My maternal grandmother was full blood Comanche Kiowa Apache. She lived in a small clapboard house close to her original family land allotment in southwestern Oklahoma. She and my small, wiry Welsh/English grandpa had six children, my mother being the third daughter. My mother’s two brothers both died young and tragically. The oldest son’s life was especially iconic in the way that American Indian lives can be. He was my uncle who everyone called “Chief.

  When I retired from a life in education, I first moved to Costa Rica for two years of wonderful adventure. Returning home I needed something to focus on. I decided to write a fictional biography of Chief. His life needed a context, so the family story starts with a boy in 1872. The first draft of four years in the life of this boy, Nukitsi, are completed.

   I used numerous historical sources to make this an accurate piece of historical fiction, but the cultural practices and beliefs of the Comanches or Numeneh, as they called themselves were mostly speculation. I want my Comanche relatives and other Comanches to read this blog and give me their feedback on what is good and what is bad about my depiction of the life of the Numeneh at this time in history.  I also want my own family who know very little of their Indian heritage to connect with this part of their family history.