The Comanche Empire

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The Comanche Empire Page 61

by Pekka Hämäläinen


  94. For the reception of Rubí’s policies, see Imaginary Kingdom, ed. Jackson, 82–84.

  95. For Apache raiding in northern New Spain, see David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 74–75. For travel between San Antonio and Santa Fe, see PV, 262.

  96. Quotes are from Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 87; and Wheat, Mapping the Trans-Mississippi West, 1: facing 108.

  97. For the 1726 estimate, see Rivera, Diario, 78. The estimate of Comanche population in 1750 is based on the following deductions. In that year Pierre Satren, a Frenchman who had lived in Comanchería for two months, reported that the rancherías in the upper Arkansas River valley could muster two thousand warriors. When women, children, and the elderly are added to this figure, it seems that between eight and ten thousand Comanches were living in the Arkansas River valley alone. To this figure should be added all the Comanche rancherías on the Llano Estacado. See

  “Declaration of Pedro Satren,” Mar. 5, 1750, PT, 3:317. For Apache population decline, see Morfí, History, 2:272.

  98. For the centrality of farming in Apache culture, see Dolores A. Gunnerson, The Jicarilla Apaches: A Study in Cultural Survival (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 242–43; Gunnerson, “Plains Village Tradition,” 239–44; and J. Loring Haskell, Southern Athapaskan Migration, A.D. 200–1750 (Tsaile, Ariz.: Navajo Community College Press, 1987), 85–92, 110–11.

  99. De Mézières to Luis Unzaga y Amezaga, Oct. 29, 1770, ADM, 1:218–19.

  C H A P T E R 2 . N E W O R D E R

  1. For an incisive analysis of these dynamics, see Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations and the British Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

  2. This reorganization of northern New Spain’s frontier policies has received considerable attention from historians. For prominent examples, see Max L. Moorhead, The Apache Frontier: Jacobo

  382

  Notes to Pages 70–72

  Ugarte and Spanish-Indian Relations in Northern New Spain, 1769–1791 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968); David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 204–35; Ross Frank, From Settler to Citizen: New Mexican Economic Development and the Creation of Vecino Society, 1750–1820

  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); and 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): 833–35.

  3. Tomás Vélez de Cachupín to Joaquín de Montserrat, marqués de Cruillas, June 27, 1762, PINM, 150.

  4. For the distribution of horses to the central and northern plains and on the difficulties the Indians in those regions faced in building viable horse cultures, see Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” JAH 90 (Dec. 2003): 13–22.

  5. For Pawnees, Kansas, Iowas, and Kiowas, see Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Chaves, Diary, in “Inside the Comanchería, 1785: The Diary of Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Chaves,” ed.

  Elizabeth A. H. John, trans. Adán Benavides, Jr., SHQ 88 (July 1994): 50; 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; and Zebulon Montgomery Pike, The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, ed. Elliott Coues, 2 vols. (1895; reprint, New York: Dover, 1987), 2:590. Pedro Vial, who lists the Kansas, Iowas, and Kiowas as Comanches’ trading partners, wrote his account after spending the summer of 1785 in eastern Comanchería. The information on Comanche-Cheyenne and Comanche-Ponca horse trade is based on Cheyenne and Ponca folklore. See Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin, Plains Indian Mythology (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975), 94–98; and Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, The Omaha Tribe, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 27 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1905–6), 79–80. For trails, see Donald J. Blakeslee and Robert Blasing, “Indian Trails in the Central Plains,” Plains Anthropologist 33 (Feb. 1988): 24.

  6. For Comanche trade in New Mexico and with the Wichitas, see Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta to Carlos Francisco de Croix, marqués de Croix, Sep. 3, 1768, PINM, 160–62. For British trade on the southern prairies and with the Wichitas, see PV, 11–12. For the 1776 report, see 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), 252. Quote is from Nicolás de Lafora, The Frontiers of New Spain: Nicolás de Lafora’s Description, 1766–1768, ed. and trans. Lawrence Kinnaird (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1958), 94.

  7. For the flow of commodities, see Vial and Chavez, Diary, 50; and Cabello, Responses, BA 17:418.

  Also see Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Western Comanche Trade Center: Rethinking the Plains Indian Trade System,” Western Historical Quarterly 29 (Winter 1998): 492–93.

  8. For Mandan and Hidatsa horse trade, see John C. Ewers, Indian Life on the Upper Missouri (1954; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 14–33; and John S. Milloy, The Plains Cree: Trade, Diplomacy, and War, 1790 to 1870 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1988).

  Quote is from Estevan Rodriguez Miró to Antonio Rengel, Dec. 12, 1785, in Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, 1785–1804, ed. A. P. Nasatir, 2 vols.

  (1952; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 1:125. Miró also listed Apaches as the

  Notes to Pages 73–76

  383

  distributors of horses to the Missouri valley, but this was an error: almost all Apaches had been pushed out of the plains by the 1760s.

  9. Lafora, Frontiers, 93, 185. To preserve Spain’s military hegemony in the Americas, the crown had prohibited the distribution of firearms among Indians since 1501. Fearful of losing the Indian trade and Indian allegiances to British contraband traders, Spanish officials frequently petitioned in the late eighteenth century for an exemption from the law, but the rigid regulations were not relaxed until the 1780s. See, e.g., Juan María Vicencio, barón de Ripperdá to the viceroy, Apr. 28, 1772, and José Areche to the viceroy, July 31, 1772, ADM, 1:269–71, 277–82.

  10. Cabello, Responses, BA 17:418; and Pedro Tamarón y Romeral, Bishop Tamarón’s Visitation of New Mexico, 1760, ed. Eleanor B. Adams (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954), 58. Quotes are from Domínguez, Missions, 252.

  11. Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 37.

  12. For Mendinueta’s Indian policy, see, e.g., Mendinueta to Teodoro de Croix, June 18, 1768, PINM, 159–62 (quotes are from p. 159).

  13. For drought, see Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 34–35, 38. For the 1771 truce and subsequent raids, see Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530–1888 (San Francisco: History Company, 1889), 259; and PINM, 44, 169n70.

  14. For the 1757 census, see John O. Baxter, Las Carneradas: Sheep Trade in New Mexico, 1700–

  1860 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 42. Quotes are from Mendinueta to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, Aug. 19, 1775, PINM, 184; and Antonio Bonilla, “Bonilla’s Notes Concerning New Mexico [1776],” in New Spain and the Anglo-American West: Historical Contributions Presented to Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed. Charles W. Hackett, George P. Hammond, and J. Lloyd Mecham, 2 vols. (Lancaster, Pa., 1932), 1:195.

  15. For Comanche horse wealth, see Mendinueta to Bucareli, Oct. 20, 1774, PINM, 175, and Juan Bautista de Anza, “Diary of the Expedition . . . against the Comanche Nation . . . ,” Sep. 10, 1779, and Francisco Xavier Ortiz to Juan Bautista de Anza, May 29, 1786, FF, 139, 323. For minimum requirements, see John H. Moore, “The Dynamics of Scale in Plains Ethnohistory,” Papers in Anthropolog
y 23:2 (1982): 234.

  16. For Comanche captive raiding in New Mexico, see Mendinueta to Croix, Nov. 10, 1769, and Aug. 4, 1770, AGN:PI 103:1, 88R,V, 114R,V; Mendinueta to Bucareli, Sep. 30, 1774, and Aug.

  18, 1775, PINM, 169–73, 180–84; and Teodoro de Croix, “General Report of 1781,” in Teodoro de Croix and the Northern Frontier of New Spain, 1776–1783: From the Original Document in the Archives of the Indies, Seville, ed. and trans. Alfred Barnaby Thomas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941), 111. For Comanche captive trade in New Mexico and the almsgiving plan, see Mendinueta to Bucareli, Sep. 30, 1774, PINM, 170; Domínguez, Missions, 252; Croix to Anza, May 27, 1782, and Phelipe Neve to Anza, Apr. 28, 1784, SANM II 11:344, 723–24 (T-839, 894); and Oakah L. Jones, Jr., “Rescue and Ransom of Spanish Captives from the indios bárbaros on the Northern Frontier of New Spain,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 4 (Spring 1995): 143–44. For Comanche trade in New Mexican captives with the Wichitas, Pawnees, and French, see Juan Agustín de Morfí, History of Texas, 1673–1779, trans. Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 2 vols.

  (Albuquerque: Quivira Society, 1935), 2:434; Athanase de Mézières to Croix, Apr. 19, 1778, ADM, 2:209; Jack B. Tykal, “From Taos to St. Louis: The Journey of María Rosa Villalpando,” NMHR 65

  (Apr. 1990): 161–74; and Angélico Cháves, Origins of New Mexico Families: A Genealogy of the Spanish Colonial Period (1954; reprint, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1992), 281–82.

  384

  Notes to Pages 76–80

  Juliana Barr has argued that during the eighteenth century Comanches seized captives with the intention of trading them rather than using them as laborers. See Juliana Barr, “From Captives to Slaves: Commodifying Indian Women in the Borderlands,” JAH 92 (June 2005): 25–26.

  17. For Lafora’s plans, see Lafora, Frontiers, 95. For New Mexico’s defenses, see Areche to Bucareli, Oct. 21, 1775, PINM, 185–86. For the 1777 and 1778 raids, see PINM, 51; and Croix, “General Report,” 111. Quotes are from Domínguez, Missions, 124, 217; and Bonilla, “Notes,” 195.

  18. For Comanche raids in New Mexico, see Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 43–44, 49–50; Mendinueta to Croix, Apr. 27 and Nov. 10, 1769, and Aug. 4, 1770, and Mendinueta to Bucareli, July 23, 1773, AGN:PI 103:1, 51R–54R, 88R,V, 114R,V, 103:2, 230R–234V; “Extract of Reports from the Kingdom of New Mexico between September 17 and November 9 of the past year [1769],” and Mendinueta to Bucareli, Sep. 30, 1774, and May 12 and Aug. 18, 1775, PINM, 169–70, 179–183; Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta, Order for the Resettlement of Abiquiu, Nov. 2, 1770, SANM I 1:289–92 (T-36); Petition of Citizens of Nuestra Señora del Rosario de las Truchas, Mar. 6–10, 1772, SANM II 10:712–16 (T-666); Domínguez, Missions, 78, 83, 92, 112–113; Joseph Rubio to Mendinueta, Jan. 8, 1778, and Croix to Mendinueta, Jan. 8, 1778, SANM II 10:965, 970 (T-714, 716); Juan Agustín de Morfí, “Geographical Description of New Mexico,” FF, 96; and Marc Simmons, “Settlement Patterns and Village Plans in Colonial New Mexico,” Journal of the West 8:1

  (1969): 15–16. Quotes are from Mendinueta to Bucareli, Feb. 8, 1775, PINM, 177; and E. Boyd,

  “Troubles at Ojo Caliente, a Frontier Post,” El Palacio 64 (Nov. 1957): 353–54. The phrase “destroyed by hostile Comanches” is from a map prepared by Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, which is reprinted in FF, 87. For Apache and Navajo raids, see Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 36–37; Domínguez, Missions, 254; and Bonilla, “Notes,” 195.

  19. For the 1779 map, see Domínguez, Missions, 2–3. For the effects of Comanche raids, see Mendinueta to Bucareli, Apr. 27, 1769, Jan. 18 and Aug. 8, 1771, Jan. 4 and Mar. 30, 1772, and July 23

  and Oct. 16, 1773, AGN:PI 103:1, 51R–54R, 134R–135V, 155R–158R, 103:2, 177R–180R, 184R–

  186R, 230R–234V, 238R–239V; Mendinueta to Bucareli, Sep. 30, 1774, and May 12 and Aug. 18, 1775, Areche to Bucareli, Oct. 21, 1775, and Mendinueta to Croix, June 22, 1778, PINM, 170–

  73, 179–83, 185–86, 212; Domínguez, Missions, 143, 213–14, 254 (quotes are from p. 213); and Charles L. Lummis, A New Mexico David and Other Stories and Sketches of the Southwest (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), 96–99. For Pecos, see Morfí, “Geographical Description,”

  93; and Domínguez, Missions, 214. In 1760, only sixteen years earlier, 168 families had lived in Pecos. See Tamarón, Visitation, 48.

  20. Tamarón, Visitation, 53; and Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 42. Quote is from Domínguez, Missions, 217.

  21. For Spanish punitive campaigns, see PINM, 38–51; and Croix to Mendinueta, Jan. 8, 1778, SANM

  II 10:970 (T-716). For a haunting account of the use of Indian ears as trophies in Santa Fe, see Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 16–18.

  22. For the 1774 battle, see Mendinueta to Bucareli, Oct. 20, 1774, PINM, 174–75. For Bucareli’s remark, see Bucareli to Mendinueta, Feb. 8, 1775, PINM, 177.

  23. For the Apache wars of the 1770s, see Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s World: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 433–47. For New Mexico’s defenses, see Mendinueta to Bucareli, Aug. 19, 1775, and Mendinueta to Croix, June 22, 1778, PINM, 184–83, 212–13; and PINM,

  Notes to Pages 80–86

  385

  54n167. For New Mexico’s settlement patterns, see Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 47–49. For Mendinueta’s attempts to strengthen the frontier, see Mendinueta to Croix, Nov. 3, 1777, in “Governor Mendinueta’s Proposals for the Defense of New Mexico, 1772–1778,” ed. Alfred B. Thomas, NMHR 6 (Jan. 1931): 36–39.

  24. For a copy of the Miera y Pacheco map and a translation of the legend, see Domínguez, Missions, 2–4. For Morfí’s account, see Morfí, “Geographical Description,” 92.

  25. The following data on raids are from Mendinueta to Bucareli, Sep. 30, 1774, PINM, 169–72.

  26. Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 33; and Mendinueta to Croix, Sep. 3, 1768, PINM, 160–61. Quotes are from Bucareli to Julián de Arriaga, Jan. 27, 1773, cited in PINM, 43; and Mendinueta to Croix, Sep. 3, 1768, PINM, 160.

  27. For the variety and fluidity of exchange strategies on the Río Grande–Great Plains and Río Grande–Navajo borderlands, see Katherine A. Spielmann, “Interaction among Nonhierarchical Societies,” in Farmers, Hunters, and Colonists: Interaction between the Southwest and the Southern Plains, ed. Katherine A. Spielmann (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991), 7–13; Patricia Albers, “War, Merger, and Symbiosis: Contrasting Forms of Intertribal Relationship among Historic Plains Indians,” in Political Economy of North American Indians, ed. John H. Moore (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 108–9; 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), 86–

  88.

  28. Domínguez, Missions, 59, 99, 111–13, 252; and Juan Agustín de Morfí, Desórdenes que se advierten en el Nuevo México [1778], AGN:HI 25, 132V. Quote is from Mendinueta to Bucareli, Oct.

  20, 1774, PINM, 175.

  29. Mendinueta to Bucareli, May 11, 1771, cited and translated in John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540–1840 (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1979), 393–95.

  30. Mendinueta to Croix, Jan. 28, 1769, AGN:PI 103:1, 60V–62V.

  31. Domínguez, Missions, 251–52; and Max L. Moorhead, New Mexico’s Royal Road: Trade and Travel on the Chihuahua Trail (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 43.

  32. Domínguez, Missions, 252.

  33. Mendinueta to Bucareli, Sep. 30, 1774, PINM, 172. The first reference to the “reverse” horse trade in Taos is from 1760. See Tamarón, Visitation, 58. That Comanches sold stolen New Mexican livestock at Taos is demonstrated by the fact that they often sold mules, which are sterile and were available to Comanches only in N
ew Mexico. For mule trade at Taos, see Domínguez, Missions, 252. For aborted hunts, see Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 230–31. Quotes are from Morfí, “Geographical Description,” 101; and Morfí, Desórdenes, AGN:HI 25, 132V.

  34. For material destruction and starvation in New Mexico, see Mendinueta to Croix, Nov. 3, 1777, in “Mendinueta’s Proposals,” 35; Mendinueta to Croix, June 22, 1778, PINM, 212; Domínguez, Missions, 92, 213, 217; and Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 50–52. Maize is rarely mentioned in the contemporary accounts of Comanche-Taos trade, probably because it was so commonplace.

  For an account that portrays Taos as a food depot for Comanches, see Domínguez, Missions, 112.

  Quote is from Anza to Croix, May 26, 1780, FF, 177.

  35. For the complex origins of “Los Comanches,” see Thomas W. Kavanagh, “Los Comanches: Pieces

  386

  Notes to Pages 86–92

  of an Historic, Folkloric Detective Story, Part I,” NMHR 81 (Winter 2006): 1–37. Quote is from Domínguez, Missions, 112.

  36. This depiction of “Los Comanches” draws on Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 1–10.

  37. Gilberto Espinosa, trans., “Los Comanches,” New Mexico Quarterly 1 (May 1931): 145.

  38. Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 1–10. For other interpretations, see John, Storms, 478–79; and Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 63–64.

  39. For the Ute–New Mexican alliance and Abiquiu trade, see Blackhawk, Violence, 70–93.

  40. Francisco Atanasio Domínguez to Isidro Murillo, Nov. 25, 1776, in Domínguez, Missions, 286–87

  (quote is from p. 286); and Angelico Chavez, trans., Ted J. Warner, ed., The Domínguez-Escalante Journal: Their Expedition through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1775 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995), 144–45. For Comanche range, see also Pedro Garrido y Duran, “An account of the events which have occurred in the provinces of New Mexico concerning peace conceded to the Comanche nation and their reconciliation with the Utes, since November 17 of last year and July of the current [1786],” FF, 295.

 

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