I would like to heartily reccomend the book I am currently reading: The Captured by Scott Zesch. His great-great uncle, Adolf Korn, was captured by Comanche in the 1860s. Although he was eventually returned to his family in Texas, he had grown to prefer life witht eh Indians. He ended up unable to live in either world and became a hermit. His family swept more or less forgot him.
When Zesch found out about his relative, he started to study the lives of white captives of the Indians and understand how they came to identify so strongly with their "captors". This is excellent frontier history, reconstructing the lives of German settlers in Texas, the Comanche, and the "white indians". Some of it is pretty raw, Zesch gives some unflinching accounts of Comanche raids on settlers and cavalry attacks on Comanche villages.
I've met old-timers in Fredericksburg (the main German town in Texas) who remember Herman Lehmann. He was captured by Apaches and eventually went to live with Quanah Parker's band of Comanche. Lehmenn later became a Texas celebrity and appeared at rodeos and did Indian trick-riding. Of course Quanah Parker was the son of a white captive. He is such a strong symbol to modern Texans that a good friend of mine named her child Quanah.
I've got to return this to the library, but I'll be durned if I don't go buy a copy soon.
Dave Hardy
www.fireandsword.com |