Ten Bears
1790–1872 1 entry
Biography
Ten Bears, in Comanche Paruasemena, was a chief of the Yamparika Comanche, known as a poet and an eloquent speaker. Born around 1790, he led his band on the southern Great Plains, where the Comanche had long been masters of the buffalo country. In 1863 he travelled to Washington with other chiefs of the Plains and met President Abraham Lincoln, hoping to secure peace for his people.
In October 1867, at the great council of Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas, he spoke for the Comanche before the American peace commissioners, in a speech that was written down and became famous as a defence of the free life of his people on the open prairie. He signed the treaty, which placed the Comanche and the Kiowa on a reservation in the Indian Territory. In 1872 he made a second journey to Washington, and he died that same year at Fort Sill, in today’s Oklahoma.
- Quotes 1