The Comanche Empire
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9. For the diffusion of horses, see Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” JAH 90 (Dec. 2003): 835–37. Quote is from Clark, Indian Sign Language, 120.
10. For various interpretations of kumantsi, see Marvin K. Opler, “The Origins of Comanche and Ute,” American Anthropologist 45 (Jan.–Mar. 1943): 155–58; Wallace and Hoebel, Comanches, 4; Thomas W. Kavanagh, “Comanche,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, The Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 2 parts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 2:902; and James A. Goss, “The Yamparika—Shoshones, Comanches, or Utes—or Does It Matter?” in Julian Stewart and the Great Basin: The Making of an Anthropologist, ed. Richard O. Clemmer, L. Daniel Myers, and Mary Elizabeth Rudden (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999), 79–80.
11. For early Ute history on New Mexico’s borderlands, see Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 27–35.
12. According to the conventional view, the Comanches moved from the central plains directly to the
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southern plains. See, e.g., T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People (New York: Da Capo, 1974), 129–32; and Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 58–62. But Comanches themselves maintain that they came to the southern plains from the Rocky Mountains. See Robert S.
Neighbors, “The Na-Ü-Ni, or Comanches of Texas; Their Traits and Beliefs, and Divisions and Intertribal Relations,” IPTS, 3:348; and Clark, Indian Sign Language, 118. In 1706, furthermore, New Mexico Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdez listed the Comanches and Utes as immediate neighbors of the Navajos, whose eastern border ran along Cañon Largo and the Jémez Mountains, deep in the Great Basin. See “Report of Francisco Cuervo y Valdez,” Aug. 18, 1706, HD, 3:381.
13. For the annual cycle of activities, see Marvin K. Opler, “The Southern Ute of Colorado,” in Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes, ed. Ralph Linton (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1940), 124–27. For Ute and Comanche trade in New Mexico, see Carl I. Wheat, ed., Mapping the Trans-Mississippi West, 1540–1861, 6 vols. (San Francisco: Institute of Historical Cartography, 1957–63), 1: facing 108; and “Opinion of Cristobal de la Serna,” Aug. 19, 1719, AC, 105. For Ute-Comanche raids into Navajo country, see Rick Hendricks and John P. Wilson, eds. and trans., The Navajos in 1705: Roque Madrid’s Campaign Journal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 6, 100. For the emergence of Comanche divisions, see Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 34; and Kavanagh, “Comanche,” 904. For divisional names, see Lila Wistrand Robinson and James Armagost, Comanche Dictionary and Grammar (Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington, 1990), 30, 157.
14. For Ute adoption of the horse, see Demitri B. Shimkin, “Introduction of the Horse,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 11, Great Basin, ed. Warren L. d’Azevedo (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 517–24. For Comanches needing assistance in the first stages of horse adoption, see Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin, Plains Indian Mythology (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975), 91. For raids, see Cristóbal Torres to Juan Páez Hurtado, Aug. 22 and Sep. 7 and 9, 1716, and Diego Marquez to Hurtado, Sep. 8, 1716, SANM II 5:626–28 (T-279) (this designation is the Twitchell number, the numerical designation Ralph Emerson Twitchell assigned to particular document sets of the Spanish Archives of New Mexico); and “Opinion of Ensign Xptobal de Torres, “Opinion of Ensign Bernardo Casillas,” and “Opinion of Cristobal de la Serna,” Aug. 19, 1719, AC, 104–5. See, too, Blackhawk, Violence, 35–40, 48. For a comparison of horses and dogs as beasts of burden, see John C. Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture: With Comparative Material from Other Western Tribes, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 159 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1955), 306–7.
15. For intriguing studies of connections between exploitation of horse use and energy, see West, Contested Plains, 34–54; and Dan Flores, Caprock Canyons: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 82–83 (quote is from p. 82).
16. For Native views of firearms, see West, Contested Plains, 49.
17. For the origins of Indian slavery in New Mexico, see Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 101–27, 155–56; David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 127–29; and Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the South-
Notes to Pages 27–30
373
west, 1640–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 62–85. For deep roots of rescate in Spain’s New World colonialism, see John E. Kicza, “Patterns in Early Spanish Overseas Expansion,” William and Mary Quarterly 49 (Apr. 1992): 230–31.
18. For Utes in New Mexico’s slave trade, see Blackhawk, Violence, 32–35; and James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2002), 50, 108, 148–50. For Comanche and Ute trade in Apache slaves in New Mexico, see Antonio de Valverde y Cosío to Baltasar de Zúñiga y Guzmán, marqués de Valero, Nov. 30, 1719, AC, 141. For Apache and Pawnee slaves in New Mexico, see Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 147; Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 49–51; L. R. Bailey, Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest (Los Angeles: Westernlore, 1966), 23–24; and Russell M. Magnaghi, “The Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest: The Comanche, a Test Case” (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 1979), 153–54. Quote is from “Decree,” Sep. 26, 1714, cited in David M. Brugge, Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico, 1694–1875 (Tsaile, Ariz.: Navajo Community College Press, 1985), xix.
19. For Navajos, see Frank McNitt, Navajo Wars: Military Campaigns, Slave Raids, and Reprisals (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972), 23. For intermarriage, see Neighbors, “Na-
Ü-Ni,” 348. For Comanche-Ute trading and raiding policy, see “Opinion of Ensign Bernardo Casillas,” “Opinion of Captain Miguel Thenorio,” “Opinion of Cristobal de la Serna,” and “Opinion of Juan de Archibèque,” Aug. 19, 1719, AC, 104–7. Quote is from “Opinion of Capt. Joseph Tru-xillas,” Aug. 19, 1719, AC, 102.
20. “Opinion of Ensign Bernardo Casillas,” Aug. 19, 1719, AC, 104.
21. “Diary of Ulibarrí,” and Valverde to Valero, Nov. 30, 1719, AC, 61–76, 141–45 (quotes are on pp.
65, 142).
22. Comanche traditions support the notion that the eastward migration to the plains took place around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See Clark, Indian Sign Language, 118. For the suitability of the southern plains environment for Spanish horses, see Dan Flores, Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 82–100; and Hämäläinen, “Rise and Fall,” 4.
23. For a detailed analysis of the advantages of mounted hunting over pedestrian hunting, see Ewers, Horse, 148–70.
24. For the patterns of early southern plains trade, see Katherine A. Spielmann, Interdependence in the Prehistoric Southwest: An Ecological Analysis of Plains-Pueblo Interaction (New York: Garland, 1991), 239–43; and Susan C. Vehik and Timothy G. Baugh, “Prehistoric Plains Trade,” in Prehistoric Exchange Systems in North America, ed. Timothy G. Baugh and Jonathon E. Ericson (New York: Plenum, 1994), 249–74. For early French trade along the Arkansas and with Apaches, see
“Diary of Ulibarrí,” 73. Apaches soon assumed a central role in France’s commercial schemes on the southern plains. See Bénard de La Harpe, “La Harpe’s First Expedition in Oklahoma,” trans.
Anna Lewis, CO 2 (Dec. 1924): 347.
25. For early eighteenth-century Spanish accounts of Apache farming on the southern plains, see
“Diary of Ulibarrí,” and Antonio de Valverde y Cosío, “Diary of the Campaign . . . against the Ute and Comanche Indians, 1719,” AC, 64, 68, 73, 112. For key studies on the Apache way of life on the southern and central plains, see Wedel, Central Plains Prehistory, 135–51; and James H. Gunnerson, “Plains Village Tradition: Western Periphery,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol.
374
Notes to Pages 31–33
13, The Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 2 parts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 2:239–43. For the late seventeenth-century droughts, see David W. Stahle and Malcolm K.
Cleaveland, “Texas Drought History Reconstructed and Analyzed from 1698 to 1980,” Journal of Climate 1 (Jan. 1988): 65.
26. Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 152; F. Todd Smith, The Wichita Indians: The Traders of Texas and the Southern Plains, 1540–1845 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 16–17; Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 55–66, 105–27; Nancy Parrott Hickerson, The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 160–230; and Charles L. Kenner, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican–Plains Indian Relations (1969; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 16–19.
27. It has been estimated that horticulturists needed as much as three acres per family to sustain themselves on the arid western plains, which suggests a compelling explanation to Comanche-Apache wars: there simply was not enough room for both Apache farmers and Comanche herders.
For Apache farming, see Wedel, Central Plains Prehistory, 135–51; and Susan C. Vehik, “Cultural Continuity and Discontinuity in the Southern Prairies and Cross Timbers,” in Plains Indians, ed.
Schlesier, 246–63. For the importance of microenvironments in understanding the ecological adaptations and history of Plains Indians, see Elliott West, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), chs. 1 and 2.
28. For Comanche plant lore and gathering on the plains, see Flores, “Bison Ecology,” 471; Wallace and Hoebel, Comanches, 73–74; and Domingo Cabello y Robles, Responses Given by the Governor of the Province of Texas to Questions Put to Him by the Lord Commanding General of the Interior [Provinces] in an Official Letter of the 27th of January Concerning Various Conditions of the Eastern Comanches, Apr. 30, 1786, BA 17:418. For the lack of reliable sources of carbohydrates among plains hunters and its possible adverse effects, see John D. Speth and Katherine A. Spielmann, “Energy Source, Protein Metabolism, and Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence Strategies,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2:1 (1983): 1–31. For the effects of excess protein consumption (more than 35–40 percent of total energy intake) among hunter-gatherers in other regions, see Loren Cordain et al., “Plant-Animal Subsistence Ratios and Macronutrient Energy Estimations in Worldwide Hunter Gatherer Diets,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71 (Mar. 2000): 682–92.
29. For Faraones, see “Testimony of Don Gerónimo,” July 20, 1715, “Testimony of Don Lorenzo,”
July 22, 1715, and “Order of Council of War,” Nov. 9, 1723, AC, 80–82, 194. For Comanche-Ute cohesion, see “Opinion of Ensign Bernardo Casillas,” and “Opinion of Captain Miguel de Coca,”
Aug. 19, 1719, AC, 104–5. For Comanche-Ute tactics, see Valverde, “Diary,” 112–15. Quote is from Rivera to Casa Fuerte, Sep. 26, 1727, AC, 211.
30. For Indian attempts to monopolize French trade, see Claude Charles Du Tisné to Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, Nov. 22, 1719, in Découvertes et établissements des français dans l’ouest et dans le sud de L’Amérique Septentrionale, 1614–1754: Mémoires et documents originaux, ed.
Pierre Margry, 6 vols. (Paris: D. Jouaust, 1879–88), 6:313–15; and Willard H. Rollings, The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), 117–18. For Pawnee-French trade and Pawnee-Apache wars, see Valverde, “Diary,”
Notes to Pages 33–37
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132; and Wedel, Central Plains Prehistory, 173. For Wichita-French trade in Apache slaves, see
“Diary of Ulibarrí,” 74; and Bénard de La Harpe, “Account of the Journey of Bénard de La Harpe: Discovery Made by Him of Several Nations Situated in the West,” trans. and ed. Ralph A. Smith, SHQ 62 (Apr. 1959): 529. For Wichita-Apache conflict, see “Relation du voyage de Bénard de La Harpe,” Dec. 12, 1719, in Découvertes, 6:290–92. Quote is from “Opinion of Captain Miguel de Coca,” 105.
31. Quotes are from Juan de la Cruz to Valero, 1719, and “Order of Valero,” Aug. 1, 1719, AC, 138–
39. For Spanish deliberations on the Apache request, see “Council of War,” Aug. 19, 1719, and Valverde to Valero, Nov. 30, 1719, AC, 100–10, 138, 141–45.
32. Valverde, “Diary,” 110–19 (quotes are from pp. 110, 112–13, 115).
33. Ibid., Valverde to Valero, Nov. 30, 1719, and Manuel San Juan de Santa Cruz to Valero, Dec. 11, 1719, AC, 119–33, 142, 147 (quotes are from pp. 132, 142). For El Cuartelejo, see “Diary of Ulibarrí,”
60–77.
34. For the Villasur expedition, see Weber, Spanish Frontier, 170–71. For Spain’s vacillating attitudes toward assisting the Apaches and building a presidio on the plains, see, e.g., Valverde to Valero, May 27, 1720, “Council of War,” June 2, 1720, and Juan de Olivan Revolledo to Valero, Dec. 9, 1720, AC, 154–60, 175–77.
35. “Council of War,” Nov. 9, 1723, and Revolledo to Casa Fuerte, July 12, 1724, AC, 195–97. Quotes are from “Decree for Council of War,” Nov. 8, 1723, Juan Domingo de Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, Jan. 10, 1724, and Revolledo to Casa Fuerte, July 12, 1724, AC, 194, 196, 201, 206.
36. For the events in 1723 and 1724, see Council of War, Juan Mirabel to Bustamante, Jan. 29, 1724, SANM II 6:105–6 (T-324); Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, Jan. 10, 1724, PT, 3:226; and Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, May 30, 1724, AC, 208. For the debate over La Jicarilla, see Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, May 30, 1724, “Reply of the Fiscal,” Dec. 14, 1726, Revolledo to Casa Fuerte, Mar. 31, 1727, and “Council of War Ordering Presidio at La Jicarilla,” Sep. 26, 1720, AC, 208–9, 217–19, 234–39. For the battle of El Gran Sierra del Fierro, see William Edward Dunn, “Apache Relations in Texas, 1718–1750,” SHQ 14 (Jan. 1911): 220.
37. This sequence of retreat, relocation, ethnogenesis, and alliance-making by the Apache refugees has been pieced together from the following sources: Council of War, Opinion of Lt. Gen. Juan Páez Hurtado, Feb. 6, 1724, SANM II 6:129 (T-324); Juan Agustín de Morfí, “Geographical Description of New Mexico,” FF, 96–97; Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, May 30, 1724, and Apr. 30, 1727, AC, 208, 256–58; and Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, Aug. 26, 1727, PT, 3:246. Quotes are from Morfí, “Geographical Description,” 97; and Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, Apr. 30, 1727, AC, 257–58.
38. See Rivera to Casa Fuerte, Sep. 26, 1727, AC, 209–17 (quotes are from pp. 213 and 214).
39. Traditionally, the Comanche-Apache wars on the southern plains have been seen as a primal struggle for living space or, as one historian put it, “for cultural life and death.” Most historians have reduced the clash to a one-dimensional territorial contest driven by greed, hatred, and the Indians’ inherent passion for war. See, e.g., Fehrenbach, Comanches, 132–33 (the phrase “cultural life and death” is on p. 132). I argue here that the wars are best understood as a multifaceted strategic struggle over specific natural resources, river valleys, and trade privileges, a view that is corroborated by the cessation of fighting in the late 1720s for nearly a decade: driven by strategic considerations rather than territorial greed or ethnic hate, the Comanches stopped fighting when t
hey had temporarily met their needs.
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40. The few existing sources suggest that during the late 1720s and 1730s, Comanches gradually extended their control several hundred miles to the east of the Rocky Mountain Front Range. See Bustamante to Casa Fuerte, Apr. 30, 1727, AC, 256; and “Declaration of Fray Miguel de Menchero,” May 10, 1744, HD, 3:401. For the Big Timbers, see Jacob Fowler, Journal of Jacob Fowler, ed. Elliott Coues (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 41–44; and Edwin James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819, 1820, vols. 14–17 of Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Arthur H.
Clark, 1906), 16:20, 31, 61. For cottonwood as emergency food, see Randolph B. Marcy, Adventure on Red River: Report on the Exploration of the Headwaters of the Red River by Captain Randolph B. Marcy and Captain G. B. McClellan, ed. Grant Foreman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937), 60–61, 141–42. For plains winters and horse ecology, see Hämäläinen, “Rise and Fall,” 14–15.
41. For the link between horse pasturing and social division, see Athanase de Mézières to Juan Maria Vicencio, barón de Ripperdá, July 4, 1772, ADM, 1:297.
42. For Comanche horse wealth and seasonal migrations, see “Declaration of Felipe de Sandoval,”
Mar. 1, 1750, and “Declaration of an Unnamed Frenchman,” June 26, 1751, PT, 3:323–24, 348. For mounted chase, see Isenberg, Destruction, 88.
43. Benito Crespo to the viceroy, Sep. 25, 1730, in Benito Crespo, “Documents Concerning Bishop Crespo’s Visitation, 1730,” NMHR 28 (July 1953): 230; Proceedings in the Case of Juan García de la Mora vs. Diego de Torres, Apr. 13–May 16, 1735, and Henrique de Olavide y Michelena, Bando, Jan. 7, 1737, SANM II 7:365, 552 (T-402, 414); “Declaration of Fray Miguel de Menchero,”