The Comanche empire

For a hundred and fifty years the Comanche were the strongest power in southern North America. They halted Spanish expansion northward, forced Mexico to negotiate, and set the limits of how far Texas could grow.

Where they came from

The Comanche split from the Shoshone in the Wyoming mountains in the seventeenth century and moved south towards the plains. What made it possible was the horse, spreading north from Spanish New Mexico — especially after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the Spanish fled and left their herds.

Timeline

1680

the Pueblo Revolt releases Spanish horses northward

1700

the Comanche reach the southern plains

1706

the first Spanish mention of them

1750

Comanchería is established; the Apache are displaced

1786

Spain makes a treaty and pays for peace

1836

Texas secedes; the pressure rises

1840

Comanchería at its greatest extent

1849

cholera along the gold rush routes takes a third of the population

1874

the Red River War; the bison is nearly gone

1875

Quanah Parker surrenders

Not a way of life but a system

Depicting the Plains cultures as timeless is wrong at both ends. The horse culture is younger than Bach's music, and it was a political and economic system, not merely a way of living.

Comanchería functioned as a trading empire. It exacted tribute from neighbours, dealt in horses, hides and captives at scale, and set the terms for Spanish, Mexican and American neighbours alike. Spain paid for peace from 1786 — not from generosity but because the alternative cost more.

The horse as technology

A Comanche warrior could shoot arrows from beneath a horse at the gallop, with his body on the animal's far side as a shield. The horse gave range: raids of a thousand kilometres were routine, and a party could strike in Mexico and be home before anyone knew who it had been.

Wealth was counted in horses. Large families owned several hundred, and the grazing pressure that created is one explanation of why the system eventually could not hold.

Why it ended

Not primarily military defeat. Three things arrived together: cholera in 1849 took a third of the population; a prolonged drought from 1845 weakened both pasture and bison; and from 1870 the bison were shot out by commercial hide hunters with the railway behind them.

Once the food supply was gone, the reservation was the only place food existed. Quanah Parker, last leader of the last free band, surrendered in 1875 and became one of the most influential advocates for the Comanche in the reservation years.