An old Comanche chief stood before a crowd of generals and settlers and gave one of the most moving speeches ever recorded on the plains.
An old Comanche chief stood before a crowd of generals and settlers and gave one of the most moving speeches ever recorded on the plains. Ten Bears (Parra-Wa-Samen) was principal chief of the Yamparika Comanche, already an old man by the Medicine Lodge Treaty council of 1867. Speaking there to the U.S. peace commissioners, he said, by the account taken down at the council, that he was born where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun, and that he did not want to be shut inside the walls of a reservation It was a plea for a vanishing way of life, spoken aloud by a man who already knew it was slipping away from him He died at Fort Sill in 1872, not long after a last journey to Washington, still speaking for a world that was closing around him. An old Comanche chief stood before a crowd of generals and settlers and gave one of the most moving speeches ever recorded on the plains. Ten Bears (Parra-Wa-Samen) was principal chief of the Yamparika Comanche, alre...