Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

If the "hostiles" are the Indians, the attacking whites are telling the story. Page one concludes with a reference to "savage massacres" by Chivington and Custer, so maybe the book isn't going to be one-sided. But there's nothing "transcendent" about that.

But page two opens with a statement that "in those days [Chivington and Custer ] there was no real attempt to destroy the tribes on a larger scale." That is a flat-out wrong assertion.

The historical record of attempted outright destruction of the indigenous peoples starts with the earliest invaders: John Mason, commander of colonial forces, attacked the Pequot in 1636 so viciously as to effectively eliminate them as a nation. In his history of the events, he praises "God" for helping "to cut off the Remembrance of [the Pequot] from the Earth."

Lord Jeffrey Amherst, of smallpox blanket infamy, in 1763, wrote that he wanted "Measures to be taken as would Bring about the Total Extirpation of [the] Indian Nations"; measures that would "put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being."

Page two also deploys the stereotypical adjectives so familiar to readers of white histories. The "bluecoats" about to enter Comanche lands are described as "at the edge of the known universe," a "trackless and featureless" place. The fact that this description concludes with the statement "white men became lost and disoriented" does not undo the stereotype; in fact, it reaffirms that the landscape itself, like its indigenous inhabitants, is presented from an invader's perspective.