What is Reddit's opinion of Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> the native Indian genocide occurred way before the 19th century

Westward expansion and the genocide of most of the Indians was after the Civil War.

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful-ebook/dp/B003KN3MDG

The point I'm trying to make is that America isn't on top because it's clever or whatever. It's because it bombed and murdered everyone else into submission. Which India cannot do.

China did things the hard way, and it took them 50 years with a government that wasn't hobbled by parliamentary democracy.

There's basically no chance for India to get to the top in the near future. We should still try, of course, but personally, I think it's a better goal to lobby for open borders and just try to improve things through emigration.

> However the unfortunate reality is that no First Nations built any cities or had significant development outside of Meso-America

Respectfully, this simply is not true. There were many cultural groups all over North America that constructed settlements including the Mississippians, the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee), The Cliff-Dwelling people of Mesa Verde.

Groups like the Iroquois even had rich political systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4gU2Tsv6hY

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Even tribes like the Nermernuh (Comanche) that had incredibly underdeveloped civics, architecture and social structure when compared to other Americans, would still make for an interesting addiction to AOE2. In the case of the Comanche, the discovery and husbandry of wild horses from Mexico catapulted them from being a frail dark-age tribe, into a cavalry powerhouse that would be a North American rival to the Huns or Mongols.

https://www.amazon.ca/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful-ebook/dp/B003KN3MDG

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I do have a bit of personal Bias being from North America myself, but I think its not only unusual to include North American civilizations, but also very compatible with the game's mechanics.

Empire of The Summer Moon about the Commanche civilization.

Thinking the question through; the question of who had the best cavalry is a moot point given the greater effect of battlefield tactics and military strategy on outcomes; and maybe conflates two separate questions: who had the best individual horse soldiers, and who utilized cavalry battle tactics against their peers (setting aside the issue of the progressive dominance of firearms) most effectively? It's a fun question. For my money, the Mongols take the second point- if only because they demonstrated dominance against all of their Chinese enemies on a range of terrains (they were great at sieges too) and decimated European/Polish mounted knights in the field who had superior forces, armor, and home turf advantage. In fact, the Europeans were decimated by what was effectively a Mongolian flanking force, sent to protect the much larger force en route to attack Hungary (for a great [read], (http://www.historynet.com/mongol-invasions-battle-of-liegnitz.htm) look at the battle of Liegnitz. They lost due to poor field discipline/organization and battlefield tactics, of which the Mongols were simply in another league.

The Mongols as a military force demonstrated tactical and strategic superiority as well as battlefield discipline, and in numbers that exceeded any other standing army (perhaps 1 million solders at peak), until the 1700's.

As far as individual horse soldiers and riders go, I might put my money on the Comanche Indians circa 1750-1880, who ran circles around both the Spanish in Mexico and other Indian tribes in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado to the extent that they were able to delay both Mexican northward colonization and Texas western settlement for 50 to 100 years with as few as 150,000 tribesman- perhaps 15 to 30,000 mounted warriors at any given time. Deadly with both bow and lance, they easily defeated every other Indian tribe they conflicted with, and were so capable on horseback that entire villages (men, women, children, and gear) were able to outride and evade mounted American cavalry- using Indian guides- for years. One witness described a battle tactic where individual riders would hook an ankle over the neck of their horse, then swing under, and release multiple arrows from a protected position underneath the horse's neck. I mean come on. That's movie stuff. They could also execute effective battlefield tactics (against other mounted horsemen) in parties of several hundred or more warriors. Individual war parties could and did cover 500-700 miles - from New Mexico to Kansas in a period of days or weeks, leading both the Spanish and American armies to consistently overestimate their numbers. They were highly territorial and were fully cognizant of the risk of encroachment of both the Spanish and the Americans. For information and an all around good read, check out Empire of the Summer Moon. The Texans for a time, and later the US Army, defeated them through attrition and superior weaponry once repeating firearms appeared on the battlefield scene. But man for man, horse for horse, and weapon for weapon, people who knew claimed that the Comanches were the best mounted cavalry then in existence. Individually, they probably spent more time on horseback, and on a war footing, than even individual mongol mounted soldiers many of whom were at least partially sedentary. But again, they could not defeat- and were not culturally prepared for- massed numbers and battlefield tactics involving tens of thousands of soldiers.

It's becoming clear to me that you have some very mistaken ideas on how conflicts between "advanced" and "primitive" societies have actually played out throughout history. As a start to correcting these misconceptions, I suggest the books <em>Empire of the Summer Moon</em> and <em>The Heart of Everything That Is</em>. While reading them, try to remind yourself that in these cases the "primitive" people were actually at a very large numerical disadvantage.

> Actually it is not hard. You your self admitted they are spread out.

Yes, that makes it harder to fight them because you have to cover more ground.

> Take village one at time killing them and they will fall.

Assuming they don't respond to this by, say, setting up traps outside or even inside villages, stationing warriors outside villages, setting up a signal system and a rapid response team of dragoons (warriors who ride horses to a battle and them dismount to fight)...

Or just, you know, be prepared to evacuate a village at a moment's notice and then return to the land after the MM retreat or move on.

> Their arrows are no match for guns.

First, while a single archer is certainly no match for a single modern rifleman, that's not the situation we're talking about. The Grounders have at least dozens of archers and hundreds of warriors with melee and throwing weapons for every one trained soldier that the MM have. They have a saying in the military: quantity has a quality all its own.

Second, bows do have their advantages in some situations. Guns are loud and emit bright muzzle flashes that reveal your position every time you fire them off. Bows are almost totally silent and obviously don't have muzzle flashes. Also, while guns are generally line-of-sight weapons, bows can shoot arrows at an arc over obstacles like artillery. It is for these reasons among others that crossbows, which are basically just bows that are easier to learn to shoot, are still occasionally used today.

So imagine that a MM death squad rolls into a Grounder village only to find it abandoned. Turns out that a scout spotted them before they got there and warned the villagers. Then suddenly arrows start to fall from the sky, coming from the woods all around the village. What do the MM do? Fire randomly into the woods and hope they hit the archers by blind luck? Charge into the woods and hope they don't get ambushed or caught in traps?

> They have lost family members for generations. If they could have stopped them they would have.

This is akin to saying that because the Barbary pirates captured and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Europeans, they clearly could have easily conquered Europe. Except they couldn't and they didn't, because raiding and conquering are very different things.

> Why the hell would they care about a truce with savages that they have bleed too death for generations?

Because fighting them would cost them more than they would gain?

> They would all be slaves to the mountain man.

Because it's not like that carries any risks...

> Slave labor is very valuable when you want to rebuild.

The only things that the Mountain Men need to rebuild are the dam turbines, which Grounder slaves would be totally useless for. The resources of Mount Weather are demonstrably enough to provide them with more than adequate food, shelter, clothing, and so on. Sure they might want to, say, build some houses on top of the mountain so they can live closer to the outside. But what's the rush?

> If they had guns don't use them as an example because the Grounders do not have guns.

You're missing the point. The question isn't "are the Grounders equivalent to the Vietcong?" the question is "is it possible to kill or severely injure a soldier with modern weapons using far more primitive weapons?" The fact that thousands of soldiers with modern weapons were injured or killed by punji stick traps during the Vietnam War demonstrates that the answer is "yes."

No, I don't think that North Vietnam and its allies could have won if they hadn't had guns and explosives, but that's because they were outnumbered 4 to 1. All the Grounders have to do is inflict a couple hundred casualties at most and they win.

> The mountain men can let slaves lead the way to set off traps.

That might work if the MM can capture slaves faster than the Grounders can dig holes and make sharpened sticks.

> Reapers will also make great soldiers to weaken the armies.

Because the Reapers did so great against Tristan's army in 1x13.

> Also how did the US get their base "North America"? I love how you have yet to mention the Indians which would be a much better example of Grounder vs Mountain man.

Actually they're not a good example at all because thanks to massive immigration from Europe and pandemic diseases like smallpox, the American Indians were very much outnumbered.

But if you want me to talk about them, I'll point out that despite their very large numerical and technological disadvantages, some American Indian tribes managed to cause the white man all sorts of trouble. Ask General Custer.

Little Bighorn was far from an isolated example. The horse tribes of the Great Plains held up the US's Western Expansion for decades. During the Civil War, the Western frontier was actually pushed back hundreds of miles in many places as soldiers that had been guarding the frontier were called back East to fight the war. The Apache fought the US army until 1886, and some renegade bands continued raiding into the early 20th century.

But my personal favorite example is the Seminole Wars. Today, many Florida Seminoles call themselves "the unconquered people," because several hundred Seminoles stayed in their native lands and never surrendered to the US. During the Second Seminole War, despite being badly outnumbered and outgunned, the Seminoles used guerrilla warfare and their superior knowledge of the terrain to kill around 300 enemy soldiers (another 1300 US soldiers died from disease). The war lasted 7 years and cost tens of millions of dollars.

But please, go ahead and tell me how the Mountain Men will easily be able to wipe out the Grounders because the former have guns and the latter do not.

> started their talk by acknowledging the land that UW and their home institution (I don't recall where) belonged to indigenous peoples and was stolen.

Yeah, I don't agree with that! It seems a bit silly. Everywhere is "stolen". Nobody is anywhere who didn't get there without their ancestors having killed someone else. Native Americans' ancestors are just as much conquerors as anybody else's.

As a case in point, from a review of the Empire of the Summer Moon,

>Empire of the Summer Moon was a book about the Comanche Indians. They were not very advanced by "civilized" standards. They didn't build cities, farm crops, centralize government, or have any form of writing. The book argues, hard as it is to believe, that they didn't really even have any art or even a religion. They just rode around on horses hunting buffalo and starting wars. But they were really, really good at it. By the 1800s they had defeated virtually every other Indian tribe in the central United States and extended into modern Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Kansas, with their territory bordered by a ring of "vassal" tribes paying them tribute and functioning as a single economic unit.

>In the 1600s and 1700s, the Spanish tried to expand northward from Mexico. They lost some horses, the horses started running wild over the Great Plains, the Comanches captured them and learned horsemanship, and then became so good at it that they actually pushed the Spanish back until finally the Spanish government gave up and promised them lucrative peace terms to leave them alone.

>When Mexico took over from Spain and tried to colonize Texas, the Comanches beat them so soundly that they decided to get some "help" by inviting Anglo-Americans to come in and colonize, leading to the Texas revolt, the Mexican War, and so on. Through the first thirty years or so of American Texas, American control only extended through the eastern half of the state, with the western half being totally Comanche and almost totally unexplored. The border was so feared that places like Fort Worth, Texas were originally a line of actual forts intended to protect the Texans from Comanche raids.

>These raids were probably the most disturbing part of the book. On the one hand, okay, the white people were trying to steal the Comanches' land and they had every right to be angry. On the other hand, the way the Comanches expressed that anger was to occasionally ride in, find a white village or farm or homestead, surround it, and then spend hours or days torturing everyone they found there in the most horrific possible ways before killing the men and enslaving the women and children. Sometimes people were scalped alive. The women would usually be gang-raped dozens of times, and then enslaved, carried off to Comanche territory, and gang-raped some more. Children were forced to watch as their parents were raped and tortured and killed, or vice versa.

I always find it a little off-putting, that sort of "precious" and very specific way some white people treat the concept of "here first" when it comes to Native Americans. It doesn't make sense and it's sort of oddly anti-progressive. I can't imagine Germans asking Syrian refugees to acknowledge their "here first"-ness in a speech. And while it's true that Syrians didn't conquer Germans, the Romans sure did. They conquered and committed genocide against most of Europe. I wonder if the ancestors of Romans living throughout Europe just so happened to be a different skin color if they too would have to apologize and acknowledge other Europeans' "here first"-ness at speaking events.