somebody's grandfather had done business with quanah parker. there's a sense of the immediacy of the frontier. often in my travels, it was this weird mixing of legend and history. i am up in a little town near wichita falls in north texas. i am up there and doing a story about these great baseball gloves. the factory burned down and the town was struggling. i was sitting at a bar with some old guy and he was telling me about this battle that took place. i had no idea what he was talking about. what he was talking about was the end of the spanish power in the new world. it was the battle in a 7058 where the comanches rode the spanish back. i'm talking about the end of the spanish world. in the new world. it was the stories and things like that. here i am, traveling around the state. one of the reasons of course is for the immediacy of the frontier, the last of the indians surrendered in 1875 and after that, there was a good deal of jostling on and off the reservation. things are happening validity 20th-century. -- well into the 20th century. the

i did not go into the details of this but essentially quanah got away. one of the key things about plains warfare was escape. there are few instances in history where a commander takes a village into the field against his adversary and wins. that is the kind of commander that quanah was, he was quite brilliant and he escaped to fight another day. he would not surrender until he led the last of the starving comanches to the reservation in 1875 after everyone of the food sources had been killed. that is all i wanted to say tonight. i would be happy to -- do we have time for questions? sorry? this mic. i would be happy to answer questions. >> [indiscernible] s.c. gwynne: that was her cousin, rachel parker palmer. >> do you have access to it? s.c. gwynne: rachel -- this is one of the great things you have , regional plumbers diary. a captive taken for many months on the planes. we get a look at comanches that is extraordinary. i held the original. yes, i do not know how many libraries around here but in texas the rare book collections will have it. i could n

he establishes the leadership of quanah parker and relations between american settlers and native americans in the west. recorded at a savannah book festival in 2012, this program is a little under 45 minutes. mr. gwynne: hello, everybody. thank you for coming. i want to talk this afternoon about how i came to this book or how the book came to me. how a connecticut yankee public career in journalism and failed attempts at fiction suddenly decides he wants to be a historian. not only that, but that he wants