The Comanche Empire

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The Comanche Empire Page 60

by Pekka Hämäläinen


  401–2; and Marc Simmons, Coronado’s Land: Essays on Daily Life in Colonial New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 42–43. Owing to its illicit nature, gun trade between Spanish subjects and Indians is rarely mentioned in sources. It must have been quite widespread, however, because New Mexican authorities saw it necessary to issue specific bandos to prohibit it. See, e.g., Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora, Bando, May 2, 1735, SANM II 7:398 (T-403).

  Indicating growing Comanche trade in Apache captives, the number of Apache baptisms in New Mexico jumped from 97 in the 1720s to 153 in the 1730s. See Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 146.

  44. For attacks, see John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540–1840 (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1979), 371. For Comanche camps in the Arkansas valley, see “Declaration of an Unnamed Frenchman,” 348. A typical Comanche camp in this period probably contained between 100 and 300 people, but camp sizes could vary considerably. In 1749 a visitor from French Louisiana reported that he had seen one Comanche camp of “eighty-four tents, containing 800 persons,” as well as two others, containing 23 and 40 tipis, or approximately 230 and 400 people, respectively. In 1750 another Frenchman reported that he had lived for four months in a massive Comanche camp that consisted of 400 tipis. See “Declaration of Luis del Fierro,” Apr. 13, 1749, and “Declaration of Felipe de Sandoval,” Mar. 1, 1750, PT, 3:303, 323.

  45. The Comanche military society had become fully mature by the late eighteenth century, when historical sources begin to shed more light on Comanches’ internal affairs. For an early remark on connections between war record and social status, see Francisco Marin del Valle, Description of the Province of New Mexico, 1758, AGN:CA 39:1, 21V. For nineteenth-century society, see Wallace and Hoebel, Comanches, 216, 245.

  46. For renewed Comanche attacks on Apaches, see Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 371–72. For the

  Notes to Pages 40–43

  377

  Comanche war machine, see Frank Raymond Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, Monographs of the American Ethnological Society 21 (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1952), 30–31.

  47. For Apache baptisms, see Brugge, Navajos, 21–22. For Apaches seeking shelter from New Mexico’s border towns, see Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 371–72. For contention over trading privileges, see Anderson, Indian Southwest, 206–7.

  48. For an insightful contemporary account of Comanche views of gifts, see Marcy, Adventure, 159, 174.

  49. Tension and conflicts between Comanches and New Mexicans at trade fairs is a consistent theme in the eighteenth-century Spanish sources. For a revealing account, see “Instruction of Don Tomás Vélez Cachupín, 1754,” PINM, 133.

  50. Gaspar Domingo Mendoza, Order to alcaldes mayores, Feb. 2, 1742, and Joachín Codallos y Rabál, Bando, Feb. 4, 1746, SANM II 8:108, 213–15 (T-443, 495); and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 69–70. For the quote on Abiquiu, see Tomás Vélez de Cachupín to Juan Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas, conde de Revillagigedo I, Nov. 27, 1751, PINM, 79. For the events in 1747, see “An Account of Lamentable Happenings in New Mexico and of Losses Experienced in Daily Affairs Spiritual and Temporal; Written by Reverend Father Fray Juan Sanz de Lazaún, in the Year 1760,” HD, 3:477; and Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530–1888 (San Francisco: History Company, 1889), 249. Records provide conflicting information about the ethnic composition of the raiding party that struck Abiquiu and about the Indian camp that Governor Codallos’s troops demolished in 1747; it is likely, however, that both were mixed Comanche-Ute units.

  51. For the Comanche-Pawnee conflict, see Opinion of Lt. Gen. Juan Páez Hurtado, SANM II 6:129;

  “Declaration of Luis del Fierro,” 304; and White, Roots of Dependency, 152, 179. Fierro speaks of hostilities between Comanches and “A nation,” which probably refers to the Arapahoes. See Douglas R. Parks, “Enigmatic Groups,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, The Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 2 parts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 2:971–72. For Osages, see Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 24–26, 48–49; and Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 103–10.

  52. For Comanche-Wichita relations, see “Declaration of Luis del Fierro,” “Declaration of Joseph Miguel Raballo,” Apr. 13, 1749, and “Declaration of Felipe de Sandoval,” PT, 3:303, 307–8, 323; and Valle, Description, AGN:CA 39:1, 22R. Not all Apache captives were sold. While visiting Comanchería, Sandoval noted that Comanches “keep for themselves whatever [women] they seize from their enemies in war.”

  53. For French traders among the Comanches in 1748, see Antonio Duran de Armijo to Joachín Codallos y Rabál, Feb. 27, 1748, in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Arno, 1976), 1:148. Quote is from Tomás Vélez de Cachupín, Brief Description of the Province and Territory of New Mexico in the Kingdom of New Spain, in “New Mexico in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: A Report Based on Governor Vélez Cachupín’s Inspection,” trans. and ed. Robert Ryal Miller, SHQ (Oct. 1975): 173. For the remark of Apache slaves in Louisiana, see Juliana Barr, “From Captives to Slaves: Commodifying Indian Women in the Borderlands,” JAH 92 (June 2005): 28.

  378

  Notes to Pages 44–49

  54. For Comanche and Ute raids against Pecos and Galisteo, see Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Mar. 8, 1750, PT, 3:328; Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 379n24, 380; and Frances Levine and Anna LaBauve, “Examining the Complexity of Historical Population Decline: A Case Study of Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico,” Ethnohistory 44 (Winter 1997): 96. For Abiquiu, Ojo Caliente, and Quemado, see Petition by Vecinos of Ojo Caliente, Abiquiu, and Pueblo Quemado to Abandon Their Settlements Due to Indian Hostilities, 1748, SANM I 1:263–66 (T-28); and “Account of Lamentable Happenings,” 477. For the execution of Comanche-Ute raids and the fortification of Pecos and Galisteo, see marqués de Altamira, “Opinion,” Jan. 15, 1753, PINM, 127; and Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Mar. 8, 1750, PT, 3:328. For Taos fairs, see Codallos to the viceroy, 1748, in Twitchell, Spanish Archives, 2:227.

  55. Quotes are from Cachupín, Brief Description, 173; and Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Mar. 8, 1750, PT, 3:328. For Cachupín’s policies, see John, Storms, 314–15.

  56. For Spanish reactions to the French threat, see Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Mar. 8, 1750, and

  “Report of Doctor Andreu,” June 7, 1751, PT, 3:326, 343; and Altamira, “Opinion,” Apr., 26, 1752, PINM, 79. Quotes are from Cachupín, Brief Description, 173; and Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Nov. 27, 1751, and “Instruction of Cachupín,” PINM, 75, 135.

  57. Varo’s account is cited in “Report of the Reverend Father Provincial, Fray Pedro Serrano, to the Most Excellent Señor Viceroy, the Marquis of Cruillas, in regard to the Custodia of New Mexico.

  In the year 1761,” HD, 3:486–87.

  58. “Report of Serrano,” HD, 3:487; and Altamira to the viceroy, Jan. 9, 1751, HD, 3:332.

  59. Tomás Vélez de Cachupín, Account of Campaign against Comanches in the Fall of 1751, SANM II 8:1049–54 (T-518); and Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Nov. 27, 1751, PINM, 68–76 (quotes are from pp. 71–73).

  60. See, e.g., “Declaration of Felipe de Sandoval,” 323.

  61. Juan Joseph Lobato to Cachupín, Aug. 28, 1752, and Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Sep. 29, 1752, PINM, 114–17, 118–25 (quotes are from pp. 115–16, 12o). Lobato’s report was based on a testimony given by a captive Indian woman who had lived among the Comanches at the time of the negotiations and was later sold to New Mexico by Utes. Her testimony was translated into Spanish by an Indian servant whose “sincerity” allowed Lobato to “understand the essential facts of the account.”

  62. Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Sep. 29, 1752, PINM, 119–21 (quotes are from pp. 120 and 121).

 
; 63. “Instruction of Cachupín,” 132–35 (quotes are from pp. 134–35).

  64. Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Sep. 29, 1752, and “Instruction of Cachupín,” PINM, 124, 135–36.

  For the Miera y Pacheco map, see Wheat, Mapping the Trans-Mississippi West, 1: facing 108.

  65. “Declaration of Luis Fuesi,” and Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Sep. 18, 1752, PINM, 107, 110.

  Little is known about Comanche–Skidi Pawnee relations, except that their alliance was often marred by hostilities. See, e.g., Pedro Tamarón y Romeral, Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, ed. Eleanor B. Adams (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954), 62.

  For the 1751 battle, see Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel de la Jonquière, marquis de la Jonquière to the French minister, Sep. 25, 1751, in The French Regime in Wisconsin, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1908), 87–88.

  66. For Taovayas, see Smith, Wichita Indians, 27–28; and Anderson, Indian Southwest, 152. For Comanche-Osage border, see Henry Dodge, Journal of the March of a Detachment of Dragoons, 24th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 181, 18.

  Notes to Pages 49–55

  379

  67. See Cachupín to Revillagigedo I, Mar. 8, 1750, PT, 3:327; and Lobato to Cachupín, Aug. 28, 1752, and “Instruction of Cachupín,” PINM, 114–15, 130–32.

  68. “Instruction of Cachupín,” 136. The significance of a common enemy for the stability of the Comanche-Ute alliance is further illustrated by the fact that the coalition had suffered a brief rupture in the mid-1730s, when the wars against Apaches had been temporarily halted. See Proceedings in the Case of Juan García de la Mora vs. Diego de Torres, SANM II 7:365 (T-402).

  69. For a study looking at the collapse of the Comanche-Ute alliance from Ute perspective, see Blackhawk, Violence, 52–54, 61–62.

  70. Quote is from Cachupín to Joaquín de Montserrat, marqués de Cruillas, June 27, 1762, PINM, 149–50. For Valle’s trade restrictions, see Francisco Marín del Valle, Bando, Nov. 26, 1754, SANM II 8:1191–96 (T-530).

  71. Revillagigedo I to marqués de Ensenada, June 28, 1753, PINM, 111–12; Tamarón, Visitation, 45, 54, 57–58 (quotes are from p. 58); and Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, “Miera’s Report,” ed. Herbert S.

  Auerbach, Utah Historical Quarterly 11 (1943): 121.

  72. Juan Candelaria, “Noticias que da Juan Candelaria vecino de esta villa de San Francisco Xauier de Alburquerque de edad de 84 años,” ed. Isidro Armijo, NMHR 4 (July 1929): 291–94; Tamarón, Visitation, 58–59 (the quote on Comanche intentions is from p. 58); and Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, The Missions of New Mexico, 1776: A Description by Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, trans. and ed. Eleanor B. Adams and Angelico Chavez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1956), 251, 257–58 (the quote on ruins is from p. 251).

  73. Candelaria, “Noticias,” 291; and Tamarón, Visitation, 59–61 (quotes are from p. 61).

  74. Tamarón, Visitation, 61–62.

  75. Ibid., 62. For Comanche social code and masculine honor, see Jane Fishburne Collier, Marriage and Inequality in Classless Societies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 47–63.

  76. Cachupín to Cruillas, June 27, 1762, PINM, 148–49.

  77. Ibid., 150–51. Also see James F. Brooks, “‘This Evil Extends Especially . . . to the Feminine Sex’: Negotiating Captivity on the New Mexico Borderlands,” Feminist Studies 22 (Summer 1996): 299.

  78. Cachupín to Cruillas, June 27, 1762, PINM, 152–53.

  79. For Cachupín’s motives, see Cachupín to Cruillas, June 27, 1762, PINM, 153–54.

  80. Quote is from Cachupín to Cruillas, June 27, 1762, PINM, 150. For Cachupín’s attempts to put an end to the Comanches’ raiding-and-trading policy, see ibid., 151. It should be emphasized that the 1762 negotiations, together with peace talks a decade before, formed only the beginning for a development that eventually could have led to a full-blown middle ground. As Richard White has shown, the creation of a middle ground was an arduous and delicate process that took generations and, moreover, was never complete. See Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. chs. 2, 7, and 8. For a study that casts the Southwest as a middle-ground failure, see Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104 (June 1999): esp. 823–29.

  81. For the resettlement of Abiquiu and Ojo Caliente, see Proceeding Regarding the Resettlement of Ojo Caliente, 1751–53, and Tomás Vélez de Cachupín, Order to Resettle the Paraje de Abiquiu, 1750, SANM I 4:265–78, 5:1561–64 (T-650, 1100). For Ute trade at Abiquiu and Ojo Caliente, see

  380

  Notes to Pages 57–60

  Domínguez, Missions, 252–53. The Utes emerged by the 1770s as fully fledged mountain people, who based their economy on small game hunting, wild plant gathering, and captive raiding in the Great Basin. They still traveled occasionally onto the plains to hunt bison, but these expeditions now had more ritual than economic meaning. See Fernando de la Concha to Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, conde de Revillagigedo II, May 6, 1793, SANM II 13:234–35

  (T-1234); and Blackhawk, Violence, 55–87.

  82. For food taboos, see Wallace and Hoebel, Comanches, 70. For feral horses, see Flores, “Bison Ecology,” 481; and Richard White, “Animals and Enterprise,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 239.

  83. For Lipan-Texas relations and the 1749 treaty, see Anderson, Indian Southwest, 111–20; and Barr,

  “From Captives to Slaves,” 32–38. For a long-term view on Apache-Spanish relations in Texas, see John, Storms, 258–87. For early eighteenth-century Texas, see Jesús F. de la Teja, “Spanish Colonial Texas,” in New Views of Borderlands History, ed. Robert H. Jackson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 127. For early Comanche excursions to the Texas plains, see Juan Agustín de Morfí, History of Texas, 1673–1779, trans. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 2 vols. (Albuquerque: Quivira Society, 1935), 2:294.

  84. For Wichita-French trade along the Red River, see Elizabeth Ann Harper, “The Taovayas Indians in Frontier Trade and Diplomacy, 1719–1768,” CO 31 (Autumn 1953): 278–79; and Smith, Wichita Indians, 28.

  85. For Taovayas, Tonkawas, and Hasinais, see Harper, “Taovayas Indians,” 271–72; Kelly F. Himmel, The Conquest of the Karankawas and Tonkawas, 1821–1859 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 23–25; and Anderson, Indian Southwest, 145–48. For Lipan expansion on the Texas plains, see, e.g., Isidro Félix de Espinosa, Crónica de los Colegios de Propaganda Fide de la Nueva España, ed. Lino Gómez Canedo (1764; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1964), 692. For Spanish accusations of French manipulation, see Morfí, History, 2:374–76, 390.

  86. For Lipan farming, see Morris E. Opler, “Lipan Apache,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, The Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 2 parts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 2:948. Quote is from “A Statement by Fray Francisco Aparicio to Colonel Parrilla,” Apr. 5, 1758, in San Sabá Papers: A Documentary Account of the Founding and Destruction of San Sabá Mission, ed. Lesley Byrd Simpson, trans. Paul D. Nathan (1959; reprint, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2000), 127–28.

  87. For San Sabá, see Robert S. Weddle, The San Sabá Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas (1964; reprint, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 35–60. For a contemporary Spanish view of San Sabá as a provocation for a Norteño attack, see Morfí, History, 2:376.

  88. “Deposition of Joseph Gutiérrez,” “Deposition of Andrés de Villareal,” “Deposition of Juan Leal,”

  and “Deposition of Father Fray Manuel Miguel de Molina,” in San Sabá Papers, 43–45, 68–77, 84–92 (quotes are from pp. 43, 71, and 90); Morfí, Hi
story, 2:378–85 (the quote on painted faces is from p. 378); and Weddle, San Sabá Mission, 88.

  89. “Deposition of Joseph Gutiérrez,” “Deposition of Sergeant Joseph Antonio Flores,” and “Memo-randum by Colonel Diego Ortiz Parrilla,” in San Sabá Papers, 44, 56, 98. Quotes are from Manuel de la Piscina to the viceroy, Mar. 24, 1758, and “Deposition of Father Miguel de Molina,” in ibid., 35, 90–91.

  Notes to Pages 61–69

  381

  90. Henry Easton Allen, “The Parrilla Expedition to the Red River in 1759,” SHQ 43 (July 1939): 53–71; Weddle, San Sabá Mission, 107–40; and Smith, Wichita Indians, 31–34. The loss of the cannons was a major blow to Texas because cannons were rare in the northern frontier and because they had considerable value as symbols of Spain’s military might. Twenty years later Spaniards were still trying to recover the lost cannons, finally succeeding in 1779. See de Mézières to Teodoro de Croix, Apr. 19, 1778, and “Summary by Croix of the Reports of de Mézières,” Sep. 23, 1778, ADM, 2:208, 228.

  91. Curtis D. Tunnell and W. W. Newcomb, Jr., A Lipan Apache Mission: San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz, 1762–1771 (Austin: Texas Memorial Museum, 1969), 167–72; and John, Storms, 355.

  92. “Itinerary of Señor Marqués de Rubí, Field Marshal of His Majesty’s Armies, in the Inspection of the Interior Presidios that by Royal Order He Conducted in this New Spain, 1766–1768,” and Cayetano María Pignatelli Rubí Corbera y San Climent, marqués de Rubí, “Dictamen of April 18, 1768,” in Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubí Military Expeditions, 1727 and 1767, ed. Jack Jackson (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1995), 111, 179, 181 (quote is from p. 111); Nicolás de Lafora, Relación del viaje que hizo a los presidios internos situados en la frontera de la América septentrional perteneciente al Rey de España, ed. Vito Alessio Robles (Mexico City: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1939), 182; and Anderson, Indian Southwest, 124–26.

  93. Rubí, “Dictamen,” 178–81.

 

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