Comanche (Ku "man she), a name derived from either the Ute Komantcia, "People Who Fight Us All the Time," or the Spanish camino ancho, "broad trail." Their self-designation was Numinu, "People." See also Shoshone, Eastern or Wind River (Chapter 4).
Location The Comanche lived in the Rocky Mountain regions of Wyoming and northern Colorado until the mid- to late seventeenth century, when the people moved into the central and southern Great Plains. Today, most Comanches live in Oklahoma.
Population In the late eighteenth century there were between 7,000 and 12,000 Comanches. Their population in the 1990s is about 8,500.
Language Comanche is part of the Uto-Aztecan language. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, variations of Comanche were used as a common trade language throughout the southwestern Great Plains.
Historical Information
History The Comanche were originally part of the Eastern Shoshone, who had lived along Arizona’s Gila River from about 3000 B.C.E. to about 500 B.C.E. At that time, a group of them began migrating north toward Utah, growing a high-altitude variety of corn that had been developed in Mexico. This group, who grew corn, beans, and squash and also hunted and gathered food, is known as the Sevier Complex.
In time, Sevier people moved north of the Great Salt Lake. When a drought struck the Great Basin in the thirteenth century, the Sevier people spread out north of the Great Salt Lake. Known then as Shoshones, they lived by hunting and gathering throughout much of the Great Basin.
By about the late seventeenth century, some Shoshone bands, from the mountainous regions of Wyoming and northern Colorado, later known as Comanche, had acquired horses. The bands began migrating into New Mexico and toward the Arkansas River on the central Plains. They adopted the cycle of buffalo hunting, raiding, and fighting characteristic of Plains life.
A Comanche warrior with a peyote rattle (1908). War Chief Quanah Parker played a major role in bringing the Peyote religion to the Comanche and many other Indian tribes after 1890.
By about 1750 they had acquired vast horse herds and dominated the central high plains. Their population had increased considerably, in part owing to the capture and adoption of young women and the abundance of buffalo meat to feed the growing numbers of children. They were also trading directly with the French by this time, from whom they acquired a steady supply of guns.
In 1780-1781 the Comanche (as well as most other Plains tribes) lost a large number of their people, perhaps as many as half, to a smallpox epidemic. In about 1790, several thousand northern Comanches and Kiowas joined together in a lasting alliance. There was a brief period of peace between the Spanish and the Comanche, roughly from 1787 to 1810, during which these two peoples were allied against the Apaches.
The Comanche continued southward throughout the eighteenth and into the early nineteenth century, pressured from the north by the Dakota/Lakota and other tribes and drawn by trade and raiding opportunities in the Southwest into New Spain/Mexico. During this period they continued to drive Apachean groups from the Plains. They also prevented the Spanish from colonizing Texas extensively, and they acted as a brake to French trade expansion into the Southwest.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Comanches were roughly separated into three divisions. The southern group lived between the Red and Colorado Rivers in Texas. The middle group wintered in Texas but followed the buffalo in summer north toward the Arkansas River. The northern group wintered on the Red River and wandered widely during the summer. In 1840, northern Comanches made peace with the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos, after the latter had staged several successful raids against them. As part of this agreement, the Comanche gave up land in western Kansas north of the Arkansas River.
A cholera epidemic in 1849-1850 took a heavier toll on Comanche population than had all battles to date. During the 1840s and 1850s, the Comanche fought bitter wars with the Texans, the latter bent on exterminating all Indian groups. In 1853, the Comanche joined with some Apaches in a failed bid to destroy the Indians who had been settled since the 1830s on "their" lands in the Indian Territory.
The Comanche defeated Kit Carson in 1864, but they and the Kiowa signed a treaty in 1865 that reserved much of western Indian Territory (Oklahoma) for them and their allies. When the U.S. government failed to keep non-Indians out of these lands, the Indians rebelled. In the ensuing 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty, some Comanche bands agreed to accept a reservation in southwestern Indian Territory with the Kiowa and Kiowa Apaches. Hostilities over non-Indian squatters and the difficulties of life in captivity continued for another eight years. However, by the late 1860s the Comanche were in serious trouble. The great buffalo herds had been hunted to near extinction and the U.S. Army was pursuing Indians relentlessly.
After the 1868 Battle of the Washita, in which the United States massacred a group of Cheyenne Indians, a few Comanche leaders surrendered their bands at Fort Cobb, Oklahoma; these roughly 2,500 people were later moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and began farming corn. Several bands, however, remained on the Plains, holding on to the free life for several more years. The Comanche adopted a modified version of the Sun Dance in 1874. At about the same time, a short-lived religious movement led to an unsuccessful battle against the United States at Adobe Walls.
In 1874, War Chief Quanah Parker led the last free Comanche bands, along with some Kiowa and Cheyenne refugees from Fort Sill, into Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, site of the last great buffalo range. There they lived traditionally until the army found and destroyed their camp and horses. In 1875, Parker surrendered to mark the end of Comanche resistance.
Parker continued as an important leader on the reservation, overseeing favorable land leases and playing a major role in bringing the Peyote religion to the Comanche and many other Indian tribes after 1890. Reservation lands were allotted beginning in 1892. Nonallotted lands were sold to non-Indians, and nothing remained of the reservation by 1908.
Religion Comanche deities included numerous celestial objects such as the sun and moon. The Eagle Dance and Beaver ceremony were important, but they did not adopt the Sun Dance until 1874. Shamans interceded with the spirit world to cure the sick.
Young men undertook vision quests in remote places, hoping to attract a guardian spirit helper. When they returned, shamans helped them to interpret their visions, which included associated songs and taboos, and to prepare their personal medicine bundles.
Government Membership was fluid in each of the roughly 13 bands, including 4 major ones. Each band had a chief or headman, who was assisted by a council of the leading men of the band. Bands cooperated with each other, but there was no overall tribal organization or leadership, a fact that limited their nevertheless great effectiveness on the Plains.
Customs In contrast to most other Plains Indians, the fiercely independent Comanche maintained virtually no police to keep order in the camp. Leaders for buffalo hunts maintained authority for that hunt only. Men might have more than one wife. Corpses were dressed in their best clothing, face painted red and red clay on eyes, and buried in flexed position in a cave or shallow grave. Mourners cut their hair, arms, and legs; gave away their possessions; and burned the dead person’s tipi, never mentioning his or her name again. After the move to the Plains, the custom of killing all of a man’s horses when he died was replaced by that of killing only the best one, with the rest to be distributed among other people.
Dwellings Women made Plains-style buffalo-skin tipis.
Diet Buffalo was the main staple on the Plains. They were driven over cliffs, stalked individually, or, most popular after the people acquired horses, surrounded on horseback. Men also hunted other large and small game. Women gathered wild potatoes, fruit (plums, grapes, and currants), nuts, and berries.
Key Technology Babies were cradled in beaded skin pockets attached to V-shaped frames. Comanches also made shallow basketry gambling trays.
Trade Comanches frequented both northern Plains aboriginal trade centers. One was located in southern North Dakota, centered on the Knife River Mandan villages. The other was located north of the mouth of the Grand River, in present-day South Dakota, and centered on the Arikara villages there.
By the early eighteenth century, Comanches were also trading at Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, although they also raided these areas mercilessly. Other important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century trading partners included the Wichita and Osage, with whom the Comanche traded horses for guns, and Mexicans, from whom the Comanche obtained tobacco. Because of their wide range, the Comanche helped to spread the use of horses throughout the Plains.
Notable Arts Comanches were known for their silver and copper ornaments.
Transportation Having acquired horses during the late sixteenth century, probably from the Utes, the Comanche became among the most highly skilled horsemen on the Plains. They were excellent breeders and trainers as well as raiders and maintained some of the largest horse herds on the Plains. Both boys and girls began riding around age five. During the eighteenth century they began using pack horses to pull travois.
Dress Women made moccasins, leggings, breechclouts, shirts, and robes for men, and for themselves they made two-piece dresses and moccasins with leggings and robes in winter. Clothing was often decorated with beaded quillwork.
War and Weapons Comanches used red paint for battle on their horses’ heads and tails as well as themselves. Other battle gear included buffalo horn headdresses, high buffalo-hide boots, and horsehair extensions to their already long hair. Weapons included feathered lances, buffalo-hide shields, and bows, mainly of Osage orange wood. The people adopted military societies beginning in the eighteenth century as well as many other features of Plains warrior culture.
Traditional enemies of the Kiowa, the two groups made peace about 1790 and became raiding partners. Apaches became a favorite raiding target beginning in the late eighteenth century, as did groups such as the Ute (allies before about 1750), Navajo, Pawnee, Osage, and eastern Pueblos as well as non-Indians in the Southwest. Allies included Caddo-speaking tribes such as the Pawnee. About 1840 the Comanche joined in a loose confederacy with the Southern Cheyennes and Southern Arapahos.
Contemporary Information
Government/Reservations The Comanche Indian Tribe of Oklahoma is governed by a business committee under a 1967 constitution. The chair and other officials are popularly elected. They have no reservation or tribally owned land. Roughly 5,000 Comanches live near the tribal headquarters north of Lawton.
Economy Craft sales and government programs represent the only alternative to the local economy.
Legal Status The Comanche Indian Tribe is a federally recognized tribal entity.
Daily Life Many Comanches have intermarried with other Indian and non-Indian people. Perhaps 250 elderly Comanches spoke their language in 1993. Efforts, undertaken by tribal members as well as the University of Oklahoma, are under way to preserve the language from demise.
Since the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975, Comanches have administered many of their own programs, such as education scholarships and assistance for the elderly. Continuing crafts include elaborate dance costumes characterized by fine feather and beadwork. The hand game, with its associated singing and gambling, is still widely played. Comanches participate in numerous local powwows, especially the Comanche Homecoming Powwow, held in July at Walters, Oklahoma. Most Comanches are Christians, although some are also members of the Native American Church.
