COMANCHE

COMANCHE. Indians were the dominant military and economic power on the Southern Plains for the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries. They controlled the flow of goods, particularly horses and horse gear, from Spanish New Mexico to the Plains.

Based on linguistic evidence, speakers of Eastern Shoshone (including the Comanches and the Wind River Shoshone of Wyoming) probably diverged from other Shoshone speakers about a.d. 1500. This provides a date for their movement onto the northwestern Plains. While some turned north, confronting the Algonkian speaking Blackfeet, who ultimately pushed them back (so that they became the Wind River Shoshone), others turned south in about 1700. The latter confronted Ute, who named them komanci (my adversary), or Southern Ute, who called them kumanchi (other, or stranger). The "tribal" category "Comanche" did not comprise a single political entity. Rather, there were multiple political organizations in time and space, derived from a common cultural model but based on differing political and domestic economic resources.

Perhaps the best way to understand the Comanche social and political structure is to start at the bottom. While nuclear families might, for whatever reason, choose to live separately for a while, the normal Comanche residential pattern consisted of groups of related extended families. Those families formed the local, or residential, band. The bands were focused around a core extended family, whose leader was the group's chief. Whereas the local residential band was structured on kin-ship, the widest Comanche social structure—the division—was of local group, or bands, linked into political networks; in historic times in New Mexico, and apparently briefly in Texas, the divisional principal chief was "elected" from amongst the constituent local band chiefs.

Four economic bases can be identified: hunting, warfare and raids, trade, and, in the pre-reservation period of Euro-American interaction, political gifts. Items produced in any one of these areas could be translated into others: for instance, items produced in hunting (such as products of the buffalo), raiding (material booty as well as captives), and the political gifts from Euro-Americans were all translated into trade items with others.

There is no way to know the pre-contact Comanche population. Early reports ranged upwards to 20,000, but none of those making these early reports had accurate personal knowledge of the Comanches as a whole. Again, while certainly there were devastating epidemics, there are no unambiguous contemporary accounts. The earliest "census" was in 1879, counting 1,479 persons. The low point occurred in 1904, with just 1,399 Comanches reported. In 1999, the Comanche tribe reported a total population of approximately 10,000.

The Comanches were one of the typical Plains tribes. They shared the pattern of horse-mounted buffalo hunting, the tipi and travois, and religion focusing on personal spiritual power.

A number of Comanche leaders became prominent in inter-tribal, and international affairs. As remembered by a dozen Comanche consultants in 1933, the greatest of pre-reservation leaders was the Yamparika Ten Bears. He participated in a number of treaty councils between 1853 and 1868 and traveled to Washington twice. After Ten Bears, historically the most important Comanche leader was Quanah Parker, the son of a captive white woman from Texas and a Comanche man. In the later reservation period Quanah was the Comanche "principal" chief. While Quanah was important in shaping internal Comanche events, he was also important as a proselytizer of the new peyote, or Native American Church.

Relations with the Spaniards of New Mexico and Texas for most of the eighteenth century alternated between hostility and periods of peaceful trading. In 1785 in Texas and 1786 in New Mexico, strong leaders arranged relatively permanent peace treaties, which lasted until the collapse of the Spanish Empire in 1821. Mexico attempted to continue the policies of Spain with treaties in 1823 and 1826, but the new government did not have the resources to maintain either major trade or political gifts. Meanwhile, the United States was trying to lure the Comanches from their Spanish alliances by providing gifts to Comanche visitors at Natchitoches, Louisiana. With the opening of the Santa Fe Trail, parts of which went right through Comanche territory, American policy became one of trying to keep the Comanches away from the trail, by treaty if possible, by military force if not.

Treaties or other agreements between the United States and the Comanches were signed in 1835, 1846, 1853, 1861, 1865, and 1867. Several treaties were negotiated with the Confederate States in 1861. But as with the Spanish and Mexican treaties, all of these agreements involved only a portion of the Comanches. The last treaty—Medicine Lodge Creek, signed in 1867—created a reservation in southwestern Indian Territory, but it was not until 1875 that all Comanches were forced to live there permanently. The reservation was allotted and dissolved in 1901. A few Comanche are alleged to have participated in the Ghost Dance of 1890, but apparently there is no direct evidence for it. At the same time, a number of Comanches became active participants in the new Native American Church.

By the twentieth century, many Comanches had become active participants in the general economy. While many original reservation allotments remain in Indian hands, relatively few Indians actually work their land; most is leased to non-Indians.

A number of Comanches served in the armed forces in World War I. In 1939, a group of Comanches fluent in their native language was recruited to act as Code Talkers. They served in Europe, landing at Normandy on D Day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foster, Morris W. Being Comanche: A Social History of an American Indian Community. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991.

Kavanagh, Thomas W. Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706–1875. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

ThomasKavanagh

See alsoTribes: Great Plains .

Co·man·che / kəˈmanchē/ • n. (pl. same or -ches ) 1. a member of an American Indian people of the southwestern U.S. The Comanche were among the first to acquire horses (from the Spanish) and resisted white settlers fiercely. 2. the Uto-Aztecan language of this people. • adj. of or relating to this people or their language.

Comanche Shoshonean-speaking Native American nation. They separated from the parent Shoshone in the distant past and migrated from e Wyoming into Kansas. Conflict with US forces resulted in their near extinction by 1874. Today, c.4500 Comanche live on reservations in sw Oklahoma.

Comanche A Native American Uto-Aztecan people of the plains and prairies of Texas and Oklahoma. An offshoot of the Shoshone, they migrated to the plains from the Rocky Mountains to hunt buffalo. Their name is derived from the Spanish camino ancho (‘wide trail’).

Comanche •ashy, flashy, Lubumbashi, mashie, plashy, splashy, trashy •Gramsci •banshee, Comanche •marshy, Ustashe •branchy, Ranchi •Bangladeshi, fleshy •Frenchy • chichi •dishy, fishy, maharishi, squishy, swishy, Vichy •rubbishy •sloshy, squashy, washy •bolshie • conchie • wishy-washy •paunchy, raunchy •sushi • munshi •bushy, cushy, pushy •brushy, gushy, mushy, plushy, rushy, slushy •bunchy, crunchy, punchy