21 of 26
Cynthia Ann & Quanah Parker
In the early 1700s the Comanche Indians left their home in the northwestern wilderness and swept down upon the Plains. Fierce warriors and skilled horsemen, they pushed out the Apache, Skidi Pawnee, Wichita, and Waco Indians, establishing an empire from central Kansas south to Austin, Texas, and from Oklahoma City west to the Raton Pass in New Mexico. The Comanches were at continual war with non-Indians too, particularly the strange white people invading their territory from the east.

Comanche Village in Texas, George Catlin, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.