Comanches! Quanah Parker Spearhead NOW HERE
BEFORE I BEGIN: If you've got no idea who Quanah Parker, here's a little context to get you up to speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanah_Parker.
Compared to today, everybody was fucked up back then. White settlers, Comanches, other Indian tribes...it was a different world that you and I didn't live in, one without antibiotics and Starbucks, so its hard to relate to how some of the things were done. People had to be hard. Shit was different, unexplainable, and unfathomable to people today...but it is cool to read and learn about, so let's get that out of the way right now and just move on like big boys and girls.
Dear Cowboys & Indians,
Yanne here. Ok...real talk. I'm not here to give you a history lesson, because its really messy and I ain't that smart, but I'm interested, and maybe you will be too.
The history of the Comanches, the white settlers, and all the other Indian tribes -it was a gong show.
We launched our first Comanche patch on April 17th, 2015. I had read Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynn and thought it would be cool to come out with a patch series. (Incidentally, the author of the book was on Rogan about 3 years ago and it was outstanding: Click Here to Watch).
Part historical, part "Buffalo Bill Wild West"-poster style -the two patches that we made were very poorly received, and I think misunderstood. I pushed the envelope.
I took a risk knowing who our customer base was (which at the beginning of Violent Little was mostly SEAL Team squadrons we were making patches for for their deployments)...which if you remember that New York Times article about how some of the boys were carrying Winkler tomahawks on their kit and getting kills with them, it seemed consistent to be in the fucking weeds on it. I've got no problem with how our boys are getting their kills -that's their business and its not for me to judge their craft -they're the ones that have to do the hard job, and the stakes are highest. We are not a brand for housewives from Ohio...although we've become slightly more commercial since then. They've been some of our worst selling patches, and I'm ok with that.
The Comanches patches were some of my favorite patches we've ever done...and we've been sitting on a boatload of them forever. Like 6...7...8 years...something like that. It was always supposed to be a three part series, but I kind of stopped at two, well, because geez...is it even a good idea to do a third? Didn't seem like it. Then some years went by and...well, we just kind of kept on living our lives.
But then there was this one customer, just one, who kept emailing us over the years asking politely and patiently when there was going to be a third. And I never forgot that he kept asking for it -so for that one guy, even if he's the only one who buys it today...this one's for you, brother. Thank you.
Maybe Quanah Parker was a piece of shit, maybe he was an amazing human being, I don't really know, and I don't care. It happened a long time ago. But what I do like doing is honoring history, so I hope this spearhead honors Quanah Parker and our shared history.
He was a skilled warrior and respected leader of his people for his time, and that's enough for me. Hope you enjoy.
All my love,
Yanne