The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  35. For the assumed Mexican failure to form functioning governmental systems as a justification for the Anglo-driven revolt, see T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans (1968; reprint, New York: Collier, 1980), 155–61. For a comprehensive analysis of Anglo-Texan views of the Mexicans, see James Ernest Crisp, “Anglo-Texan Attitudes toward the Mexican, 1821–1845”

  (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976). See also James E. Crisp, Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stance and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), esp. 38–42. For a study emphasizing the racist, vitriolic nature of the Anglo-Texan attitudes toward Mexicans and Indians, see Anderson, Conquest of Texas, esp. 33–42. Quote is from William H. Wharton, Texas: A Brief Account of the Origin, Progress and Present State of the Colo-

  Notes to Pages 201–204

  411

  nial Settlements of Texas; Together with an Exposition of the Causes which have induced the Existing War with Mexico (1836; reprint, Austin: Pemberton, 1964), 3–5.

  36. For an incisive analysis of how Anglo-Texans used Mexican weakness in the face of Indian power as a means to invalidate Mexico’s claims to Texas soil, see Brian DeLay, “Independent Indians and the U.S.–Mexican War,” American Historical Review 112 (Feb. 2007): 48–53. For Houston, see Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 112. Quote is from Mary Austin Holley, Texas (Lexington, Ky.: Clarke, 1836), 299. The idea that the supposed underutilization of Texas by Mexicans legitimized the Anglo takeover has proved remarkably resilient among Holley’s successors. See Gerald E. Poyo and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, “Spanish Texas and Borderlands Historiography in Transition: Implications for United States History,” JAH 75 (Sep. 1988): 400.

  37. For Spanish plans, see, e.g., François Luis Hector Carondelet, barón de Carondelet to Duque de Alcudia, Jan. 8, 1796, in Before Lewis and Clark, ed. Nasatir, 2:392–93; and N. Salcedo to Joaquín Real del Alencaster, Jan. 16, 1806, PV, 443–45.

  38. Charles Dehault Delassus to Sebastián Nicolás de Bari Calvo de la Puerta, marqués de Casa Calvo, Aug. 10, 1804, in Before Lewis and Clark, 2:742–45 (quote is from p. 744). Also see David J.

  Weber, Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest, 1540–1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 35. Spain’s thin presence in the interior became an acute problem for Spanish officials when Spain and the United States were drawn into a bitter dispute over the extent of the Louisiana Purchase. Unable to claim any effective rule over Texas beyond San Antonio and Nacogdoches, Spanish administrators relied on history, commissioning José Antonio Pichardo to prepare a detailed study of the historical boundary between Texas and Louisiana. Pichardo’s massive 5,127-page treatise helped bolster Spanish claims to Texas, but the argument was based on a past and largely vanished presence and was a poor compensation for the lack of a present one on the ground. In 1819, after tortured negotiations, Spain and the United States agreed on a boundary in the Adams-Onís Treaty. Spain retained Texas—the border traced the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas rivers to the Rockies—but only by ceding the Floridas to the United States. See Weber, Spanish Frontier, 295, 299–300.

  39. For New Mexico’s recovery, see Ross Frank, From Settler to Citizen: New Mexican Economic Development and the Creation of Vecino Society, 1750–1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 119–56. This innovative study of New Mexico’s late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century economic growth emphasizes the role of the Bourbon Reforms, but it also underscores the crucial significance of the Comanche alliance.

  40. For Comanche visits to Santa Fe, see Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 180. Quote is from Fernando Chacón, Report, in “The Chacón Economic Report of 1803,” ed. Marc Simmons, NMHR 60 (Jan. 1985): 87.

  41. For new border villages, genízaros, and Spanish plans, see Juan Agustín de Morfí, “Desórdenes que se advierten en el Nuevo México [1778],” AGN:HI 25, 47R–48V; Russell M. Magnaghi, “The Genízaro Experiment in Spanish New Mexico,” in Spain and the Plains: Myths and Realities of Spanish Exploration and Settlement on the Great Plains, ed. Ralph H. Vigil, Frances W. Kaye, and John R. Wunder (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1994), 119–20; Frances Levine, “Historical Settlement Patterns and Land-Use Practices on the Pecos Frontier,” in Investigations at Sites 48 and 77, Santa Rosa Lake, Guadalupe County, New Mexico: An Inquiry into the Nature of Archeological Reality, ed. Frances Levine and Joseph C. Winter (Albuquerque: Office of Con-

  412

  Notes to Pages 205–208

  tract Archeology, University of New Mexico, 1987), 556–75; John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540–1840 (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1979), 434–59; Charles L. Kenner, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican–Plains Indian Relations (1969; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 63–66; Richard L.

  Nostrand, The Hispano Homeland (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 71–97; and Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 195–98, 221. The eastward shift of New Mexico’s commercial focus contributed to the decline and fall of Pecos, which became complete in 1838 when the remaining inhabitants abandoned the village.

  42. For comanchero trade, see Alencaster to N. Salcedo, Jan. 4, 1806, PV, 441; José Manrique to N. Salcedo, Mar. 27, 1810, Manuel Baca to Manrique, June 1, 1813, Case against Josef Manuel González and Juan Domingo Cordero, June 8–Aug. 18, 1814, Alberto Maynez, Journal of Events, Apr. 1–Dec. 1, 1815, Pablo Lucero to Maynez, Aug. 16, 1815, and Examination of Manuel Rivera, Oct. 8, 1819, SANM II 17:61–63, 731–33, 992–1034, 18:29–32, 137–38, 19:987–90 (T-2308, 2492, 2542, 2585, 2619, 2850); Jacob Fowler, The Journal of Jacob Fowler, ed. Elliott Coues (1898; reprint, Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1965), 64; and Paul D. Friedman, Final Report of History and Oral History Studies of the Fort Carson Piñon Canyon Maneuver Area, Las Animas County, Colorado (Denver: Colorado State Office, Bureau of Land Management, 1985), 38.

  43. Burnet, “Letters,” 122.

  44. Chacón, Report, 87. New Mexico’s trade with other Mexican provinces, too, may have been heavily dependent on Comanche commerce, for buffalo robes and other animal skins constituted one of the colony’s chief exports. See Weber, Taos Trappers, 30–31.

  45. For the use of the Comanche language in New Mexico’s eastern border, see Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 180–81; and Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 439. For ciboleros, see H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard, trans., Three New Mexico Chronicles: The Exposición of Don Pedro Bautista Pino 1812; the Ojeada of Lic. Antonio Barreiro 1832; and the additions by Don José Agustín de Escudero, 1849 (Albuquerque: Quivira Society, 1942), 101–2; and Kenner, Comanchero Frontier, 100–107. Quote is from Chacón, Report, 84.

  46. Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, 67; Fowler, Journal, 72; and Curtis Marez, “Signifying Spain, Becoming Comanche, Making Mexicans: Indian Captivity and the History of Chicana/o Performance,” American Quarterly 53 (June 2001): 274–75.

  47. Fernando de la Concha, Instructions drawn up by Colonel Don Fernando de la Concha, former governor of the Province of New Mexico, so that his successor, the Lieutenant Colonel Don Fernando Chacón, may adapt what part of it that may seem to him suitable for the advantage, tranquility, and development of the aforesaid province, in “Notes and Documents: Advice on Governing New Mexico, 1794,” ed. and trans. Donald E. Worcester, NMHR 24 (July 1949): 243.

  48. Concha, Instructions, 243–44, 250 (emphasis mine). See also Joaquín Real del Alencaster’s report that the “residents of the Río Arriba and jurisdiction of La Cañada . . . continually, in spite of the restriction, live among them [Comanches], and are ones of worst conduct in all the province.” See Alencaster to N. Salcedo, Jan. 4, 1806, PV, 441.

  49. Proceedings into the Conduct of Vecinos of the Districts of Pecos and Cañada [1805], Maynez to the alcaldes, June 14, 1808, N. Salcedo to Maynez, Aug. 10, 1808, and Manrique to N. Salcedo, Mar. 27, 1810, SANM II 15:1043–98, 16:531, 592–93, 17:61–63 (T-1930, 2114, 2144, 2308); F
rances Levine, “Economic Perspectives on the Comanchero Trade,” in Farmers, Hunters, and Colonists: Interaction between the Southwest and the Southern Plains, ed. Katherine A. Spielmann (Tucson:

  Notes to Pages 208–212

  413

  University of Arizona Press, 1991), 158–62; and Frances Levine and Martha Doty Freeman, A Study of Documentary and Archaeological Evidence for Comanchero Activity in the Texas Panhandle (Austin: Texas Historical Commission, 1982), 6.

  50. Juan Lobato to Facundo Melgares, Sep. 22, 1818, and Juan de Dios Peña to Melgares, Nov. 4, 1818, SANM II 19:302–4, 433–34 (T-2750, 2768); and Melgares to Alexo Garcia Conde, Oct. 8, 1818, in “Documents Bearing upon the Northern Frontier of New Mexico, 1818–1819,” ed. Alfred B.

  Thomas, NMHR 4 (Apr. 1929): 156.

  51. Anonymous, Notes Concerning the Province of New Mexico Collected on My Mission to the West, in “Anonymous Description of New Mexico, 1818,” ed. Alfred B. Thomas, SHQ 33 (July 1929): 62.

  52. Manuel Durán to Melgares, Aug. 21, 1821, and Melgares to the alcaldes, Aug. 25, 1821, SANM II 20:735–36, 740–41 (T-3008, 3010); and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 201.

  53. Weber, Mexican Frontier, 243; Kenner, Comanchero Frontier, 72–73; Manuel Martínez to Manuel Armijo, Sep. 22, 1827, Mariano Martín to Armijo, Sep. 23, 1827, Juan José Arocha, José Francisco Ruíz, and José Cavallero to José Antonio Chávez, Aug. 31, 1828, Chavéz, Diary, Aug. 2, 1829, Chavéz to José Antonio Vizcarra, Jan. 15, 1830, and Manuel Antonio Baca to Chavéz, Aug.

  27, 1830, NMA 1827/1145, 1827/1175, 1828/943, 1829/463, 1830/99, 1830/636; Chavéz, Arocha, and Ruíz, Report, July 26, 1829, José J. Calvo, Circular, Oct. 16, 1831, and Chavéz to Vizcarra, Oct. 23, 1831, MANM 9:866–68, 13:483, 488; and Carroll and Haggard, Three New Mexico Chronicles, 77–78.

  54. José María Ronquillo, Report, Sep. 17, 1831, Chávez to Vizcarra, Oct. 23, 1831, Ronquillo to ayudante inspector, Oct. 31, 1832, and June 28, 1833, and Mariano Martínez to departmental assembly, June 27, 1845, MANM 13:559–79, 13:488, 14:914, 930–31, 38:740–45; and Charles Bent to William Medill, Nov. 10, 1846, in California and New Mexico: Message from the President of the United States Communicating Information Called For by a Resolution of the Senate (New York: Arno, 1976), 184–85. For the importance of Comanche trade for New Mexico’s subsistence economy during the Mexican period, see Antonio Narvona, “Report,” Apr. 8, 1827, in Carroll and Haggard, Three New Mexico Chronicles, 90. For Navajo raids, see Gregg, Commerce, 200. For the impact of Santa Fe trade in New Mexico, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 122–46; and Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 93–123. Quote is from jefe politico to comandante principal, Sep.

  23, 1831, cited in Kenner, Comanche Frontier, 80.

  55. For the Mexican nation-building project and the Chimayó Rebellion, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 242–72; Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 56–92, 171–96: “An Account of the Rebellion,” in Janet Lecompte, A Rebellion in Río Arriba (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 91–104; and James F. Brooks, “‘This Evil Extends Especially . . . to the Feminine Sex’: Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands,” Feminist Studies 22 (Summer 1996): 293–94.

  56. Albert Pike, Prose Sketches and Poems, ed. David J. Weber (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 37, 40–42; Gregg, Commerce, 257; and James William Abert, Expedition to the Southwest: An 1845 Reconnaissance of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma (1846; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 51, 71. Quote is from Gregg, Commerce, 436–37.

  57. Armijo to Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, Sep. 7, 1840, NMA 1840/140; Armijo to Juan Almonte, Mar. 3, 1841, MANM 27:1116–20; Isidro Vizcaya Canales, ed., La invasión de los indios bárbaros

  414

  Notes to Pages 212–217

  al noreste de Mexico en los años de 1840 y 1841 (Monterrey: Instituto Technológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, 1968), 257; and Weber, Mexican Frontier, 114–15. For an illuminating account of New Mexico’s economic dependence on Comanche trade, see Donaciano Vigil, Arms, Indians, and the Mismanagement of New Mexico, ed. and trans. David J. Weber (El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso, 1986), 5.

  58. List of Indians who Arrived in This Capital of Santa Fe, July 31, 1844, and Martínez to departmental assembly, June 27, 1845, MANM 37:651–52, 38:740–45; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 208. Also see Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 225n77.

  59. Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846–1912: A Territorial History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 42–55 (the quote “unconscious process of economic conquest” is from p. 47); Weber, Mexican Frontier, 190–95; and Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 81–83, 124–45, 171–96. Like Mexican Texas, Mexican New Mexico did eventually hand out massive land grants to foreign-born residents, but that process did not start until the early 1840s, and most of the lands remained unoccupied during the Mexican era. Quote “mongrel race” is from Telegraph and Texas Register, Mar. 23, 1842.

  60. For the Texas Revolution and the Republic of Texas in general, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 242–55; Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 146–70; and Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 247–67.

  61. For Houston’s scheme, see Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 122–23. Quote is from Sam Houston to the Comanche chiefs, Dec. 3, 1836, in The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863, ed. Amelia W.

  Williams and Eugene C. Barker, 8 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938–43), 7:5.

  62. T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People (New York: Da Capo, 1974), 283–92, 305–9; Telegraph and Texas Register, July 21, 1838; R. A. Irion to Houston, Mar. 4, 1838, and

  “Treaty between Texas and the Comanche Indians,” May 29, 1838, IPTS, 1:42–45, 50–52 (quote is from p. 44); and William Preston Johnston, The Life of Albert Sidney Johnson, Embracing His Services in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and Confederate States (New York: D. Appleton, 1878), 89.

  63. H. Allen Anderson, “The Delaware and Shawnee Indians and the Republic of Texas, 1820–1845,”

  SHQ 94 (Oct. 1990): 243–46; John H. Jenkins and Kenneth Kesselus, Edward Burleson, Texas Frontier Leader (Austin: Jenkins, 1990), 183, 211; Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 173–81; J. W. Benedict, “Diary of a Campaign against the Comanches,” SHQ 32 (Apr. 1929): 306; and Crisp, “Anglo-Texan Attitudes,” chs. 2, 3, and 4.

  64. H. W. Karnes to Albert Sidney Johnston, Jan. 10, 1840, and Johnston to W. S. Fisher, IPTS, 1:101, 105–6 (quotes are from pp. 101 and 105); and Journals of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas, Fifth Congress, Appendix (Austin: Gazette Office, 1841), 136–39.

  65. Donaly E. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid: Boldest Indian Attack of the Texas Republic (Austin: Eakin, 1987), 27–48; and Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 183–91.

  66. For the costs and the impact of Comanche war on Texas economy, see W. Eugene Hollon, The Southwest: Old and New (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 128. For Mexican agents in Comanchería and rumors of a Mexican–Plains Indian alliance, see H. W. Karnes to Johnston, Jan. 10, 1840, IPTS, 1:43; and Crisp, “Anglo-Texan Attitudes,” 116–17, 121. For peace sentiment among Texans, see, e.g., Johnston, Life, 88. For Houston’s policies, see Anna Muckleroy, “The Indian Policy of the Republic of Texas,” SHQ 25 (Jan. 1923): 200–2; Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 256–78, 284–85; and Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 195–211. For captive exchanges,

  Notes to Pages 217–221

  415

  see Michael L. Tate, “Comanche Captives: People between Two Worlds,” CO 72 (Fall 1994): 247–51.

  67. J. C. Eldredge to Houston, Dec. 8, 1843, and Mopechucope to Houston, Mar. 21, 1843, IPTS, 1:268–73, 2:6–9 (quote “from thence” is from p. 8). Quote “bones of their brothers” is from Pierce Mason Butler, “Report,” Apr. 29, 1843, cited in Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 203.

  68. “Minutes of Council at the Falls of the Brazos,” Oct. 7, 1844, IPTS, 2:103–14 (quotes are fro
m pp.

  109–11).

  69. “A Treaty Signed in Council at Tehuacana Creek,” Oct. 9, 1844, IPTS, 2:114–19. Texas officials later treated the trading house line as effective border line. See, e.g., Thomas G. Western to Neighbors, July 18, 1845, IPTS, 2:292–93.

  70. Western to Benjamin Sloat and L. H. Williams, Apr. 9, 1845, Western to Williams, Apr. 29, 1845, Western to A. Coleman, May 11, 1845, Western to Williams, May 12, 1845, Western to Sloat, May 12, 1845, “List of Invoices of Goods Sent to Trading House on Tehuacana Creek,” Feb. 23–Dec. 25, 1844, Jan. 29–May 16, 1845, “Minutes of a Council Held at Tehuacana Creek and Appointment of Daniel D. Gulp as Secretary,” Aug. 27, 1845, “Report of a Council with the Comanche Indians,”

  Nov. 23, 1845, and “Treaty with the Comanche Indians,” May 15, 1846, IPTS, 2:217, 225, 236–40, 242–48, 334–44, 410–12, 3:43–51; Fehrenbach, Comanches, 361; and Neighbors to Medill, Nov.

  18, 1847, 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rpt. 171, 9–10. Several Lipan bands did move in the late 1840s into Comanchería, where they fell under Comanche control. See Neighbors to Medill, Oct. 23, 1848, 30th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, 598.

  71. “Report of Standing Committee on Indian Affairs,” Oct. 12, 1837, IPTS, 1:24; and Anonymous, Texas in 1837, 110–11.

  72. For early raids and Apache captives, 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): 51; David B. Adams, “Embattled Borderland: Northern Nuevo León and the Indios Bárbaros, 1686–1870,” SHQ 95 (Oct. 1991): 211–13; N. Salcedo to Herrera, Dec. 18, 1811, BA 49:756–57; and Fernando de la Concha to Jacobo Ugarte y Loyola, Nov. 20, 1788, SANM II 12:108 (T-1024).