Comanche history – in the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache (Plains Apache), Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins.
Their extensive area of suzerainty has been called an empire, but the Comanche were never united under a single government or leader. They consisted of several bands with a common language which operated independently of each other. Estimates of the Comanche's total population in 1780, when they were most numerous, are usually around 20,000, although one estimate numbers them at 40,000.
The Comanche bands regularly waged war on neighboring tribes and European settlers encroaching on Comancheria. Although infamous for their unrelenting warfare and raiding into Mexico, they also took thousands of captives from raids on other Native tribes as well as Anglo settlers on the American frontier. Many of these captives were kept as slaves or traded to the Spanish in New Mexico, but captives taken by the Comanche at a young age were usually assimilated into Comanche society as members of the tribe. By 1875, decimated by European diseases, warfare, a tide of Anglo settlement, and the near-eradication of the bison, the Comanche had been defeated by the U.S. army and were forced to live on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.
In 1920 the United States census listed fewer than 1,500 Comanche. Tribal enrollment in the 21st century numbered 15,191, with 7,763 members residing in the Lawton-Fort Sill and surrounding areas of southwest Oklahoma. Of the three million acres (12,000 km²) promised the Comanche, Kiowa and Kiowa Apache by treaty in 1867, only 235,000 acres (951 km²) have remained in native hands. Of this, 4,400 acres (18 km²) are owned by the tribe itself.
Prehistory The Comanche were closely related in language and tradition to the Eastern Shoshone of Wyoming. The Comanche probably split from the Shoshone in the 16th century with the Comanche moving southeast to Colorado and becoming, as did the Eastern Shoshone, bison-hunting Great Plains nomads. The movement onto the Great Plains may have been stimulated by wetter climatic conditions which permitted an increase in the bison population on the Great Plains.
In southern Colorado, the Comanche formed an alliance with the Ute and in the late 17th century, it appears the subsistence pattern of the two tribes were similar. From fall to early spring, the Comanche separated into small groups and were hunter-gatherers in western Colorado, especially the San Luis Valley. In late spring the Comanche and Ute crossed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and moved eastward onto the Great Plains where they hunted bison during the summer months. They probably first acquired horses during the 1680s after the Pueblo peoples expelled the Spanish for 12 years from New Mexico and Spanish horses became available to the native peoples. The acquisition of horses enabled the Comanche to have the mobility to become wide-ranging nomads.
In 1706, Spanish soldier Juan de Ulibarri in the Pueblo settlement of Taos made the first European mention of the Comanche. He was told by the leaders of the settlement that "The infidel enemies of the Ute and Comanche tribe were about to make an attack upon this pueblo." The attack did not occur but the reputation of the Comanche as an aggressive tribe which raided sedentary peoples was established. The Ute word kɨmantsi, probably meaning 'enemy', was the name by which the Comanche became known. Their name for themselves was nɨmɨnɨɨ, meaning 'people'. The French, encountering the Comanche before 1740 called the Comanche Padouca, a name they also gave to the Apache, thus causing confusion in the early history of French contact with the two peoples.
Comanche expansion: 18th century
Comanche history for the eighteenth century falls into three broad and distinct categories: (1) the Comanche and their relationship with the Spanish, Puebloans, Ute, and Apache peoples of New Mexico; (2) The Comanche and their relationship with the Spanish, Apache, Wichita, and other peoples of Texas; and, (3) The Comanche and their relationship with the French and the Indian tribes of Oklahoma and Kansas.
By the late 18th century, there were two distinct groups of Comanche. The western bands, resident in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and the Texas panhandle were oriented toward the Spanish settlements of New Mexico; the eastern bands in south-western Oklahoma and central Texas were oriented toward the Spanish settlements of Texas. A third challenge to the Comanche were the French and their Indian allies on the eastern border of the Great Plains. In the 19th century the emigrant Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma and the Anglo residents of Texas presented new challenges to the Comanche.
Comanche and New Mexico
In the early 18th century the Ute and Comanche (who were probably the junior partners of the alliance at this time) established their primacy on the northern frontier of Spanish New Mexico, although their depredations consisted mostly of stealing livestock. In 1716, the governor of New Mexico launched an attack against a peaceful Ute/Comanche camp near San Antonio Mountain, north of the capital of Santa Fe, killing and capturing many and enslaving the captives. After that incident the conflict between the Spanish and Ute/Comanche became more violent. In 1719, the Ute and Comanche carried out a large raid in the Taos area and killed several people. The Spanish governor organized an expedition to punish the Indians and an army of more than 700, mostly Pueblos and Apache, marched north to the Arkansas River valley and searched for two months without finding a single Ute or Comanche. However, the expedition learned that the Apache peoples in southern Colorado were suffering heavy attacks from the Ute and Comanche. Several of the Apache bands would shortly seek safety nearer to the Spanish settlements in New Mexico; other bands would remain hostile to both the Spanish and the Comanche.
In the 1720s, the Comanche completed the conquest of the Arkansas River valley of Colorado, and in the 1730s they became the first fully-mounted, bison-hunting nomads of the Great Plains—the first American Indians to make the cultural shift to an equestrian economy. The Comanche pushed the Apache south and west off the Great Plains and continued to expand southward. The Comanche grew apart from their Ute allies, both culturally and politically in the 1730s, and in 1749, the Ute asked the Spanish in New Mexico for military assistance against the Comanche. The war between the Ute and Comanche would continue for the remainder of the 18th century, although the Comanche had greater priorities than the Ute.
The Puebloan and Spanish population in New Mexico in 1749 was only 15,000 and the Comanche, despite several military reverses, began to dominate the colony, alternately trading and raiding. In 1747, a Spanish and Puebloan force of more than 500 men attacked a Comanche and Ute camp near the Chama River, killing 107 of the Indians and capturing 206. In 1751, Spanish and Puebloan troops trapped 300 Comanche in a box canyon and killed 112 and captured 33. These defeats caused the Comanche to sue for peace. The peace agreement of 1752 was favorable to the Comanche, granting them trade privileges and treatment as a sovereign nation, and freeing them to make war on the Ute. In 1761, after a minor dispute, the Spanish joined the Ute, attacked a Comanche encampment and killed more than 400 and captured 300 people. The resultant peace agreement in 1762 was again mostly favorable to the Comanche granting them status as allies rather than enemies of the Spanish in New Mexico.
The 1762 peace agreement broke down after 1767 and the Comanche embarked on an intense campaign which over several years killed hundreds of Spanish and Puebloans and left the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico in ruins. In 1774, the Spanish responded. Six hundred soldiers surrounded a band of Comanches and killed 300 men, women, and children and took more than 100 prisoners. Being taken prisoner by the Spanish usually meant transport to the mines of Mexico or the sugar plantations of the Caribbean for men and slavery in Spanish households for women and children. Undeterred by their occasional defeats, the Comanche continued to strengthen their economic and political hold on New Mexico.
The last major battle between the New Mexican settlers and the Comanche took place in 1779. The governor of New Mexico, Juan Bautista de Anza, an experienced Indian fighter, took the war to the Comanche in their own country. With 800 men, including 200 Ute and Apache auxiliaries, he marched north and killed Cuerno Verde ("Green Horn") the most important Comanche war leader and many of his followers in the Greenhorn Valley south of Pueblo, Colorado. Raids dropped off noticeably but did not halt entirely. In the summer of 1785, De Anza let it be known that he was interested in making peace with the Comanches if they could agree on a single leader to represent them. The idea took root and received a major push when the eastern Comanche in Texas signed a peace treaty, negotiated by Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Chaves, that autumn with Texas Governor Domingo Cabello y Robles.
Among the western Comanche, the main opposition to peace was a leader named White Bull (Toro Blanco). The peace faction of the Comanche assassinated him and the Kotsoteka, Jupe, and Yamparika sub-tribes gave the power to make peace to a leader named Ecueracapa. After two meetings at Pecos and another in a Comanche camp early in 1786, De Anza sent a signed treaty to Mexico City in July. De Anza also arranged a truce between the Ute and Comanche, while gaining a Comanche alliance with the Spanish against the Apache, many groups of which were hostile to the Spanish. The 1786 agreement established a nominal submission of the Comanche to Spanish authority, while in practice they were left almost fully independent, but most importantly, it ended major hostilities between the Comanche, and the Spanish and Puebloans of New Mexico.
The peace of 1786 endured. The Comanche and Spanish undertook joint operations against their common Apache enemy. The Spanish extended their settlements eastward onto the Great Plains and the population of New Mexico increased. The Spanish showered the Comanche with gifts and removed trade restrictions on guns and ammunition. A few Comanche sent their children to Spanish schools. Travelers crossed the Plains from east to west without danger. A class of traders, called Comancheros, transported Spanish goods into the Comanche heartland in the Texas panhandle and traded for buffalo robes, meat, and horses.