Three Years Among the Comanches

First published in 1859, Nelson Lee’s Three Years Among the Comanches is perhaps the most widely known story of all Indian captivity narratives. Lee was a Texan Ranger captured by marauding Indians in the 1850s and forced to live with them as a slave for three years before making his escape. His account includes detailed descriptions of life in a nomadic Comanche village, his marriage to a young squaw, buffalo hunts, Comanche versus Apache conflicts, Comanche mythology and gut-wrenching descriptions of the terrible fates of his fellow-captives who were tortured before him, his life being spared only because of a silver alarm clock he possessed, the loud workings of which mystified his superstitious captors.

• My Sixty Years on the Plains
• My Life as an Indian: The Story of a Red Woman and a White Man in the Lodges of the Blackfeet
• Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879: The Story of the Captivity and Life of a Texan Among the Indians
• The White Indian Boy: The Story of Uncle Nick Among the Shoshones
• Adventures of a Mountain Man: The Narrative of Zenas Leonard
• The Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace: The Texas Ranger and Hunter
• The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky
• The Indian War of 1864
• My People The Sioux
• Wild life in the Far West: Personal Adventures of a Border Mountain Man (1872)