The Comanche Empire
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Taovayas’ resistance collapsed in 1757, and they retreated some two hundred
miles south to the Red River, where they built new villages just west of the Cross Timbers, a north-south sliver of scraggy oaks stretching between the Red and Brazos rivers. To prepare for future Osage raids, the Taovayas built their grass houses close together and encircled their villages with deep trenches and thick, twelve-foot-tall wooden and earthen ramparts. Comanches, meanwhile, managed to keep their newly seized territory intact. Osages failed to edge onto the bison-rich shortgrass plains, and the Comanche-Osage border on the middle
Arkansas, Cimarron, and Canadian rivers became a no-man’s-land which both
groups entered only reluctantly, risking death. Created by mutual fear, this neutral ground lasted well into the nineteenth century: when U.S. Army officials inspected the southern plains in the 1830s, they noted its existence.⁶⁶
The treaty of 1752 between the Comanches and New Mexico had a mixed
legacy. While it pacified the Comanche-Spanish relations and helped put an
end to the protracted Comanche-Apache wars on the Llano Estacado, it also
led to the collapse of the long-standing union between the Comanches and the Utes. The Comanche-Ute alliance was in shambles by the early 1750s, having
lived out its usefulness in the fluid, rapidly changing world. Then other things happened—Cachupín retired, the French and Indian War broke out, a little
captive boy rejected redemption—and the Comanche-Ute conflict exploded
into a sprawling war that engulfed the borderlands.
The sources provide only fragmentary glimpses into deteriorating Comanche-
Ute relations. The first signs of trouble surfaced in 1749, when a Ute band asked in Santa Fe for Spanish military support against the Comanches. And when
Comanches opened peace talks with New Mexico two years later, they did so
without the Utes, who began their own negotiations with Governor Cachupín,
reaching a separate accord in 1752. By the end of that year, Spanish sources suggest, Comanches and Utes had clashed in several battles.⁶⁷
That the Comanches’ and Utes’ half-century-old alliance would disintegrate
just as their joint war against the Apaches and Spaniards came to an end was
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not a coincidence. The war, it appears, had been the glue that held the alliance together, and its end brought latent tensions to the surface. The main point of contention was access to New Mexico’s markets, which suffered from a scarcity of trade goods, an affliction Comanches and Utes themselves had aggravated.
Although constantly subsidized by Mexico City, New Mexico had grown in-
creasingly poor during its long wars with the Comanches and Utes, and by the late 1740s the colony was facing difficulties in generating enough goods for all its Native customers. Clashes between Comanches and Utes at and around trade
fairs ensued, prompting Cachupín to instruct his successor to carefully coordinate Comanche and Ute visits to Taos in order to avoid violent confrontations between the two.⁶⁸
But Comanche and Ute interests had not only overlapped and clashed; they
had also diverged. Unlike Comanches, Utes never fully committed to life on
the plains; only one of their subtribes, the Muaches, made a serious effort to develop a plains culture. While Comanches quickly severed their ties to the Rocky Mountains, Utes continued to migrate seasonally between the mountains and
the grasslands. They joined Comanches in raiding eastern New Mexico during
the warm months but spent the cold season in the shelter of the Rockies. The detachment deepened further in the late 1740s and early 1750s when Comanches
built their plains-oriented alliance network, an independent maneuvering that wrenched them away from their union with the Utes, who were not included in
the new political arrangements with the French, Taovayas, and Pawnees. The
Comanche alliance system shut off the Utes from the plains commerce and
diplomacy, locking the two groups in contrasting foreign political trajectories.
Comanches turned themselves into key players in the imperial drama that un-
folded in the contested borderlands between the Río Grande and the Missis-
sippi valley, a repositioning that set them increasingly apart—politically and geographically—from the more locally oriented Utes.⁶⁹
Comanche-Ute conflict started out as a clash between two former allies but
soon escalated into a major borderland war. Utes, while having tutored Comanches in equestrianism, now found themselves powerless against Comanche cav-
alry and in their distress solicited Spanish support and protection. Governor Cachupín managed to balance between the two groups without committing to
either, but the tenuous peace did not survive his departure in 1754. The new governor, Francisco Marín del Valle, lacked his predecessor’s grasp of multipolar cross-cultural diplomacy and allowed the critically important personal ties with Comanche leaders to unravel; Comanches would later lament that “they had
come with their hearts full of kindness to establish peace but . . . that governor
. . . never wished to hear them speak directly to him.” Valle also limited Indian
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trade by issuing a bando that prohibited the sale of firearms, knives, and other weaponry. Alarmed by Comanches’ growing horse wealth, a wealth that fueled
their arms trade with French Louisiana, he prohibited the sale of breeding
mares, studs, and donkeys and set a high price of fifteen hides for high-quality geldings.⁷⁰
Before long, Comanches resumed raiding, pillaging Pecos, Galisteo, and
other border villages for horses and captives. In response, Spaniards formed a loose anti-Comanche coalition with the Utes and refugee Apache bands residing on the New Mexico border. At the same time, however, Spaniards also
kept their markets open for Comanches out of the fear that complete alienation would intensify their raids. The borderland war that gradually gathered force in the shadow of the sprawling Seven Years’ War was thus a confusing multisided conflict in which the distinction between enemies and allies was often blurred and in which terror was a key weapon.
In spite of escalating Comanche raids, Taos continued to welcome Coman-
che traders, apparently with official Spanish approval; Fray Pedro Tamarón y Romeral reported how Comanche trade convoys came every year to Taos fairs,
as did the governor of New Mexico and “people from all over the kingdom.” To Tamarón’s disgust, Comanches often paid for the maize and metal tools they
received from Taoseños with horses and other goods they had stolen from other New Mexican settlements. When confronted about the raids, he noted, Comanche leaders claimed nonparticipation with vicious bravado. “‘Don’t be too trust-ing,”’ one chief said. ‘“Remember, there are rogues among us, just as there are among you. Hang any of them you catch.’” Such statements did not necessarily reflect existing divisions in Comanche ranks. As the events that followed suggest, they seem to have been calculated rhetoric aimed at confusing Spanish
officials and keeping the Taos markets open.⁷¹
The summer fair of 1760 in Taos was even more unruly than usual, featur-
ing not only lively bartering but also a ritual dance in which the Taoseños displayed twenty-four fresh scalps. When the Comanches were about to depart,
the townspeople, as if to test the sincerity of Comanche statements that the
“rogue” raiders could be killed at will, revealed that the scalps had been taken from Comanches. The Comanches left the pueblo peacefully but returned with
an enormous military force. In a remarkable display of unity and organization, a reported three thousand Comanche warriors attacked Taos with the apparent
“intention of finishing” the pueblo. The attackers, failing to penetrate the town’s thick walls, then launched a destructive raiding spree down the Taos valley. They burned twelve ranches near the Spanish village of Ranchos de Taos and sacked the local stronghold, the fortified hacienda of Pablo Francisco Villalpando, kill-
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ing seventeen people and carrying fifty-six women and children into captivity.
The region never fully recovered. When visiting the Taos valley sixteen years later, one observer noted “a number of ruins of very good ranchos.”⁷²
The following year, 1761, brought even more violence and turmoil. In Decem-
ber a Comanche embassy of fifty-eight tipis arrived in Taos to ransom some of the captives they had taken a year before. Led by their “principal man,” Onacama, ten Comanche captains entered the pueblo to meet with Manuel del Por-
tillo Urrisola, the interim governor. The talks collapsed when one of the captives, a nine-year-old boy, refused to leave his captors. Portillo seized the boy and the Comanche captains. Overcoming their guards, the Comanches struggled free
and barricaded themselves in a stable inside Taos. Portillo ordered his troops outside the pueblo and, “invoking the Queen of Angels and men,” unleashed them
on the unwary Comanche camp. Among Portillo’s force was a group of Utes who
had pledged to fight with the Spaniards “until death.”⁷³
The result was one of the worst military catastrophes in Comanche history.
Dazed by volleys of cannon and shotgun fire, the warriors fled the battle scene, leaving most of their women and children behind in the camp. Portillo led his men into pursuit, but the Ute warriors broke away and stormed the Comanche camp, carrying off “more than a thousand horses and mules and more than
three hundred Comanche women, large and small.” Portillo’s troops meanwhile
continued the chase until they reached “a place impossible to pass.” There, he reported, “we kept killing Comanches. Those fields were covered with their
bodies, for none of them were willing to surrender alive.” He reported four hundred dead Comanches. Upon returning to Taos, he ordered the stable with the
trapped Comanche chiefs inside it to be burned. Two captains came out. One
was shot on the spot; the other escaped, wounded and bleeding.⁷⁴
A Ute captive who was among the Comanches at that time but managed to
escape later described the battle’s aftermath in Comanchería. Overcome with
horror and grief, the surviving Comanches, numbering only thirty-six, “set fire to everything they had, they killed all their herd of horses, they cut their ears, and they went fleeing.” The pain engulfed everyone, but it must have been especially excruciating for those men whose wives, children, and relatives were among the dead or captured. According to Comanche social code, a man’s honor depended
on his ability to protect and expand his kinship network, and losing one’s wife or children to enemies was a source of unbearable shame, resulting in a loss of masculine respect. Such a loss brought a social stigma that could only be removed by retrieving the relatives, by replacing them with the captors’ women and children, or by symbolically covering the dead with enemy bodies. Massive grief and loss, in other words, demanded massive retribution.⁷⁵
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It was into this frontier chaos that Cachupín returned in January of 1762 for his second gubernatorial term. Shocked to find the peace he had so carefully built dead and alarmed by rumors that Comanches were preparing for a general war against the colony, he immediately released six Comanche women and
sent them home “as ambassadors to their nation.” Cachupín’s detailed reports, which also include Comanche testimonies, provide a stereoscopic view into the complex negotiations that ensued. When the six female ambassadors arrived in Comanchería with the peace overture, they found the Comanches “in council
discussing the safest means of making war upon the Spaniards.” When learning about Cachupín’s return to New Mexico, however, the council quickly adopted
a new agenda. The chiefs and elders decided to send nine secondary chiefs, two of whom had the right to give “opinions in their government,” to meet with the governor. Escorted by sixty warriors, the emissaries arrived a few weeks later in Taos, from where they were ushered to Santa Fe. Along the way, on Cachupín’s orders, Spanish officials showered the Comanches with presents “so that they would understand our kindness and good faith.” The emissaries arrived at the Governor’s Palace carrying a tall cross, wearing smaller crosses on their necks, and “well armed with French rifles,” delivering a mixed message that at once underscored Comanches’ willingness to negotiate and their military power and international reach. Significantly, Cachupín recognized several of the nine
chiefs from his previous term that had ended eight years earlier, which indicates that the Comanche political system was based on institutionalized leadership positions.⁷⁶
Comanche emissaries opened the talks by listing grievances that ranged from
Governor Portillo’s unprovoked attack in 1761 to chaos at the Taos fairs and the restrictions on Comanche trade in New Mexico. Cachupín’s response was
a combination of remorse, reconciliation, and patent Spanish paternalism. He declared that the recent hostilities had violated, but not annulled, the bonds of friendship that had been established in 1752. Both sides, he regretted, “had acted in an insane manner in making war upon one another when they ought
to have been the best of friends.” He then laid out his peace proposal. He promised to restore Comanches’ trading privileges and invited them to visit New
Mexico “frequently, without fear or lack of confidence.” He also suggested that both sides return their captives, thus deftly eliminating a fundamental cause behind borderland violence—the pain that arose from losing one’s relatives into captivity and other peoples’ kinship networks. Visibly satisfied, the Comanches promised to take the terms “before the notice of all their chiefs and principal men of the nation,” and Cachupín lavished them with presents so that “they
might smoke and consider well their resolutions in regard to my purposes.”⁷⁷
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The Comanche response came some months later when another embassy—
four chiefs, seven warriors, and ten women and children—arrived in Santa Fe.
“Dispatched by the two superior chiefs” of their nation, the emissaries informed Cachupín that an order had been sent to “all rancherías of their tribe to hold a council and hasten the return of all Spaniards, large and small, whom they held prisoners.” The four chiefs then requested that Cachupín return to each of them a captive, “some relative or his own woman whom perhaps they might
find,” so that they would have proof of his “estimation” for the Comanche nation. Cachupín ordered thirty-one women and children to be brought before
the chiefs, each of whom then “selected the relation closest to him.” These acts sealed the peace by transforming the violent, disruptive potential embedded in the captive institution into a cross-cultural bridge. As the chiefs reunited with their loved ones, restoring fractured kinship networks, a major cause behind the Comanche-Spanish conflict disappeared. As a result of this action, the governor later exulted, the chiefs showed “undeniable satisfaction and pleasure; all embraced me around the neck and gave me repeated thanks. They now said that
their tribe had no reason any longer to fear or follow any other dictate than the observance of a real peace and firm alliance with the Spaniards.”⁷⁸
These proceedings—which mirrored and built on the negotiations ten years
earlier—were more than peace talks: they were an attempt to create a political and cultural middle ground between two nations. When Cachupín painstak-ingly documented Comanche customs and political practices, he was not only
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quenching Spanish bureaucracy’s thirst for detail; he was writing a manual for cross-cultural communication. And when he gratified Comanches with gifts,
he was not merely trying to create goodwill; he was appealing to the Comanche belief that real peace could not exist without gifts, which turned enemies into friends and strangers into metaphorical kinspeople. Anticipating a profound
shift in Spanish Indian policy that would reconfigure Spain’s northern frontier in the 1780s, Cachupín had realized that peace with Indian nations depended
on gifting and personal bonds rather than institutional ties. It required yielding dreams of cultural supremacy to the reality of cultural accommodation and exchange.⁷⁹
But Spaniards were not the only ones making concessions. Equally eager for
peace, Comanches too compromised, paving the way for deep, mutual accom-
modation. They did not insist on framing the alliance with fraternal kinship metaphors but accepted, at least on the surface, Cachupín’s patriarchal notion that they had yielded to “obedience and vassalage to the great and powerful
captain of the world, the king and lord of the Spaniards.” This was a fictional interpretation that ignored the real balance of power on the ground, but it
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was a fiction shared by both sides, albeit for different reasons. For Cachupín, the patriarchal formulation was a political necessity, the only acceptable way he could justify to his superiors in Mexico City and Madrid an alliance with heathen savages. Comanches, too, interpreted the alliance through their own
cultural prism. They expected persons in authority to be generous guardians, not autocratic rulers, and it is likely that they expected the king of Spain to be a benefactor who would provide them with presents, protect their trading privileges, and shield them against such atrocities as Governor Portillo’s 1761 attack.
Comanches also seem to have respected—if not accepted—the notion that New
Mexico was not a collection of autonomous communities with whom they could
maintain separate, even contradictory relations. For several years after the accord they refrained from their long-standing raiding-and-trading policy in New Mexico and maintained a universal peace with the province.⁸⁰