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M E X I C O
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50 100 150 200 miles
Trade center
6. Comanche trading empire in the early nineteenth century. Map by Bill Nelson.
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cial commodities over vast areas and extend their sphere of influence far beyond their borders. Numerous Native groups around Comanchería—Cheyennes,
Pawnees, Mandans, and Hidatsas on the central and northern plains; Wichi-
tas and Caddos on the southern prairies; and the immigrant nations in Indian Territory—needed a constant inflow of domesticated horses and mules for their economic survival, and they all looked toward Comanchería to meet that need.
This put the Comanches in an extraordinarily powerful position: by controlling the diffusion of animals from the livestock-rich Southwest to the north and east, they could literally control the technological, economic, and military evolution in the North American interior.
Comanches’ privileged position undoubtedly caused resentment among their
allies, but it also fostered peaceful relations. In a stark contrast to the northern plains, which collapsed into long and bloody intertribal wars in the late eighteenth century when rival groups attempted to dominate the region’s multiple trade chains, the southern plains remained relatively calm: except for the Cheyenne-Arapaho intrusion in the 1830s, Comanchería was not subjected to
prolonged trade wars. The difference, it seems, was Comanches’ monopolistic
grip on horse trade. As much as their trading partners may have detested their dependence on Comanche suppliers, few were willing to jeopardize their access to Comanchería’s livestock reserves by starting an uncertain trade war. Just as multipolarity fueled instability on the northern plains, apolarity promoted stability in and around Comanchería.⁴⁹
Commercial hegemony shielded Comanchería against external aggression,
and it allowed Comanches to project their influence outward from Coman-
chería, for hard political and economic power readily translated into softer and more subtle forms of cultural power. At once dependent on and dazzled
by Comanchería’s wealth, many bordering societies emulated and adopted as-
pects of Comanche culture. For example, Cheyenne traditions speak of exten-
sive mimicking of the Comanches that ranged from equestrian lore to the basic techniques of nomadic culture. One story relates a meeting between the horse-mounted Comanches and still pedestrian Cheyennes. Cheyennes were at once
astonished and hesitant at this singular moment: “We never heard of horses,”
said one Cheyenne priest. “Perhaps Maheo [All-Father Creator] wouldn’t like
for us to have them.” Comanches, eager to open trade relations, assumed the role of a proponent: “‘Why don’t you ask him?’ a Comanche said. ‘We’ll trade with you, if you’re too afraid to go and get them [from New Mexico].’” Cheyennes
did so and received Maheo’s blessing for their decision, after which “Coman-
ches stayed with the Cheyennes another four days, and their women showed the Cheyenne women what kind of wood to use for tipi poles, and how to cut and
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sew a tipi, and how to tie the poles to their horses, and load them with the tipis and the other things they needed.”⁵⁰
Such stories may not always have been literally accurate, but their signifi-
cance lies elsewhere: more than of conventional facts, they speak of Indians’
understanding of defining historical trends. Groups like the Cheyennes or the Poncas probably acquired their first horses from the nomadic middleman traders of the northern plains, but their stories emphasize the example and guidance of Comanches, whose spectacularly successful pastoral culture represented the ideal for the indigenous societies across the Great Plains.⁵¹ Horses spread to the Great Plains from several sources—Texas, New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains,
the Mississippi valley, even Canada—but the people tended to look south toward Comanchería for how to best put them in use.
Comanches’ cultural influence was not limited to equestrian knowledge but
affected things as diverse as religious ceremonies, military societies, clothing accessories, hairstyles, and weaponry. To contemporary Euro-Americans the
most illuminating sign of Comanches’ cultural power was the spread of their
language across the Southwest and the Great Plains. By the turn of the eigh-
teenth century, Comanches were able to conduct most of their business at New Mexico’s border fairs in their own language, and many of the comancheros and ciboleros who visited Comanchería to trade and hunt were fluent in the Comanche language. The diffusion of the Comanche language accelerated in the early nineteenth century when Comanches extended their commercial reach across
the midcontinent, connecting with a growing number of people. Several Euro-
American observers noted matter-of-factly that the Indians of the southern and central Great Plains used the Comanche language in commercial and diplomatic interactions, and Native oral traditions attest that Comanche challenged sign language as the universal language of exchange. Comanche was thus to a
large section of the middle North America what the Chinook Jargon was to the Northwest or Mobilian to the Mississippi valley: a trade lingua franca. When people and societies meet and intermingle on frontiers, their choice of language is often an accurate gauge of relative power dynamics between them: economically and politically weaker groups tend to adopt the words, phrases, and even syntaxes of stronger ones. So too does the ascendancy of the Comanche language denote a larger truth: having wielded unparalleled economic, political, and cultural influence, the Comanches were re-creating the midcontinent in
their own image.⁵²
Encircling Comanchería there thus lay an extensive sphere of cultural pene-
tration that bore an unmistakable imprint of Comanche influence. The people
inhabiting that zone were tied to the Comanche nation as allies, dependents,
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and exchange partners and more or less willingly embraced elements of Coman-
che culture. But cultural diffusion was only one facet of a much more inclusive and intensive process of Comanchenization: a large portion of the foreign ethnicities attached to the Comanche orbit would eventually immigrate into Co-
manchería, seduced by its prosperity and security. The immigrants took many
different roads into Comanchería, but all paths merged into a single process.
Whether the newcomers blended into the Comanche society, becoming in
effect naturalized Comanches, adopted a subordinate status as junior allies, or retained a larger measure of political and cultural autonomy, the net effect of their arrival was Comanchería’s transformation from an ethnically homogenous national domain into a multicultural and politically stratified imperial realm.
Large-
scale incorporation of foreign ethnicities into Comanchería began
with the Kiowas and Naishans. The closely allied Kiowas and Naishans migrated into Comanchería during the first and second decades of the nineteenth century, after having lost their middleman trading niche on the central plains to Cheyennes and Arapahoes. They established residence on the upper Canadian
and Red rivers where, at the very heart of Comanchería, they slowly began to blend in with the Comanches. The three groups camped and hunted together,
intermarried extensively, and joined their forces in frequent raiding expeditions and defensive military campaigns. According to one observer, some Naishans
“settled in Comanche villages” and the Kiowas were often mistaken for Coman-
ches, “since they sometimes share their encampments.” The three groups wor-
shipped together and exchanged customs, rituals, and beliefs; Comanches, who apparently did not practice the Sun Dance before 1800, participated in the
Kiowa ceremony and in time developed their own version of the Kiowa ritual.
A dearth of sources on the early nineteenth-century Kiowas and Naishans
prevents determining how deeply the two nations were incorporated into the
Comanche political system, but that dearth is also suggestive: Kiowas and
Naishans, even while maintaining a separate political organization with tribal councils and chiefs, largely conformed to Comanches’ political designs. While Comanches became increasingly involved in interimperial rivalries and power
politics, Kiowas and Naishans remained more local actors who rarely figure
in colonial powers’ diplomatic considerations, especially during the first third of the nineteenth century. Kiowas sometimes played a central role in Indian-Indian diplomacy—they negotiated the great peace of 1840 side by side with
Comanches—but Comanches often represented both the Naishans and Kiowas
in high-level political meetings with colonial powers. Some Euro-American
sources listed Kiowas and Naishans as simply one of the “tribes” or “peoples”
of the Comanche nation or confederacy. As contemporary Euro-Americans
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understood it, Kiowas and Naishans resided on the southern plains under the
auspices and partial domination of the Comanches. On an outward-extending
gradient of privilege and participation, the Kiowas and Naishans were closest to the empire’s core.⁵³
Sometime after 1800 Comanches also accepted the Chariticas, an Arapaho
group from the central plains, into its fold. As with many other groups that gravitated toward Comanchería, the immediate attraction for the Chariticas was the region’s horse wealth and hospitable climate for animal husbandry. Before moving to the southern plains, the Chariticas had possessed few horses and used castrated dogs to pull their belongings, but they emerged in Comanchería “as good horsemen as their allies.” In the course of the 1810s and 1820s, the Chariticas severed ties to the main Arapaho body, crossed the Arkansas River into Comanchería, and amalgamated into the Comanche nation. In 1828 General
Manuel de Mier y Terán, then the leader of a scientific and boundary expedition into Texas, wrote that Chariticas had relocated some fifteen years earlier from the north, and “Comanches have admitted them. Today they are identical and
live in mixed camps.” Berlandier reported that Chariticas “often live among the Comanches . . . with whom they are very good friends,” and that they “resemble the Comanche in their clothing and war ornaments but differ from them in their customs and their language, which is much harsher and without harmony.” Ruíz emphasized the hierarchical nature of the relationship. “The Chariticas steal horses habitually; they are, in my opinion, the most barbarian of all people. Even their best friends are in danger when they visit a Charitica encampment if there are no Comanches present at that time. The Comanches exert certain influence over the Chariticas, and the latter do not dare do some things in their presence.”
By midcentury, the Chariticas were considered part of the Comanche nation.⁵⁴
The Wichitas followed yet another path into Comanchería. Initially close
commercial and military allies, Wichitas and Comanches clashed violently in
the late eighteenth century over trading rights. But as Wichitas’ power faded in the early 1810s, Comanches reversed their policy and sought cooperative relations. The Taovayas, Tawakonis, and Wacos gradually drew closer to Coman-
chería and entered a partnership that became increasingly unequal. Comanches traded with the three groups, supplying them with horses and bison products
in exchange for farming produce, while at the same time curtailing their au-
tonomy. They prevented the Wichitas from trading directly with Americans and represented them in political meetings with Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas. By the 1840s, Wichita foreign policy had become subordinate to Comanche leadership. When Texas officials approached the Tawakonis in 1844 with
the intention of negotiating a peace accord, their chief immediately recoiled: “I
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can’t say that I will make peace . . . until I see the Comanche, else I may tell a lie. My people will do as they do.” Comanches also used Taovaya, Tawakoni, and Waco villages as supply depots, replenishing their food storages and recruiting warriors before launching raids into Texas, and some Mexican officials believed that Comanches pressured Tawakonis to raid for them. Taovaya, Tawakoni, and
Waco villages also served Comanchería as buffers that cushioned the blows of colonial reprisals. Wichitas were widely deemed as irredeemable thieves and the
“worst” Indians in Texas, a notion some Comanche leaders deliberately fostered.
“The Wichita are like Dogs,” Chief Pahayuko stated in 1845. “They will steal.
You may feed a dog well at night and he will steal all your meat before morning.
This is the way with the Wichitas.” Although not nearly as effective raiders as the Comanches, the Wichitas suffered some of the bloodiest reprisals at the hands of Mexican troops and Anglo-Texas militia.⁵⁵
Over time, Comanches absorbed entire Wichita bands into their realm, which
served two immediate purposes: it removed the last remnants of the Wichita
trading barrier to eastern markets and allowed Comanches to recruit warriors against the Osages, their principal enemy. In 1811, after the collapse of the great Taovaya-Tawakoni villages on the Red River, John Sibley reported that a portion of Taovaya refugees “joined a wandering band” of Comanches. As the Wichitas’
power declined in the ensuing years, nearly all their bands sought protection within Comanchería’s expanding borders, conforming to Comanche leadership
as junior allies and partially blending into the Comanche body politic. Ber-
landier listed three of the four Wichita tribes—the Taovayas, Tawakonis, and Wacos—as Comanches’ subordinates, “lesser peoples whom poverty or fear has
driven to seek their protection,” and Mexican officials noted that the Comanche nation “is made very strong by the nine nations that are subordinate to it” (several of those nine nations undoubtedly were Wichita groups). Writing in the 1830s, Josiah Gregg noted that Comanches “generally remain on friendly terms with
the petty tribes of the south, whom, indeed, they seem to hold as vassals,” and the traveler Thomas J. Farnham reported that Comanches “stand in the relation of conquerors among the tribes in the south.” Although Comanches themselves
never explicitly called the Taovayas, Tawakonis, and Wacos “subordinates” or
“vassals,” the three groups had fallen under heavy Comanche influence. With
their autonomy curtailed, geopolitical space narrowed, and economic opportu-
nities compromised, they had become dependents of the Comanche empire.⁵
⁶
In addition to the wholesale incorporation of ethnic groups, there seems to
have been a nearly constant stream of immigrants, refugees, renegades, and
exiles from adjoining societies into Comanchería. Untold numbers of Wichi-
tas, Caddos, Apaches, Pawnees, Shoshones, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws,
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Delawares, Shawnees, Seminoles, Quapaws, and black slaves from Indian Ter-
ritory voluntarily left their communities to join the increasingly multiethnic Comanche nation, evidently lured by its growing prosperity and security. Not even the Spanish colonies were immune to Comanchería’s pull. Native subjects and genízaros escaped exploitation, harsh conditions, and curtailed opportunities in New Mexico and Texas by fleeing to Comanchería, as did a number of
socially marginalized and impoverished Spanish citizens.
Little is known about the actual incorporation processes; unlike captives who sometimes were ransomed back to their relatives, voluntary immigrants tend to vanish from the historical record after entering Comanchería. It seems, however, that most of them married into Comanche families, adopted Comanche
customs and language, relinquished outward signs of their former identity, and were eventually Comancheanized. Sometimes only physical traits remained, as
Sibley realized in 1807, when he noticed among visiting Comanche rancherías
several people of “light Brown or Auburn Hair & Blue or light Grey Eyes.” A half century later voluntary immigration and ethnic incorporation had transformed the very fabric of Comanche society, prompting Texas Indian agent Robert S.
Neighbors to write that “there are at the present time very few pure-blooded Comanches.”⁵⁷
In crudely materialist terms, the flow of immigrants into Comanchería is easy to explain. Whether one was looking in from the central Great Plains in the
north, Wichita country or Indian Territory in the east, Spanish or Mexican Texas in the south, or New Mexico in the west, Comanchería appeared safe, dynamic, and prosperous. People from nearby societies, Post Oak Jim told an ethnographer in 1933, “frequently snuck into [Comanche rancherías] to give themselves up—they came from poor tribes where there was not enough food.” Spaniards,
Mexicans, and Pueblo Indians from New Mexico and Texas variously sought in
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