The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  the avenues for dialogue open, the Comanche party returned two New Mexican

  captives and voluntarily left two of their own members among the Spaniards as hostages.²²

  118

  The Embrace

  In late fall 1785, however, the Kotsoteka-centered peace faction received a

  boost when the news of the eastern Comanches’ treaty with Texas reached western Comanchería. It is possible that the news was brought by Camisa de Hierro, who had conferred with Vial and Chaves in September and promised to report

  of the talks “to the Yambericas, our comrades and brothers.” In November six hundred western Comanche households, some six thousand people, gathered

  at the Big Timbers of the Arkansas to prepare for peace talks with Anza. A Kotsoteka chief called Ecueracapa was elected as western Comanches’ delegate to New Mexico. As Pedro Garrido, a Spanish official who summarized New Mexican reports to the commanding general of the Interior Provinces, understood

  the events, Ecueracapa was chosen “to seek a new adjustment and establishment of their commerce in New Mexico” by conferring “directly with the governor to remove the deterring obstacles.”²³

  Ecueracapa was uniquely equipped for an intermediary role between the

  western Comanches and Spaniards. Indeed, it is possible that the Ecueracapa of the western Comanches and Camisa de Hierro of the eastern Comanches were

  the same person: the Spaniards in New Mexico knew Ecueracapa also as Cota

  de Malla (Coat of Mail), and several Spanish officials stated that Ecueracapa/

  Cota de Malla was the same person as Camisa de Hierro—“Ecueracapa” may

  have been a derivative of Spanish words cuera, “leather jacket,” and capa, “cape”

  or “cloak.” Ecueracapa may have thus been an eastern Comanche envoy turned

  into a western Comanche representative who traveled across Comanchería with

  his accumulated experience in dealings with Spanish colonial agents. According to Garrido, Ecueracapa was known as “one without equal in military achievements” and, more important, distinguished “by his adroitness and intelligence in political matters.” Perhaps because he was a newcomer to western Comanche politics, he took decisive measures to consolidate his authority. He reportedly warned the council that elected him that if the other western Comanche chiefs were to abandon him, “he would attach himself to the Spanish party.” Soon

  after, Kotsoteka agents assassinated Toroblanco, demolishing the war faction.

  After this, Garrido wrote, Toroblanco’s followers “adhered to the dominant party of the Cuchanecs [Kotsotekas], except some belonging to the . . . [ranchería] of the dead captain who separated into a little band to commit hostilities.”²⁴

  In December an unanticipated opening to start peace talks with the Spaniards appeared to Ecueracapa. An Indian member of a plains-bound Spanish hunting

  party became separated from the main group and “was made prisoner by the

  spies of Ecueracapa, who took him for a pagan whose costume he was wearing.”

  Upon learning that the man, José Chiquito, spoke the Comanche language,

  Ecueracapa decided to use him as an intermediary. He called together four con-

  The Embrace

  119

  secutive councils to discuss the details of peace talks and, having reached an agreement with the other chiefs, sent Chiquito and two Comanche envoys to

  inform Anza that he would be arriving shortly in Santa Fe.²⁵

  The announcement electrified the Southwest, where news traveled quickly

  through the networks of commerce and kinship. Settlers along the New Mexi-

  can border were ecstatic over the prospect of peace that would put an end to their long suffering under Comanche onslaughts. “The news of these events

  ran rapidly through the pueblos of the province,” Garrido wrote, “because of its circumstance of which there was no previous example, and spread among the

  inhabitants the belief that this time peace with the Comanche nation would

  be attained.” In January 1786 a group of western Comanches attacked Pecos

  in what proved the last gush of the war faction. Kotsotekas tracked down the perpetrators, and Ecueracapa personally executed their leader. He then sent a delegation to Santa Fe to apologize for the transgression and to offer the news of the execution as a ritual compensation.²⁶

  Word of the forthcoming Comanche-Spanish negotiations also reached the

  Utes, who were outraged by the new Spanish policy. Having nurtured a stable

  and mutually beneficial alliance with New Mexico since midcentury—an alli-

  ance that had been sustained by common dread of the Comanches—they now

  feared that Comanche-Spanish rapprochement would leave them marginalized

  and exposed to Comanche violence. In January 1786 Moara and Pinto, “two of

  their most authoritative chiefs,” arrived in Santa Fe. They met with Anza and

  “heatedly declared against the attempted peace, advancing the most vindictive and even insulting and barbarous arguments to destroy it, even stating to that chief, Anza, that he preferred frequent, unfaithful rebels to friends always obedient and faithful.” “They were so inflamed,” Garrido stated, “that for more than four hours while they repeated their arguments, they did not wish to smoke or accept any presents.” Anza listened to the chiefs’ grievances, insisting that the king “could not avoid extending this grace to whoever implored it,” and finally

  “promised to interpose all his meditation with the Comanches in proof of the appreciation which he had of their faithful and ancient friendship.” He invited the Ute delegates to stay in Santa Fe for the forthcoming negotiations with

  Ecueracapa.²⁷

  When Ecueracapa arrived in Santa Fe on February 25, 1786, the town stirred

  with expectant tension. Anza extended the chief a stately welcome, and Ecueracapa responded in kind, maintaining the elaborate social performance that culminated in the momentous embrace at the doorway of the Governor’s Palace.

  The negotiations inside the palace, however, were more pragmatic than cere-

  monial. Ecueracapa came armed with a detailed agenda that had been approved

  120

  The Embrace

  in large western Comanche assemblies. (It also appears that Comanche emis-

  saries had discussed possible treaty stipulations in Taos and other border villages with close ties to Comanchería.) That agenda, presented “in the name of all his people,” stemmed from the outstanding problem the western Comanches faced

  in the mid-1780s: the acute lack of goods resulting from the disruption of trade.

  Having lost their exchange links in the north and east, Comanches now sought to dominate the exchange networks and resources of the Southwest borderlands.²⁸

  Ecueracapa wanted a “new and better established peace” with New Mexico,

  and to that end, demanded a number of concessions from the Spaniards: the

  right to “settle and subsist a short distance from the settlements,” “the establishment of fairs and free trade with Pecos,” and “free and safe passage through Pecos to Santa Fe” for the purpose of cultivating “reciprocal friendship and commerce.” Finally, Ecueracapa proposed a joint war against “the common enemies, the Apaches.” Collectively, these stipulations would have given the Comanches a virtual monopoly over New Mexico’s eastern markets: they already possessed a secure access to the Taos fairs, and now Pecos and Santa Fe would fall within their commercial sphere. Unhindered exchange was thus the basic tenet of the peace, and the idea of an anti-Apache military alliance, too, sprang from this concern. Although most Apache groups had fled the plains, a few Jicarilla bands still resided near Pecos and Santa Fe, compromising Comanches’ access to New Mexico’s border villages. These Jicarilla rancherías also prevented Comanches from entering the prime hunting range west of the Pecos
River where bison

  herds congregated in winters. By demanding the right to “settle and subsist a short distance” from Spanish settlements, Ecueracapa in effect pressured Anza to recognize Comanche control over those key border zones and hunting ranges.

  Spaniards, he demanded, should make an unequivocal commitment to the

  Comanches, cut off all support to the Apaches, and, if necessary, help Comanches eliminate the remaining Apaches from Pecos’s and Santa Fe’s vicinity by force.²⁹

  After laying out the framework for peace, Ecueracapa moved to the specifics.

  He asked Anza to deliver a formal reply to his offer in the more eastern village of Pecos, where other Comanche chiefs were already gathering. He also asked

  the governor to assign “him at that same moment a token or credential” of his standing among the Spaniards so that “he would be able to prove to his scattered rancherías that all their nation was admitted to peace.” Here, it seems, Ecueracapa’s political agenda blended with a personal one: he wanted to expose the treaty stipulations to public display and public censure by his followers while by the same token using the public space to boost his own power base among the

  western Comanches.³⁰

  The Embrace

  121

  These talks had been carried out in the presence of seven Ute delegates, and the summit ended with Ecueracapa and the Ute representatives forming a peace agreement. The agreement was cemented “according to their manner”: the two

  sides exchanged clothes to cleanse the relationship of ill-feeling and rekindle their frayed kinship bond. The accord, which ended more than thirty years of on-and-off Comanches-Ute warfare, becomes understandable in the context of

  Ecueracapa’s treaty conditions to Anza. If Comanches were to gain unrestricted access to Pecos and Santa Fe fairs in central New Mexico, there would be less need to keep the Utes out of northern New Mexican markets. The focus of

  Comanche commerce was about to shift to the south, which gave the Utes on

  New Mexico’s northern borderlands more breathing space. Comanche chiefs

  declared later during the peace process that “the advantages they had secured

  [from the Spaniards] would serve to stimulate them to carry on . . . trade with greater zeal, transferring, if not all, the greater part of their fairs to the pueblo of Pecos.”³¹

  Anza, the celebrated slayer of Cuerno Verde, found himself upstaged by the

  assertive diplomacy of Ecueracapa who had faced the governor as an equal, if not in fact as a superior. Confounded, the governor improvised. He broke off formal council and invited Ecueracapa to a private tête-à-tête. Deeply impressed by the “talent, judiciousness, and remarkable genius of this captain,” Garrido later explained, “the politic idea [had] occurred to Anza—suggested before but never given effect in similar cases—namely that by means of his person, elevating him above the rest of his class, he would be able, perhaps, to submit subtly all his nation to the dominion of the king without using violent means contrary to his sovereign intentions.” Out of the public eye, Anza urged Ecueracapa to “take charge of the government and absolute direction of its national interests.” Appealing to what he understood as Indians’ penchant for personalized politics, he promised to decorate Ecueracapa “with the medal of his royal bust” on the condition that the chief give the governor “token of his submission and fidelity to the king.” Ecueracapa’s response was polite but noncommittal. He accepted the medal but insisted that he would have worked “for the execution of as much as Anza had suggested to him . . . even if Anza had not interposed to aid him toward the general command.” Ecueracapa, in other words, accepted the bestowal of the medal as an honorific gesture symbolizing his social standing and Anza’s respect for his authority, but subtly rejected the governor’s meddling with Comanche politics. Through affirming his own agency, he erected strict boundaries for the alliance.³²

  In keeping with Ecueracapa’s request, the conference then moved to Pecos,

  where hundreds of Kotsotekas had gathered to hear the outcome of the talks.

  122

  The Embrace

  When Anza arrived, the settlement resembled less a Pueblo Indian village than a Comanche ranchería. The governor was guided into a massive Comanche

  camp at the town’s center where some two hundred Kotsoteka men lined up to

  embrace him “with excessive expressions of affection and respect to which,” an appalled Garrido noted, “they were hardly entitled by their rank and standing.”

  The embraces Garrido saw as improper, uncivil exhibitions of intimacy and emotion in fact constituted an essential bonding ritual intended to translate physical touch into personal ties on which diplomatic relations could rest.³³ Thus, after the ceremony, eleven Kotsoteka chiefs and thirty-one headmen received Anza

  in a large hide lodge, the site of the summit. Surrounded by the headmen, the chiefs “seated themselves according to order . . . in the first place, Ecueracapa, followed successively by Tosacondata, Tosapoy, Hichapat, Parraginanchi, Cuetaninaveni, Quihuaneantime, Sohuacat, Canaguaipe, Pisimampat, Toyamancare

  and Tichinalla.” Tosapoy, who acted as tekwawapi̲, designated speaker for the Kotsotekas, reiterated the main Comanche concern, requesting Comanches

  and Spaniards to “conduct themselves with the demonstrations and affections

  of children, and with equity and justice in the particular matter of commerce.”

  To invoke such unconditional affinity, Tosapoy ruefully admitted his personal

  “quarrel with a Spaniard who was present.” He then “delivered (on his knees) a native of Santa Fe whom they had [held] . . . prisoner among them for eleven years.”

  With a proper ritual social space thus created, Anza gave his formal reply to Ecueracapa’s treaty terms. He accepted them one by one, but he did so “in the name of the king whose great power he was shortly imposing upon them.” He

  presented Ecueracapa with his personal staff of office (rather than the proposed medal with a bust of the king of Spain) and expressed a wish that the chief would display the cane at “the absent rancherías” as “the most certain token of their having been admitted to peace.” Ecueracapa, however, in a symbolically momentous act, asked that the cane “be transferred to Tosacondata, second in authority, whom from that moment he was commissioning to conduct and exhibit

  the emblem where he would advise him.” Comanches concluded the talks by

  making “in the soil a hole which they refilled with various attendant ceremonies.

  In this (as they say, and is the custom among them) they also buried the war on their part.”³⁴

  The next day, at Comanches’ request, Anza sponsored a trade fair. In line with the treaty terms, the governor ordered the Pecoseños to refrain from “excesses experienced in similar events.” He also adjusted a previous tariff from 1754 in Comanches’ advantage, specifying that they should receive not one but two belduques (butchering knives) for a buffalo robe and thirteen belduques for an aver-

  The Embrace

  123

  age horse. To institute order, Anza “marked off two lines so that the contracting parties, placed on the outside of both, could exhibit and deliver to each other in the intermediate space the effects which they had to exchange.” Visibly “gratified” by the arrangement, Comanches bartered more than six hundred bison

  robes, fifteen horses, three guns, and “many loads of meat and tallow” for hard bread and iron tools.³⁵

  That fair sealed the outcome of the negotiations, for its meaning was more

  than material. By regulating the prices and by pledging to establish “just rule”

  at the fairs, Anza had, at least superficially, embraced the Comanche idea that trade was more than a means of profit-making; it was an avenue for sharing. By trying to satisfy Comanche needs through exchange, moreover, Anza unknowingly secured the political alliance itself, for in Comanche culture economic ties could not
be divorced from political ones. Sustained exchange was a precon-dition for sustained peace, and an alliance could endure only between people who took care of each other’s needs, political and material alike. It is telling that when the bartering was concluded and the fair closed, Comanche chiefs told

  Anza “that they understood now more than ever the assurance of our peace, and by virtue of the justice and sympathy employed with them, were bound to be

  faithful forever.”³⁶ As they had done with Governor Tomás Vélez de Cachupín

  a generation before, Comanches guided Anza through the proper process of

  building an enduring peace. And like Cachupín before him, Anza did his best

  to advance Spain’s imperial ambitions within the parameters of Comanche cul-

  tural logic—however imperfectly he may have understood those parameters.

  The Comanche treaty was a momentous coup for Anza and it gave him lever-

  age to enter into negotiations with the powerful Navajos who dominated a vast territory west of New Mexico. In March 1786, only weeks after the conclusion of Comanche talks, Anza invited Navajo leaders to a peace conference. His objective was to pacify the Navajos by forcing them to resign their alliance with the Gileño Apaches, and he had laid the ground for this move a year before when

  he banned all trade between the Navajos and the inhabitants of New Mexico.

  Now eighty Navajos came to meet with him in Santa Fe where, significantly, a small Comanche delegation was also present. When the talks between Anza

  and Navajo leaders began in the Governor’s Palace, two Comanches, at Anza’s

  request, made a surprise entrance “so that the Navajos, having seen them, might be moved by the fear and respect they have for this warlike nation.” According to Garrido’s report, one of the Comanches demanded that the Navajos become

  Spain’s allies, lest “the forces of the Comanches as good allies and friends of the Spaniards would come and exterminate them. He menaced and terrorized

  them so much that with the same submission which the governor [received]

  124

  The Embrace