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Osages also made possible a restoration of direct commercial ties between eastern Comanches and Americans. As Comanchería’s eastern border transformed
from a contested into a commercial zone, American merchants returned. Among
them were familiar itinerant traders like Josiah Gregg, but, unlike before, Americans now built permanent trading posts, hoping to tap into the booming com-
merce that was developing between the Comanches and their Native allies. Holland Coffee, an Anglo-Texan merchant, established a fortified trading house on the Red River just east of Comanchería and by the late 1830s traded regularly with Comanches, Cherokees, Choctaws, Delawares, and Shawnees. He was re-
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ported to be handing munitions to Comanches on a daily basis and encouraging them to raid Mexican settlements for horses and mules. Auguste Chouteau, of
the eminent St. Louis fur-trading family, built a post on the middle South Canadian River on Comanchería’s eastern edge, and Abel Warren erected a trading
house on Cache Creek within Comanchería’s borders.²⁸
The advent of these trading posts along and within Comanchería’s borders
opened a new chapter in the economic history of Comanches, the beginning
of mass-scale market production of bison robes. The posts provided a secure
outlet for hides, which found ready markets in Texas and the United States east of the Mississippi and were moved to those locations by regular supply trains.
Comanches had traded bison meat and robes for generations, but that exchange had largely been limited to local subsistence bartering. Now Comanchería’s bison became an animal of enterprise, slaughtered for its commodified hides and robes for distant industrial markets. It was not long before the herds started to show signs of overexploitation.²⁹
If peace and commerce had undesired ecological ramifications, they also had
unexpected and far-reaching geopolitical repercussions. Seen from the vantage point of Washington, D.C., the transformation of Comanchería’s eastern front from a battlefield into a thriving trading zone meant that the removal of indigenous nations from the east into Indian Territory could continue. And with that, so too could continue the unrelenting westward march of the cotton kingdom
and its settlement frontier.
In western Comanchería, meanwhile, a parallel commercial expansion was
taking place, and as in eastern Comanchería, it was set off by the westward thrust of American merchants and markets. Trade between western Comanches and
Americans probably began as an offshoot of eastern Comanche-American com-
merce: some of the Louisiana-based American traders who visited eastern Co-
manchería from the 1790s on continued farther west to open new markets for
their products. But the upper western Comanche divisions, the Yamparikas and Jupes in the upper Arkansas basin, also attracted itinerant American traders directly from St. Louis and other settlements along the middle Mississippi and lower Missouri valleys. In 1796 a rumor reached Spanish officials in Natchitoches that a group of American traders had built a blockhouse among the Yamparikas, sparking fear that the United States was about to invade New Spain by way of Comanchería.³⁰
The acquisition of Louisiana, which by Washington’s sweeping interpreta-
tion extended all the way to the Río Grande and the Rockies, stirred up the
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incipient American interest in the commercial possibilities of the Southwest.
Scores of plains-bound American traders and Rockies-bound American trappers
ascended the Arkansas, Canadian, and Red rivers into western Comanchería
where their presence and products, especially guns and powder, were eagerly
welcomed. Conducted under the watchful eye of Spanish officials, the burgeoning western Comanche–American trade became one of worst-kept secrets in the
early nineteenth-century Southwest borderlands. In 1804, for example, Manuel Merino y Moreno, secretary of the Commandancy General of the Interior Provinces, reported that western Comanches bore guns with “markings that leave
no doubt that they were manufactured in London”—a revealing sign of their
connections to U.S. market circuits.³¹
Such reports alarmed the Spanish officials in Santa Fe who once again found
themselves in the familiar quandary: a rival colonial power threatened Spanish interests by extending its commercial operations deep into Comanchería. Although American trade openly violated the 1786 treaty, Bourbon officials were reluctant to pressure the Comanches, fearing that force would push them closer to the United States. Instead, the officials kept the border fairs open and continued to offer favorable exchange rates and abundant gifts, hoping to retain whatever hold they could on the Comanches. Between 1790 and 1815 an average
of some one hundred Comanches visited Santa Fe each year, collecting thou-
sands of pesos worth of gifts. Comanche chiefs were provided with special guest quarters, and governors entertained Comanche elite at their table, serving them wine and sharing ritual food with them. The town maintained a general store
where Comanches could purchase cloth, vermilion, and other luxuries, and the chiefs even received guns, which remained in short supply in New Mexico, as
gifts.³²
The presents, fairs, and favorable terms of exchange helped preserve diplo-
matic bonds between New Mexico and Comanchería, but on a more abstract
level, they turned Spain’s Indian policy into a caricature of its original intention.
The gifts now had almost none of the meaning Spanish policymakers attrib-
uted to them. Rather than a political adhesive affixing Comanches to Spain as faithful allies, they became payments for loyalty Comanches were not willing to give. Yet, even against the mounting evidence, many Spanish officials refused to relinquish the idea of Comanche obedience. Writing in 1812, Pino insisted that
“a continued state of peace and friendship of the greatest importance in checking other tribes has been the result of the small number of presents given them.
At first the Comanches thought they had to reciprocate. They brought all the fine pelts they could collect in order to exceed the munificence of our presents.
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When they were informed that favors given them in the name of our king should not be returned, they were greatly astonished. Thus they were placed under obligation to us.”³³
Pino’s account underlines the unrealistic rationale of Spain’s Indian policy, which had created a substantial one-way stream of gifts from New Mexico
among the Comanches, who accepted the material goods but rejected their po-
litical implications. Two Spanish reports from 1818 reveal just how badly Spain’s Comanche policy had fallen short of its objectives. In the first, New Mexico Governor Facundo Melgares complained bitterly how his hosting of a party of
one thousand Comanches had required so many gifts that he did not have goods to gratify other Indian nations. But the gifts did little to bring the Comanches to Spain’s exclusive embrace, as the second report illustrates. The Indians “who live to the east of the mountains on the waters of the Arkansas,” an anonymous observer wrote, undoubtedly referring to Comanches, “have frequent communication with the English [i.e., Canadian traders] and Americans” and “are doing everything possible to allure the traders of these two nations to themselves.”
Spanish policymakers, he concluded, were caught in a delicate play-off situation and should commit themselves to searching “for means to furnishing” the Comanches: “For there is no doubt that in the hands of the one or the other
governments, these savages would become either important means of defense
or an important means of attack.”³⁴
/> Spanish authorities may have felt pressured to mete out more gifts to Co-
manchería in order to counterbalance American influence, but it is likely that no amount of presents would have persuaded Comanches to cut off their ties
to those Americans who were willing to operate within Comanche cultural
parameters and hand out gifts. The experiences of Thomas James, one of the
pioneers of the Santa Fe Trail, is an illuminating case in point. James led his first commercial expedition to western Comanchería in 1821, traveling from St.
Louis to the Texas Panhandle, where he encountered an assemblage of Coman-
che rancherías. James, at the request of Comanche chiefs, made several rounds of gift distributions, dispensing thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise.
Oblivious to the intricacies of Comanche protocol, however, he tried to save the bulk of his goods for New Mexican markets and disregarded the chiefs’ demands for further gifts. When James insisted on continuing to Santa Fe with
his remaining goods, Comanches arrested him and his men and threatened to
kill them. Yet despite repeated errors of judgment, the gifts had won James the trust of key Comanche leaders. He visited Comanchería again the next year, was ritually adopted by a powerful chief, and purchased more than three hundred
high-quality animals, a transaction worth several thousand dollars in St. Louis.
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James himself depicted his travels into Comanchería as a high adventure with repeated near brushes with death, but the real story is his submersion into a new cultural logic. Comanche chiefs were not so much extorting or abusing James as keenly—although not always patiently—teaching the newcomer how to negotiate the Comanche ritual forms and cultural etiquette.³⁵
Despite Spanish protests, then, the trade between Comanches and Ameri-
cans continued unabated, but the collapse of the Spanish empire in 1821 turned the trickle of American traders into a stream. Mexican authorities immediately lifted the restrictive trade laws of the Spanish empire and opened New Mexico to U.S. merchants and markets. The result was the Santa Fe trade, a burgeoning commercial enterprise that revolved around regular trading caravans between
Missouri and New Mexico. The main artery of the trade, the Santa Fe Trail,
ran across western Comanchería, along the Arkansas River to its headwaters
before turning southwest toward New Mexico. In the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s,
tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise traveled through Coman-
chería each year, but a substantial part of it stayed there. Comanches demanded compensation for granting right-of-ways through their territory, and the overlanders routinely engaged in trade with them. Some, like Thomas James, found the horses and hides of Comanchería more enticing than the mules and furs of New Mexico and traveled to the west to trade specifically with the Comanches.
James was back in western Comanchería in 1822 and this time capably maneu-
vered the Native protocol. The exchange, as he recounted, followed a rigorous structure, which made a clear distinction between gift giving and actual trade: I prepared for trading by making presents, according to custom, of knives,
tobacco, cloths for breech garments, &c., which, though a large heap when together, made a small appearance when divided among all this band. The
trade then began. They claimed twelve articles for a horse. I made four yards of British strouding at $5.50 per yard and two yards of calico at 62½ cents to count three, and a knife, flint, tobacco, looking-glass, and other small articles made up the compliment. They brought to me some horses for which I refused the stipulated price. They then produced others which were really fine animals, worth at least $100 each in St. Louis. I bought seventeen of these, but would not take any more at the same price, the rest being inferior. The
refusal enraged the Chief, who said I must buy them, and on my persisting in my course, drove away the Indians from around me and left me alone. After
a short time he returned with a request that I should buy some buffalo and
beaver skins, to which I acceded. He went away and the women soon returned
with the fur and skins, of which I bought a much larger quantity than I wished then to have on my hands.
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James spent several days with the Comanches, participating in a series of similar fairs. He smoked the calumet with his hosts, was adopted as brother by one of the chiefs, and eventually returned to St. Louis with more than two thousand dollars’ worth of horses, skins, and furs, a feat few, if any, New Mexico-bound American trading convoys could duplicate. James’s commercial success was remarkable but not unique in the middle space between Mexican and American
markets. In 1838, sixteen years after the opening of the Santa Fe trade, a Texas newspaper reported that several American merchants from Arkansas and Missouri were active in western Comanchería, tapping deeply into the “immense”
horse wealth of Comanches. Far more than a thoroughfare, western Coman-
chería was an integral part of a flourishing multinational commercial institution that linked the economies of the United States, northern Mexico, and Comanchería.³⁶
Yet despite the enduring links, New Mexico was becoming increasingly
peripheral to Comanches. Just as American trade and markets had drawn the
eastern Comanches away from Texas’s sphere of influence, so too did Ameri-
can commerce cause western Comanches to turn away from New Mexico. And
just as in eastern Comanchería, the political and economic reorientation of the western Comanches was accelerated by the emergence of new trading relations
with other Plains Indian nations. In the early nineteenth century, at the same time as they forged ties with U.S. merchants, western Comanches also began
restoring trade links with their Native neighbors, links that had become badly frayed during the intertribal wars of the 1780s. The first step to this end was the termination of the Pawnee wars, which had raged on for more than a decade
and taken the lives of such prominent Comanche leaders as Ecueracapa and
Hachaxas. The peace process began in 1793, when Encanguané, Ecueracapa’s
successor as western Comanche head chief, persuaded New Mexico Governor
Fernando de la Concha to send Pedro Vial to the north to mediate a truce be-
tween the Comanches and the Pawnees. An experienced borderland ambassa-
dor, Vial traveled to the Pawnee villages on the Kansas River, where, according to Zenon Trudeau, lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana, he “delivered a medal, a complete suit of clothes and other things to the [Pawnee] Chief.” The gesture helped “cover” the deaths inflicted by Comanches and “caused peace to be made as . . . desired.” Commerce apparently played a key role in the proceedings, and after the peace talks were concluded, Vial conducted a trade convoy from Pawnee country to Comanchería. Regular Pawnee trade journeys to the
south commenced soon after, opening for western Comanches an access to the
manufactured goods Pawnees obtained from Spanish and American traders who
operated—and competed over Native customers—along the lower Missouri
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River. Although often interrupted by bouts of violence that required careful mediation, the Comanche-Pawnee connection endured into the 1840s.³⁷
Meanwhile, western Comanches had already initiated peace talks with
Kiowas and Naishan Apaches (also known as Kiowa Apaches or Plains Apaches),
a small group of Athapascan speakers who, unlike most Apaches of the plains, fled Comanche expansion north to the Missouri valley, where they attached
themselves to the Kiowa nation. Comanches and Kiowas had been trading part-
ners in the 1760s and 1770s,
but the alliance had unraveled during the tumultuous 1780s. Kiowa traditions relate that the restoration of peaceful relations began in 1790, but a broader peace process did not get under way until 1806, when Yamparika and Kiowa parties unexpectedly met at the New Mexican
border town of San Miguel del Vado, where a Spanish settler brokered a meet-
ing. According to Kiowa traditions, Guik’áte (Wolf Lying Down), the second
highest ranking Kiowa chief, proclaimed his desire for peace. Päréiyä (Afraid of Water), the Yamparika leader, replied that the matter “would have to be considered by the whole tribe” and invited Guik’áte to visit the main Yamparika village on the Brazos River. Accompanied by a Comanche captive who had been with
the Kiowa party, Guik’áte followed Päréiyä to the Yamparika ranchería, where he spent the summer hunting and feasting with his hosts. A Yamparika council guided by the village chief Tutsayatuhovit ratified the treaty. In the fall, a large Kiowa delegation arrived in the Yamparika ranchería, and the two parties made peace, which was sanctioned with elaborate gift exchanges and a three-day feast.
Again, kinship secured the peace: Guik’áte married the daughter of Somiquaso, the newly elected Yamparika head chief, and moved his tipi among the Yamparikas. The peace process then shifted among other Comanche and Kiowa bands,
each of which ratified the treaty.³⁸
The alliance that resulted was the firmest and most durable in Comanche
history. After the peace had been consolidated, Kiowas and Naishans moved
from the central plains into north-central Comanchería, thereby gaining access to the milder climates and fertile horse pastures of the southern plains. For the Naishans, moreover, the alliance signified a return to the ancestral homelands of the southern plains, which they had abandoned almost a century before in
the face of Comanche expansion. For Comanches the alliance offered obvious
political advantages. Collaboration with the relatively small Kiowa and Naishan nations—approximately twelve and three hundred people, respectively—augmented their military and political weight without putting excessive pressure on Comanchería’s resources. Comanches incorporated both groups in their protective border campaigns against the Utes in the west and the Osages in the east.