This is Cheevers, a Yamparika (yahm-pah-ree-kah) Comanche leader, photographed in Washington in 1872 on the last trip his more famous grandfather ever made. He was the grandson of Ten Bears, and after that chief died he led the largest piece of the old band still holding together. Ten Bears was Paruasemena (pah-roo-ah-seh-meh-nah), principal chief of the Yamparika from about 1860 until his death. Yamparika means Root Eaters, or Yap Eaters. Yap was a potato-like root they dug for food, an old Shoshone staple, and the name marks them as a northern Comanche division, often counted among the last to separate from the Shoshone. Spanish records in New Mexico knew them by the 1750s, when they were still mostly north of the Arkansas River. Later some of their local groups, including Ten Bears’s people, shifted south into the North Canadian valley in New Mexico and Texas. He also led the Ketahto (keh-tah-toh) local group, the Don’t Wear Shoes band, probably from the late 1840s. A division was the larger body. A local group was the community that actually camped and moved together. He had already signed the Treaty of Fort Atkinson in 1853 and the Treaty of the Little Arkansas in 1865. At Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in October 1867, he gave the speech still quoted from that council, asking for peace and for room to keep moving on the prairie. He had been to Washington once before, in 1863, and got little for his people. Cheevers went with him on the 1872 delegation, along with other Comanche and Kiowa leaders. Government captions call the grandson He Goat or Male Goat, usually traced to a Spanish word for goat. Francis Joseph Attocknie (ah-tock-nee), a nephew who later preserved the family history, said the Comanche name was tsii putsi (tsee poot-see), little pitied one. Those two explanations do not agree, and both still travel with him. No separate first name is on record. Cheevers is the personal name as the agents wrote it. The word Tamparethka on the card the print was pasted to is a spelling of the Yamparika division, not a given name. That same card calls him a prominent man in his tribe and chief of his band. Birth year is still disputed. One note says about 1858, which cannot fit a report that his parents died in the 1849 cholera epidemic. Attocknie family material puts the birth near 1842, which fits a band chief on that delegation better than a boy of fourteen. His parents’ names were not remembered. His sister Querherbitty (about 1847) later married Attocknie. The trip failed in the way the earlier ones had failed. Promises were not kept. Ten Bears died at Fort Sill on November 23, 1872, soon after they returned, and was buried in the post cemetery. Cheevers then took the main portion of the Ketahto. On the early reservation that local group was the largest Comanche community still together. He did not become principal chief of the whole Yamparika division, and he never held the standing his grandfather had. The Ketahto had already split. Smaller portions stayed with sons or stepsons of Ten Bears, Isananaka (ee-sah-nah-nah-kah), Wolf’s Name, and Hitutatsi (hee-too-taht-see), Little Crow. Both died of unknown causes about 1883. That is the generation after Medicine Lodge. Ten Bears is remembered for a speech. Cheevers is remembered, when he is remembered at all, for what came next: holding the main Ketahto community after the chief everyone still quotes was gone, while fragments of the same family led their own people a short distance away. Photo: Alexander Gardner, Washington, D.C., 1872. National Archives, Cheevers–He-Goat, Comanches, NAID 519070. Same sitting held by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.