The Comanches are a Native American people, today about 14,050 people, half of whom live in Oklahoma (former Indian Territory); the rest is divided between Texas, California and New Mexico.
Flag of the Comanche Nation.
The Comanches are today recognized federally as the Comanche Nation.
Name and language
There are two explanations for the origin of the name "Comanche", which is a degeneration of either the Ute term "komants", which means "those who always fight us", or the Spanish "camino ancho", meaning "wide track ". They were also called 'Paducah' by early French and American explorers1, but their own preferred name is 'Numunuh', meaning 'the People'. The Comanche speak an Uto-Aztecan language, sometimes classified as a Shoshone dialect.
Birth of the Comanche tribes
The Comanches emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke away from the Shoshones living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. This coincides with their acquisition of the horse, which allowed them greater mobility in their search for better hunting grounds. Their original migration took them to the Great Plains, from where they moved south through territory stretching from the Arkansas River to central Texas. During this time, their population grew significantly due to an abundance of buffalo, an influx of Shoshone migrants, and the adoption of significant numbers of women and children taken prisoner by rival groups. Nevertheless, the Comanches never formed a united tribal entity, and were divided into a dozen autonomous groups, which shared the same language and culture, but which could have fought among themselves as often as they cooperated. These groups were very flexible, and often united and separated, depending on the circumstances.
Speciality of the Comanches
The Pueblo Indians had learned to ride the horse, to use it as a source of food or as a commodity in exchange with the Indians of the Plains. Following the Revolt of the Pueblos in 1680, the Utes became masters in the art of the horse trade, then the Utes by allying themselves with the Comanches introduced them to equestrian culture in the years 1705, the latter using them in particular as harnessing their travois, to make war and to hunt buffalo on horseback. The horse was a key element in the emergence of a specific Comanche culture. It has even been suggested that it was the search for new sources of horse supply among southern Mexican settlers (rather than the search for new buffalo herds) that first led the Comanches to split from the Shoshones. The Comanches may even have been the first Plains Native American group to completely include the horse in their culture, and may have also introduced the horse to other Plains peoples. By the middle of the 19th century, they supplied horses to French and American traders and settlers, and then to migrants passing through their territory on the route of the Californian gold rush. Many of these horses were stolen, and the Comanches soon acquired a reputation as formidable horse and later cattle thieves. Their victims included Spanish and American settlers, as well as the other Plains tribes, which often led to war. They were formidable opponents, who developed comprehensive strategies for combat on horseback with traditional weapons.
A culture of hunting is thus succeeded by a nomadic pastoral economy that combines hunting with breeding and trade in horses and bison skins.
The Comanche Wars
With Apaches and Spaniards
In fact, warfare was an essential part of Comanche life. Their emergence around the turn of the 18th century and their migration south brought them into conflict with the Apaches, who were already living in the area and who began to migrate to Spanish-dominated Texas and New Mexico. In an attempt to prevent Apache incursions, the Spanish offered aid in their wars against the Comanches, but these efforts mostly failed and the Apaches had to leave the Southern Plains by mid-century. At this time, the Comanches dominated the area surrounding the Texas Panhandle, including western Oklahoma and northeastern New Mexico.
With the settlers
The Comanches maintained ambiguous relations with the Europeans and then the Americans attempting to colonize their territory. They were valued as trading partners, but they were also feared for their raids. Likewise, the Comanches were at war at one time or another with each of the Great Plains tribes, leaving room for European colonial powers and the United States to politically manipulate rival groups. At one point, Sam Houston, the president of the nascent Republic of Texas, nearly succeeded in signing a peace treaty with the Comanches, but his efforts were shattered when the Texas legislature refused to create an official border between Texas and the United States. Comanche territory.
While the Comanches managed to maintain their independence and even expand their territory, they came close to annihilation in the mid-19th century due to the wave of epidemics introduced by white settlers as well as the depletion of their resources. in horses and bison. The epidemics of smallpox (1817, 1848) and cholera (1849) cost the Comanches dearly in human lives, whose population fell from about 20,0004 in the middle of the century to only a few thousand around 1870, which forced them in particular to make treaties with the Spaniards. They adapted during the 1860s and 1870s, with the Treaty of Medicine Lodge restoring their grassland and the Civil War making millions of head of cattle available for raiding.
Peace
Efforts to move the Comanches to reservations began in the late 1860s with the Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867), which granted them churches, schools and an annual income in exchange for a large piece of land exceeding 160 000 km2. The government promised to stop the buffalo hunters who were decimating the great herds of the Plains, on the condition that the Comanches, along with the Apaches, Kiowas, Cheyenne and Arapaho, settle in a reservation of less than 13,000 km2 of area. Yet the government failed to stop the buffalo hunters from slaughtering the herds, which led to the Comanches, led by Isa-Tai (White Eagle) attacking a hunting party in the Texas Panhandle during the Second Battle of Adobe Walls (1874). The attack was a disaster for the Comanches, and the army was called in to bring the remaining Comanches back to the reservation. In just ten years, the bison were on the verge of extinction, ending the Comanche way of life as hunters. In 1875, the last group of free Comanches, led by a Quahadi warrior named Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
In the meantime, the government negotiated the Jerome Agreement (1892) with the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches, further reducing their reservation to 1,940 square kilometers for the price of $308.88 per square kilometer. Each tribe obtained a territory corresponding to a piece of land of 0.6 km2 per member of the tribe. In 1906, new plots of land were granted to all children born after the Jerome Agreement, and the remaining land was opened for settler settlement.
The Comanches were unprepared for life in a modern Western economic system, and many lost what was left of their land and possessions. During World War II, many Comanches left the reservations in Oklahoma in search of financial opportunities in the cities of California and in the Southwest. Today, they are among the most educated Native American peoples in the United States. Nearly half of the Comanche population still lives in Oklahoma, around the town of Lawton. It is the site of the annual powwow, when Comanches from across the country gather to celebrate their heritage and culture.
Comanche code
Like the Navajos in the Pacific theater, a group of soldiers of Comanche descent were employed in the European theater during World War II to code and transmit messages from the United States military. What was later called the Comanche Code.
During the time of French Louisiana, the French called Padouca this Native American nation currently known as the Comanche, it was approached and described in 1724 by the French explorer Étienne de Veniard, sieur de Bourgmont.