plains. The students will look at the logic of Manifest Destiny to both the Comanche’s and the American to show the inevitability of the collision of both worlds. The students will also look closely at the “final solution” to the Indian problem as it unfolded in the post-civil war era. The book will also take a closer look at the use of technology to the military that allowed white America to advance westward even in the face of Indian resistance. Finally the student will evaluate the treaty system as it existed between the United States federal government and the various Indian tribes to determine if justice of their application was given to the American Indians. During the reading you will be responsible for completing the Dialectical Note Taking Sheet on Empire of the Summer Moon to be checked on September 4, 2013. A paper will be assigned at the appropriate time in the course. Student Name: ______________________________________________________ Author/Title: S.C. Gwynne Empire of the Summer Moon Dialectical Note-taking Sheet (Empire of the Summer Moon) Summer reading for incoming seniors DIRECTIONS: A dialectical note taking sheet is another name for a double-entry journal or a reader-response journal. This sheet records a dialogue, or conversation, between the ideas in the text (the words that you are reading) and your own ideas. While you are reading, choose at least 6 passages that stand out to you and record them in the left-hand column. In the right-hand column, write your in-depth response to the text. (3-5 sentences) Be sure to include any thoughts, questions, insights, and ideas that you think are powerful, significant, thought provoking, or puzzling. You may attach additional note taking sheets if needed. Quotation sample Page This Shows… ”F. Scott Fitzgerald once suggested that 304 This quote shows how Quanah Parker re- ‘there are no second acts in American lives’. invented himself after what appeared to Quanah Parker’s life serves as an exception be a disaster for him and his band of to that rule. Comanche’s. It also suggests that his personal characteristics helped him After the disaster of defeat and capture by the overcome his circumstances. What were United States military he would spend the rest they? of his life remaking and reinventing himself into a prosperous, tax paying citizen of the United States of America. The notion that a late Stone Age barbarian would move into the mainstream of industrial American culture was just short of ridiculous. Parker was to become a bourgeois statesman, a prosperous burgher, a religious leader and businessman who played the game of capitalism as well as anyone in Texas. Quanah never looked back.” (Chapter 20, p 304) 1. 2. Quotation: Page: This Shows: 3. 4. 5. 6. The following is your READING GUIDE to the book Empire of the Summer Moon. EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON Chapter One A New Kind of War 1. October 3, 1871 marked the ‘beginning of the end of the Indian Wars in American History 250 years of bloody combat a ‘final solution’ had begun. Explain the meaning of this ‘final solution’? 2. Locate and describe the geography of Coronado’s Llano Estacado. In what way was it the ‘edge of the universe for white men? 3. Why were US troops going into this territory, populated exclusively by the most hostile Indians on the American Continent? Who was their leader? In what way was he President Grant’s ‘agent of destruction’? Why did he become an ‘agent of retribution’? 4. Describe the ‘hostiles’ of the Great Plains. Who were the Comanche’s? What was ‘special’ about them? 5. “If the Indian marauders are not punished, the whole country seems in a fair way of becoming totally depopulated.” In what way were the Comanche’s ‘rolling back civilization’ both American and Spanish? 6. What was the importance of the Salt Creek Massacre? What did it demonstrate about the methods and determination of the Comanche’s? 7. ‘Hundreds of {North American} tribes had either perished from the earth or had been driven west. Trace some of these examples. How was the history of the Comanche’s different? 8. Describe the extent of ‘greatest mass destruction of warm blooded animals in human history’ as it relates to the American buffalo. 9. Describe the band of Comanche’s known as the “Quahadis’. What made them unique among the other hostile Plains Indians? In what way was their land ‘like a bad hallucination’ to Europeans? 10. Describe the character and personal history of the young war chief of the Quahadis named Quanah. 11. Who was Cynthia Ann Parker? 12. What is the ‘Battle of Blanco Canyon’? How did it start? 13. Describe the meaning of the title of this chapter. Chapter Two A Lethal Paradise 1. Why is the year 1836 the ‘tumultuous and transformative’ year in the history of Texas? Trace the birth of the sovereign nation called the Republic of Texas. 2. What was Parker’s Fort? Why was it ‘an extremely dangerous place’? 3. Describe how the raid on Parker’s Fort triggered the longest and most brutal of all wars between Americans and a single Indian tribe? 4. What was the outcome of the raid? In what way did this raid typify the tactics and methods of the Comanche’s? 5. Reconstruct the ‘logic of Comanche raids’? Why were they so ‘depraved’ and brutal? Did they reserve this brutality only for white men? 6. If the Parker’s knew about the brutality of the Comanche’s, why did they settle where they did…’in a place where almost every waking moment held a mortal threat”? 7. Describe the ‘breed’ of men and women who pushed American civilization westward into Texas. How was their method different than the spread of the Spanish Empire? 8. What was the typical attitude of these agents of civilization toward Indians? In what way was Quanah Parker’s family a nearly perfect example of this attitude? Explain the irony! 9. Describe the treatment of the survivors of the Parker’s Fort Raid. What became of Cynthia Ann and Rachel and 14 month old James Plummer? How do we know? 10. Describe the meaning of this chapter Chapter Three Worlds in Collision 1. Describe the extent and power of the Comanche Empire. How is language a significant sign of their domination? 2. Given the extent of this empire, how is it possible that Anglo-Americans knew so little about the Comanche’s? 3. Explain the motive for the Mexican encouragement of Americans to settle in Texas in the 1820’s. What is so ironic about this? 4. Identify early contact between Americans and Comanche’s. In what way was the Comanche territory as ‘unknown as unexplored regions of Africa’. 5. What is the significance of the fact that the Comanche’s who raided Parker’s fort were mounted? 6. Describe the early Comanche culture. What happened to transform the Nermernuh people from such a backward tribe of Stone Age hunters to one of the most powerful forces of civilization on the North American continent? 7. Describe the nature of the ‘horse revolution’ from the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico with their Iberian mustang, the transmission of Spanish horse culture and the dispersal of the horses in herds throughout North America. 8. What was the importance of the great Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in terms of the Great Horse Dispersal? How did this event alter the power structure of the Great Plains? What role did the Apaches play in this change? 9. How did horse technology change the method of hunting and war making? 10. “I am ready, without hesitation, to pronounce the Comanche’s the most extraordinary horsemen I have seen yet in all my travels ...The finest light cavalry in the world.” What additions to “horse technology” did the Comanche’s create? 11. “No other tribe, except possibly the Kiowas, so completely lived on horseback from their ‘horse vocabulary’ ...to gambling.” Explain 12. In what way did the Comanche mastery of the horse lead to their migration southward? Why was this important in the competition for buffalo? 13. When and where did the Comanche ride into recorded history? 14. Explain the meaning of the title of this chapter? Chapter Four High Lonesome 1. “With these remarks, I submit the following pages to the perusal of a generous public; feeling assured that before they are published, the hand that penned them will be cold in death.” Briefly describe the memoir of captivity of Rachel Plummer Parker. 2. Describe and locate the heart of the Comancheria, otherwise known as the Great American Desert.