Comancheria

So, she gets into this place called Fort Parker.

There's a complicating factor here, which is that colonial era Texas as a republic, right, is butting up against greater Comancheria, which is like, they're arguably the most fearsome, warlike, really like a set of tribes in North America.

Nothing compares to them.

And especially the Quahadi tribe, that is the one that Nakona belongs to.

And there's a question too, in the text imagination, like why would this need to happen? Like they're children, right? And they try to paint them as like savages.

But you have to imagine that like, if you are...

Comanche, which is 250,000 square miles of Comancheria.

You have not come in contact with white people.

And so everybody got picked off.

And so he writes it from the perspective of the Comanche being the Comancheria, actually, as he puts it, having this vast empire, and that's the word he uses, this vast empire that the colonialists could not see and could not understand and could not comprehend.

and and basically stepping into something stepping into negotiation they didn't understand how to get out of and the only way that the only thing they could settle on was brutality that's the only thing they could settle on because they couldn't figure out any other way which by the way i also have to point out the brutality only starts when i say only The brutality really kicks in.

That's a better way of framing it.

But I think that there is like a false narrative around it where I think people kind of misremember, misunderstand what Texas had been historically.

Like Mexico had Spanish and then Mexico had like for years been like, how do we kind of protect ourselves from Comancheria, right? Which was like the Comanche empire.

And they were like, hey, these Anglo people are nuts and they'll go out there and be

killed

And so we have the, you know, primary footage of the documentary of the interviews of Angela, her family, her life story, and then, you know, the backdrop of rodeo athletes and kind of people talking about rodeo in general in America.

And then from that, there were so many pieces of Angela's story that related to the history of rodeo in Texas because her grandparents, her great-grandparents, were the original pioneer ranchers of West Texas, what was then Comancheria.

And they settled there in 1850.

And so we wanted to really bring that home because Angela's lineage is Almost she makes her a contemporary pioneer in a way, you know, because her and the way that she fought cancer and the way her attitude was, we felt was so relevant.

Right now.

Meanwhile, can you talk a little bit about, there's this very imposing natural landscape, you know, which is loosely called Comancheria.

You know, you have the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains.

Can you talk about, you know, I just, from reading your book and reading S.W. Gwynn's book, The Empire of the Summer Moon, reading about the mass of territory that the Comanches in their prime really held sway over, you know, talk a little bit about that.

Her, uh...

The Comanches at this time would raid colonial settlements to sort of deter them from encroaching further into Comancheria.

Mm.

You know, this is like Waco, Central Texas, into North Texas.

Mm-hmm

... um, he, he developed this reputation on the plains across Comancheria as, like, you know, someone who could, like, in, in the words of, you know, of, of others saying that he, he would blow aside the bullets or...

And he actually died that way.

He was charging the Texas Rangers and taunting them because they kept trying to shoot him, and they couldn't kill him-

Totally.

Okay, so let's kind of set the stage here.

We are talking about the Comanche and, um, the region's, uh, Comancheria.

This is, the Comanche are known for, we're talking, I think, around the time of Quanah Parker, we're talking 1830s or so.

On the US side, it encompassed New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as well as the southernmost parts of Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.

He also included parts of West Texas and stopped right around the area known historically as the Comancheria, an area which includes parts that were originally within Coahuiltecan territory prior to the Comanche incursion to that area.

Of course, those familiar with Chicano ideology know that Aztlán eventually came to symbolize all of Mexico's ceded territories, including Texas.

Some thought of it as the lost land, and the notion gained wider attention throughout the Southwest, most notably after the Denver Youth Conference in 1969.