DISAPPEARED AND ERASED
Once upon a time, the Comanche people ruled the Texas Panhandle. Then they were disappeared and erased—saw both genocide and “cultural genocide.” Tammie’s Destiny, Volume 6 of my historical romance series, tells the coming-of-age story and forbidden love between an adolescent Comanche girl from a reservation in New Mexico and a young man from a Texas millionaire ranching family. The tale’s background is the generational hatred between Texans and Native Americans, seemingly making such a relationship impossible.
Their impossible love is analogous to a forbidden love between an Armenian Christian Caucasian girl and an Azerbaijani Muslim Turkish-Asian boy. Recently and covertly, Azerbaijani soldiers in their remote territory of Nakhichevan—bordered by Turkey, Armenia, and Iran—destroyed an estimated 89 medieval Armenian churches, 5,840 khachkars (statuesque cemetery headstones), and 22,000 tombstones. When Armenian Americans protested, officials of the Azerbaijan Consulate in Los Angeles denied that Armenian churches and cemeteries ever existed in the region and that Armenians ever lived there, only Azerbaijani Turks. Historically, however, Nakhichevan was for centuries populated by Armenians. But they fled to Armenia, as a result of the “Armenian genocide.” First, the Azerbaijani forced them out, then systematically committed “cultural genocide—erasure of all evidence that Armenians ever lived in Nakhichevan. This is similar to what happened to the Comanche people of the Texas Panhandle. First, they were removed to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), then all evidence that they ever lived there was erased.
In Azerbaijan and Armenia, differences of religion, race, and ethnicity would place almost insurmountable obstacles for a girl and a boy from the two countries to be allowed to fall in love. Likewise, in the Texas Panhandle of the 1950s, when my story takes place, an Anglo boy and a Native American girl would be considered traitors to their race, to their religion, and to their nationality, if they dared to fall in love. It’s hard for someone not raised in the Panhandle to understand the depth of animosity and hatred of native Texans of that era for Native Americans: they’re savages, barbarians, devil worshipers, gang rapists, baby killers—they have no culture and practice a worse-than-false religion; they’re dark and unwashed, nomads who cannot settle in one place; they’re unfeeling, compassionless, and merciless; and so on and on.
So in my story, when Tammie, the Comanche girl, and Grant, the Texas cowboy, meet and decide that Destiny has called them to be together, both families are horrified. Grant’s tycoon father takes matters into his own hands. Grant is his only heir and is destined to take over the family lands and enterprises in five states. The father will go to any length, even murder, to prevent the relationship from resulting in marriage and “half-breed” children. And furthermore, he feels it is his right and his duty: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” If he can have Tammie killed, he will feel no remorse—only satisfaction. And he can do so with impunity in white-ruled Texas.
The resulting tale is a narrative of how these two young people from different worlds find ways to overcome the obstacles placed in their way, both by the young man’s and the young lady’s families. Tammie and Grant are destined for each other. But how can they possibly overcome such insoluble and intractable obstacles? … Read my story and find out.