Prairie schooner pirates: The Story of the Comancheros

Prairie Schooner Pirates is an informal. lively and entertaining chronicle which explores a segment of American history which has often been by-passed by historians and about which misunderstanding. misinterpretation and misinformation have long gathered. A native Westerner. the descendant of early pioneers. Herman Moncus has been interested since his youngest days in the history of the Southwest and especially in the story of the Comanchero traders. An ardent Indian champion and folklorist, he had made wide and deep searches to bring to light new materials to exculpate the blameless Indians for the disastrous raids which were often perpetrated by the Comanchero marauders. Here, corroborated not only by the researchers of reliable historians but by folk lore, family legends, his own observations and discoveries, the author unfolds the story of the dreaded and feared Southwest highwaymen known as the Comancheros. The earliest Comanchero traders were honest, reliable and sincere merchants who provided the frontier with necessary domestic goods. Later, they became an almost secret freemasonry of bandits and open country hoodlums who robbed prairie schooners and ranchers of their merchandise and which they later sold to willing but unwitting buyers in the plains and mountain regions of \m Mexico. Often they abducted the human cargoes on the wagon trains and sold women and children as slaves. The illegal Comanchero traders were Anglos, Spaniards and renegade Indians. To hide their depredations and vicious assaults, the Comancheros would leave circumstantial evidence at a raid to indicate that it has been perpetrated by the plains and pueblo Indians of -New Mexico. These deceptions led to many troubles between the settlers and the aboriginals of the Territory of New Mexico.
ASIN: B0007FF094
VSKU: RDV.B0007FF094.A
Condition: Acceptable