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lobbying Houston in mid-August when Elizabeth Kellogg suddenly appeared in Nacogdoches. She had been purchased for $150 by a band of friendly Delaware Indians, who proceeded to ransom her to the Texans for a similar amount—paid by Houston, according to James, who says he himself was penniless. James returned her to her family. But first there was an ugly scene when he and Elizabeth came across a wounded Indian who had been shot while allegedly trying to steal a horse. By James’s account, Elizabeth recognized the man as one of the raiders who had killed Elder John: she claimed to remember the distinctive scars on each of the man’s arms. James reacted “ with mingled feelings of joy , sorrow and revenge.” He gave no details of what he did to the Indian, but afterward, “suffice it to say … it was the unanimous opinion of the company that he would never kill and scalp another white man.”
    Uncle James had killed his first Indian.
    ALL THREE OF THE PARKER CHILDREN— Cynthia Ann, John, and James Pratt—disappeared into the heart of the Comanche world and left no written account of their experiences. Rachel Plummer, by contrast, would leave a compact, detailed, and brutally frank written narrative that depicts the stunning violence of her abduction and captivity.
    After they separated her from her young son and the other captives,Rachel’s abductors headed north. Each day the vegetation receded further and the landscape grew more stark and naked, until they entered what seemed like a vast, arid sea of brown rock, dry dirt, and scrub. The imperious sun beat down, and even in May a hot breeze clawed at the ground. Washington Irving, who had passed through the same area four years earlier accompanying a government surveying mission, found “ something inexpressibly lonely … [H]ere we have an immense extent of landscape without a sign of human existence. We have the consciousness of being far, far beyond the bounds of human habitation; we feel as if moving in the midst of a desert world.”
    This was the heart of Comancheria, homeland and sanctuary of the Comanche nation, an empire without borders, signposts, fences, or walls. It was a roughly egg-shaped territory stretching some six hundred miles north to south from Kansas and the headwaters of the Arkansas River to the Rio Grande, and four hundred miles east to west from modern-day Oklahoma to New Mexico. The Comanches were supreme nomads: they built nothing they could not tear down overnight, load onto a travois strapped to the backs of horses or dogs, and drag to a new location. They left no monuments, temples, or enduring architecture. Even the term “Comanche” was created by others. It was derived from the Ute Indians, who described their foes as
Koh-mahts,
“Those Who Are Always Against Us.” The Comanches called themselves
Nemernuh
—“the People”—a name that suggested that non-Comanches were less than human.
    There was in fact not one overarching Comanche nation but rather a collection of bands that spoke the same language and recognized each other as distantly related even while living in separate geographic areas. There may have been a dozen or more of these bands: among the larger and more noteworthy were the Penateka (“Honey-Eaters”), who dominated southern and central Texas; the Nokoni (“Those Who Turn Back”) in the northeast region; the Quahadi (“Antelope Eaters”) in the northwest and New Mexico, and the Yamparika (“Root Eaters”) in western Kansas and southeastern Colorado. There was no central authority, no chief whose word was law or could be considered binding on the others, no rulers and no subjects.
    Still, by the mid-eighteenth century the Comanches had become the most relentless and feared war machine in the Southwest. They butchered their prisoners—torturing, amputating, eviscerating, mutilating, decapitating, and