Shoshonean-speaking North American Plains Indians who migrated S from Wyoming and became a powerful group, raiding and displacing others (eg the Apache), and challenging white settlers. They were one of the first to acquire horses from the Spanish, and hunted buffalo. The S Comanche were settled on reservations in the mid-19th-c, but the N Comanche held out against the white settlers, finally agreeing to settle on a reservation in Oklahoma in 1867.
For alternate meanings, see Comanche (disambiguation)
| Comanche | |
|---|---|
| Comanche flag | |
| Total population | 15,000-20,000 |
| Regions with significant populations | United States (Oklahoma, Texas, California) |
| Language | English, Comanche |
| Religion | Christianity, other |
| Related ethnic groups | Shoshone and other Numic peoples |
The Comanche are a Native American group whose historical range (the Comancheria) consisted of present-day Eastern New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of Northern and Southern Texas. There might once have been as many as 20,000 Comanches.
There are various accounts of the origin of the name Comanche. Early French and American explorers knew the Comanche as Padouca (or Paducah), their Siouan name.
The Comanche speak an Uto-Aztecan language, sometimes classified as a Shoshone dialect.
Comanche History
Formation
The Comanches emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. During that time, their population increased dramatically due to the abundance of buffalo, an influx of Shoshone migrants, and the adoption of significant numbers of women and children taken captive from rival groups. Nevertheless, the Comanches never formed a single cohesive tribal unit but were divided into almost a dozen autonomous groups.
The horse was a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture, and there have been suggestions that it was the search for additional sources of horses among the Mexican settlers to the south (rather than the search for new herds of buffalo) that first led the Comanches to break off from the Shoshone. The Comanches may have been the first group of Plains natives to fully incorporate the horse into their culture, and to have introduced the animal to the other Plains peoples. Many of these horses were stolen, and the Comanches earned a reputation as formidable horse and later cattle thieves. Warfare was a major part of Comanche life.
Conflicts
The emergence of the Comanche around the turn of the eighteenth century and their subsequent migration southward brought them into conflict with the Apaches, who already lived in the region and themselves began migrating to Spanish-dominated Texas and New Mexico. In an attempt to prevent Apache incursions, the Spanish offered them help in their wars with the Comanches, but these efforts generally failed and the Apaches were finally forced out of the Southern Plains by mid-century. The Comanche now dominated the area surrounding the Texas Panhandle, including western Oklahoma and northeastern New Mexico.
Comanche raids into Mexico were a yearly event for many decades, with the warriors seeking weapons, cattle, horses, mules, women, goods and slaves. At least one such raid went so far south into Mexico that the returning raiders spoke of seeing "little men in the trees who would not speak to us", referring to monkeys. The Comanche raids were greatly feared. The Comanche mobility on horseback made these raids unstoppable until their final defeat by the United States. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, addressed the issue of Comanche raids, and the United States promised to stop the raids, but was not able to do so for many years.
Relationship with settlers
The Comanches maintained an ambiguous relationship with the Europeans and later Americans attempting to colonize their territory. Similarly, the Comanches were at war at one time or another with virtually every other Native American group living in the Great Plains, leaving opportunities for political maneuvering by the European colonial powers and the United States. At one point, Sam Houston, president of the newly created Republic of Texas, almost succeeded in reaching a peace treaty with the Comanches, but his efforts were thwarted when the Texas legislature refused to create an official boundary between Texas and the Comancheria.
While the Comanches managed to maintain their independence and even increase their territory, by the mid-nineteenth century they faced annihilation because of a wave of epidemics introduced by white settlers. Outbreaks of smallpox (1817, 1848) and cholera (1849) took a major toll on the Comanches, whose population dropped from an estimated 20,000 in mid-century to just a few thousand by the 1870s.
Efforts to move the Comanches into reservations began in the late 1860s with the Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867), which offered them churches, schools, and annuities in return for a vast tract of land totaling over 60,000 square miles (160,000 km²). The government promised to stop the buffalo hunters, who were decimating the great herds of the Plains, provided that the Comanches, along with the Apaches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos, moved to a reservation totaling less than 5,000 square miles (13,000 km²) of land. However, the government failed to prevent the slaughtering of the herds, which provoked the Comanches under Isa-tai (White Eagle) to attack a group of hunters in the Texas Panhandle in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls (1874). The attack was a disaster for the Comanches and the army was called in to drive all the remaining Comanche in the area into the reservation. Within just ten years, the buffalo were on the verge of extinction, effectively ending the Comanche way of life as hunters.
In 1892 the government negotiated the Jerome Agreement, with the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches, further reducing their reservation to 480,000 acres (1,940 km²) at a cost of $1.25 per acre ($308.88/km²), with an allotment of 160 acres (0.6 km²) per person per tribe to be held in trust. With this new arrangement, the era of the Comanche reservation came to an abrupt end.
Modern times
The Comanches were ill-prepared for life in a modern economic system, and many of them were defrauded of whatever remained of their land and possessions. During World War II, many Comanches left the traditional tribal lands in Oklahoma in search of financial opportunities in the cities of California and the Southwest. About half the Comanche population still lives in Oklahoma, centered around the town of Lawton. This is the site of the annual pow-wow, when Comanches from across the United States gather to celebrate their heritage and culture.
Culture
Social Order
Comanche groups did not have a single acknowledged leader.
The peace chief was usually an older individual, who could bring his experience to the task of advising.
The council made decisions about where the band should hunt, whether they should war against their enemies, and whether to ally themselves with other bands.
In times of war, the band selected a war chief. While the band was at war, the war chief was in charge, and all the warriors had to obey him.
The Comanche men did most of the hunting and always fought the wars. On the plains, Comanche women carried out the demanding tasks of cooking, skinning animals, setting up camp, and transporting household goods.
Childbirth
If a woman gave birth while the band was in camp, she was moved to a tipi, or a brush lodge if it was summer, and one or more of the older women assisted as midwives. If a woman went into labor while the band was on the move, she simply paused along the trail, gave birth to her child, and after a few hours caught up with the group again.
First, the midwives softened the earthen floor of the tipi and dug two holes.
After the birth, the midwives hung the umbilical cord on a hackberry tree.
The newborn was swaddled and remained with its mother in the tipi for a few days.
Cradleboards consisted of a flat board attached to which was a basket made from rawhide straps, or a leather sheath that laced up the front.
Both girls and boys were welcomed into the band, but boys were favored.
Sometimes a man named his child, but mostly the father asked a medicine man (or another man of distinction) to do so.
Boys were often named after their grandfather, uncle, or other relative. Girls were usually named after one of their father's relatives, but the name was selected by the mother.
Raising Children
The Comanche looked upon their children as their most precious gift. Children were also told about Big Cannibal Owl (Pia Mupitsi, derived from Mupitz, see Comanche language) who, they were told, lived in a cave on the south side of the Wichita Mountains and ate bad children at night.
Children learned from example, by observing and listening to their parents and others in the band. As soon as she was old enough to walk, a girl followed her mother about the camp playing at the daily tasks of cooking and making clothing.
A boy identified not only with his father but with his father's family, as well as with the bravest warriors in the band. His grandfather also taught him about his own boyhood and the history and legends of the Comanche.
As he grew older, he joined the other boys to hunt birds.
Coming of Age
Boys were highly respected because they would become warriors and might die young in battle. As he approached manhood, a boy went on his first buffalo hunt. Only after he had proven himself on a buffalo hunt was a young man allowed to go on a war path.
When he was ready to become a warrior, at about age fifteen or sixteen, a young man first "made his medicine" by going on a vision quest (a rite of passage). Following this quest, his father gave the young man a good horse to ride into battle and another mount for the trail.
Girls learned to gather berries, nuts, and roots. They carried water and collected wood, and when about twelve years old learned to cook meals, make tipis, sew clothing, and perform other tasks essential to becoming a wife and mother.
Marriage
Boys might boldly risk their lives as hunters and warriors, but, when it came to girls, boys were very bashful.
When he wished to marry, a boy offered a gift. Sometimes a marriage was arranged with an older man of wealth, but girls resisted such unions, often eloping with the young men they truly loved.
Death
Old men who no longer went on the war path had a special tipi called the Smoke Lodge, where they gathered each day.
A very old and ill person was "thrown away" by everyone other than close family. After he died, the Comanches immediately buried his body.
The deceased was attired in the finest available clothing, and then laid upon a blanket. Placed in a sitting position on a horse, the body was taken to the burial place, which was usually a cave, a deep ravine, or a crevice high among the rocks.
The body was placed in a sitting position, or on its side, in a hole, or on the ground, around stacked rocks and wooden poles. In the late 1800s, some Comanches, especially those living along the Red River, built tree or scaffold burial structures like those used by the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians. The Comanche did not fear death, but death worried them, and they often broke camp after a burial to get away from the place of death.
There was little mourning for the old people who died, but intense mourning for a young man who died.
Transportation
When they lived with the Shoshone, the Comanche mainly used dog-drawn travois for transportation.
Food
The Comanche were, initially at least, hunter-gatherers. When they lived in the Rocky Mountains during their migration to the Great Plains, both men and women shared the responsibility of gathering and providing food. When the Comanche reached the plains, hunting came to predominate.
For meat, the Comanche ate buffalo, bison, elk, black bears, pronghorn antelope, and deer. In later years the Comanche raided Texas ranches and stole longhorn cattle.
Buffalo meat and other game was prepared and cooked by the women. The Comanche also acquired maize, dried pumpkin, and tobacco through trade and raids.
Most meats were roasted over a fire or boiled. To boil fresh or dried meat and vegetables, women dug a pit in the ground, which they lined with animal skins or buffalo stomach and filled with water to make a kind of cooking pot. After they came into contact with the Spanish, the Comanche traded for copper pots and iron kettles, which made cooking easier.
Women used berries and nuts, as well as honey and tallow, to flavor buffalo meat. The Comanches sometimes ate raw meat, especially raw liver flavored with gall. Among their delicacies was the curdled milk from the stomachs of suckling buffalo calves, and they also enjoyed buffalo tripe, or stomachs.
Comanche people generally had a light meal in the morning and a large evening meal. Like other Plains Indians, the Comanche were very hospitable people. They prepared meals whenever a visitor arrived in camp, which led to the belief that the Comanches ate at all hours of the day or night.
Comanche children ate pemmican, but this was primarily a tasty, high-energy food reserved for war parties.
Habitation
Much of the area inhabited by the Comanches was flat and dry, with the exception of major rivers like the Cimarron River, the Pecos River, the Brazos River, and the Red River. The water of these rivers was often too dirty to drink, so the Comanches usually lived along the smaller, clear streams which flowed into them. These streams supported trees which the Comanche used to build shelters.
The Comanche sheathed their tipis with a covering made of buffalo hides sewn together. To prepare the buffalo hides, women first spread them on the ground, then scraped away the fat and flesh with blades made from bones or antlers, and left them in the sun.
To finish the tipi covering, women laid the tanned hides side by side and stitched them together. An entire Comanche band could be packed and chasing a buffalo herd within about fifteen minutes.
Clothing
Comanche clothing was simple and easy to wear. The moccasins had soles made from thick, tough buffalo hide with soft deerskin uppers.
The Comanche men wore nothing on the upper body except in the winter, when they wore warm, heavy robes made from buffalo hides (or occasionally, bear, wolf, or coyote skins) with knee-length buffalo-hide boots. When they reached the age of eight or nine they began to wear the clothing of a Comanche adult.
In the 19th Century, woven cloth replaced the buckskin breechclouts, and the men began wearing loose-fitting buckskin shirts.
Comanche women wore long deerskin dresses. Comanche women wore buckskin moccasins with buffalo soles.
Unlike the boys, young girls did not go naked. By the age of twelve or thirteen they adopted the clothes of Comanche women.
Hair and headgear
Comanche men took pride in their hair, which was worn long and rarely cut. They wore their hair in two long braids tied with leather thongs or colored cloth, and sometimes wrapped with beaver fur. The feather had no special meaning for the Comanche, but was worn solely for decoration.
Comanche men rarely wore anything on their heads, and had no tradition of wearing the large feathered bonnets seen among the northern Plains peoples. Only after they moved onto a reservation late in the 19th Century would Comanche men begin to wear the typical Plains headdress. If the winter was severely cold they might wear a brimless, woolly buffalo hide hat.
When they went to war, some warriors wore a headdress made from a buffalo's scalp. Warriors cut away most of the hide and flesh from a buffalo head, leaving only a portion of the woolly hair and the horns. This type of woolly, horned buffalo hat was worn only by the Comanche.
Comanche women did not let their hair grow as long as the men did. Young girls might wear their hair long and braided, but women parted their hair in the middle and kept it short.
Body Decoration
Comanche men usually had pierced ears with hanging earrings made from pieces of shell or loops of brass or silver wire. The men also tattooed their face, arms, and chest with geometric designs, and painted their face and body. Comanche men also wore bands of leather and strips of metal on their arms.
Except for black, which was the color for war, there was no standard color or pattern for face and body painting: it was a matter of individual preference. For example, one Comanche might paint one side of his face white and the other side red; One Comanche might always paint himself in a particular way, while another might change the colors and designs when so inclined.
Comanche women might also tattoo their face or arms. A popular pattern among the women was to paint the insides of their ears a bright red, and paint great orange and red circles on their cheeks.
Arts and Crafts
Due to their frequent traveling, Comanche Indians had to make sure that their household goods and other possessions were light and unbreakable. Basketry, weaving, wood carving, and metal working were also unknown among the Comanches. Nearly two hundred different articles were made from the horns, hide, and bones of the buffalo.
Removing the lining of the inner stomach, women made the paunch into a water bag. With wood scarce on the plains, women relied on buffalo chips (dried dung) to fuel the fires that cooked meals and warmed the people through long winters.
Stiff rawhide was fashioned into saddles, stirrups and cinches, knife cases, buckets, and moccasin soles. Women also tanned hides to make soft and supple buckskin, which was used for tipi covers, warm robes, blankets, cloths, and moccasins.
Sinew was used for bowstrings and sewing thread. Buffalo hair was used to fill saddle pads, and was also used in rope and halters.
Language
Comanche (Numu tekwapu) is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people. It is closely related to the language of the Shoshone, from which the Comanche diverged around 1700. Although efforts are now being made to ensure its survival, most speakers of the language are elderly, and less than one percent of the Comanches can speak the language. In the late 1800s, Comanche children were placed in boarding schools where they were discouraged from speaking their native language, and even severely punished for doing so. The second generation then grew up speaking English, because of the belief that it was better for them not to know Comanche.
During World War II, a group of seventeen young men referred to as "The Comanche Code Talkers" were trained and used by the U.S. Army to send messages conveying sensitive information that could not be deciphered by the enemy.
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