The Comanches were perhaps the most famous riders of the entire west. They became the benchmark for all western riders, and no one could match the skill and agility of a Comanche rider. The Comanches were consistent in the adoption of horsemanship and horse culture. That is, they invented nothing, just lavishly improved upon it. The Comanche bridle was made of horsehair stitched about a horse’s jaw. The saddle was light, built from bison bone and hide, weighing in at about three pounds. The only major innovation, it wasn’t really an invention, was that of a loop slipped around the horse’s neck that allowed the rider to either hang over the horse’s side or under its neck, effectively dodging both arrows fired by other Native tribes and bullets fired by American settlers.

The horse was not an improvement in the family life of a Comanche warrior. Because so many hours were spent on horseback, many women went sterile and most suffered numerous miscarriages before giving birth to a healthy child. The constant jarring of the horse limited most women to about two births, three births was very uncommon, and four births would be today’s equivalent of having septuplets. These problems actually made the birth rate and population of Comanche bands decline in numbers, sometimes-great numbers. As with everything, the culture eventually adapted to this, and polygamy became the norm. The birthrate stabilized, and life went on.
Comanche actions and tribal organizations of power are centered around the individual. The best way to look at this is through a story given by a Comanche to the writer Hoebel in 1940: A young man asked his father for permission to go on a war party. His father said, “OK, take this pony and lead it from the mule. When you’re in enemy territory, ride the pony fast aways and then stop do this four times and he will never tire.” The story goes on to explain the adolescent’s heroisms on the battlefield. As he wins more and more skirmishes, fights, and small battles, the more important and respected he becomes. Objects are given as symbols to success both on and off the battlefield. In the case of the story above, respect may be shown symbolically in that the members of the tribe will not smoke before him. Ceremonial dances were also frequently used as a sign of victory and respect. Headdresses were probably the biggest symbol of how powerful an individual in the tribe had become. For instance, the otter-fur cap was the symbol of a raiding party; the leaders of these parties also used buffalo horns on the headdresses as a symbol of power.

Headdresses were not the only thing that could symbolize a warrior’s bravery or leadership. Spears decorated with crow feathers were awarded to the particularly brave warriors or members of the highest class in the tribe. The “patsukuwe kwitowi,” a crooked lance could also have been used to distinguish the high and mighty from anyone lower. A third item that symbolized a warrior’s bravery was the pianuﻞupais, a notched wooden club with a lash. This item was only worn by the best of the best, the bravest men on the battlefield.

The Comanche chief is a lot like America’s president today: “some obey him, others do not.” Some Euro Americas at the time that could not understand the idea of free will, and formed the following observation: Comanches were perverse savages, having no laws. Others said they were governed by the person “most noted for bravery intrepidity, and ferocity, but they obey him when they wish, without noting him.” In other words, the Comanche were governed by themselves, there were no real leaders. This can actually be suspect as the Comanches were generally nomadic, leaving the mountains band by band in the way that early humans slowly came out of the jungle and learned to walk upright.

However, despite the fact that Comanches were for the most part independent, there were still authoritarian figures. The authoritarian figure was probably decided by the most important factor of Comanche social standing: war honors. If you were a good warrior, that invoked authority upon the tribe or war party. With the respect of subordinates, you had command. With the command over tribe, band, or war party, you could exercise command and effectively become a leader.

The most successful chiefs derived their support from several aspects and resources. To try to base power on only one resource was ultimately the recipe for disaster. Obviously, the most important resource for a chief was his war record. In a war culture like the one the Comanche had, the war record was the most important aspect of power. However, since raiding, killing, and waging war on everyone was not the Comanche’s sole way of life, war was not the only resource in which a Comanche leader could define power. Kinsmen, for instance, were another important part of the Comanche social structure. If there were a blemish in a chief’s ancestral record, his leadership would probably be questioned by the band or tribe. Also, a factor of Comanche power was the distribution of gifts in ceremonial dances such as the Shakedown Dance. In order to give gifts that actually meant something, a chief had to have control over a vast amount of natural resources. These resources included: a vast control over land, buffalo, and horse; war campaigns, and from these war campaigns you obtained the resource of war booty; the control of trade in your domain; and the control of Euro American trade and Euro American political gifts in your domain. Through these many areas of resource domination, true power and respect could be given to the Comanche chief.

The Comanche people were not very religious. True, they used dances, but mostly in ceremony as a way to show victory on the battlefield or on a hunt. There was a general belief in a Supreme Creator, spirits, and an afterlife. They had only one real religious dance, which was a different form of the Sun Dance. The Sun Dance was traditionally a four to eight day dance that went on continuously, representing the birth, life, death, and eventual rebirth of everything in the universe. When the Ghost Dance movement swept across the Great Plains, the Comanches did not partake in this. Although the Comanche were not religious as compared to other tribes, they did have a creation myth that contained a Great Spirit, or Supreme Being:

One day the Great Spirit collected swirls of dust from the four directions in order to create the Comanche people. These people formed from the earth had the strength of mighty storms. Unfortunately, a shape-shifting demon was also created and began to torment the people. The Great Spirit cast the demon into a bottomless pit. To seek revenge the demon took refuge in the fangs and stingers of poisonous creatures and continues to harm people every chance it gets.

As I said at the beginning of the paper, the Comanches were literally the kings of the plains. They erected their tipis in open family circles along streams, offering no kind of security, protection, or defense. It was almost as if they seemed to flaunt their power over other plains tribes. With the exception of camp guard dogs, there were no scouts or any other form of warning for an imminent attack on the camp. The Comanches were so powerful on the plains that they even pushed entire tribes from their homes, including the Apache. The Comanche also, rather obviously, had problems with the European settlers that moved into their turf starting in the early 1700s.
These troubles with early settlers began when the Comanches found themselves in control of huge amounts of land. They had simply beaten everyone else off the land. This land, their land, was called the Comanchería. This land occupied much of what today is Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and the far northern reaches of Mexico itself. In the beginning, the Spanish were slowly extending a line of settlements north out of Mexico and into what is now New Mexico and Texas, on the western and central reaches of Comanche holdings. These Spaniards had only experienced the discontent that the Apache had felt, and had fought the Apache for several years prior to their first encounter with the Comanche. Remember, the Comanche had forced the Apache off the Plains, so the Comanche would give the Spaniards hell before Euro Americans could peacefully and finally settle on Comanche land. The far-reaching Comanches, who were known to lead raids deep into the interior of Mexico, scattered the early settlements, raided livestock and food, destroyed ranches and villages, killing all inhabitants. They went where they wanted to go, and took what they wanted to take. The Comanches wanted every European to know that this was their land, and whoever wanted to take would have to go through all hell to get it.

Europeans were not the only enemies of the Comanche. Before there were the Spaniards to raid, the Comanches made enemies of most of the tribes in the Great Plains and American Southwest, including the Crow, Pueblo, Arikara, Lakota, Kansa, Pawnee, Navaho, Apache, Ute, Wichita, Waco, Tonkawa, Osage, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw. They had few allies; in fact, most of their allies were former enemies who had made amends, like the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. The warfare that was waged upon the whites was also waged upon these tribes. In fact, the body count for whites taken by the Comanches during the 1700 and 1800s is grossly exaggerated in the fact that simply, the Comanches raided and killed many more other Native American settlements during this time period. The only real difference between the raids against the whites was that when the Comanches raided other Native tribes, not everyone was killed. Older children and women were kept as slaves, whereas the younger children were often kept and raised into the Comanche way of life.

For some, the way the Comanche treated American settlers after 1800 would seem atrocious, but one thing to remember that this was their land, fought for and won by the blood of young warriors, many of whom died and were buried and shallow graves on hillsides. During the westward expansion by the United States of America after the Revolutionary War, and more importantly, the Homestead Act, things really began to heat up for the Comanche and their allies. The fact was that during this time, the settlers that had started to move westward thought that this was THEIR land. The Comanches just would not have that, and wars began. Most of the bloodshed took place in the area of what now is western Texas, which most of the Comanchería occupied.
In Texas, both the United States and Mexico were against the Comanche people, mostly for one reason: mixed up stories. Mexico hated the Comanche; the Comanche had troubled their people for years by stealing livestock, killing and raiding rancheros, and just plain around being a nuisance to the Mexican people. The Mexicans were always trying to get the Comanche to surrender, and be “controlled.” Now, this was around the time that the United States was having trouble with Mexico and the annexation of Texas. In early 1836, many western newspapers reported that the Comanches had met with Mexican general Martín Perfecto de Cos. The articles said, “The military, the tools of the despot, have made a treaty with the Comanches and other tribes of savages and have engaged them to fight us.” Later, other newspapers also reported, “Comanches have declared against Texas and will second the operations of General Santa Anna.”

This caused an immediate call for the end of all Comanche’s lives. The problem was, was that the Comanche never said anything of the sort to any body in Mexico, so the rivalry between the two cultures flared incredibly. While Texas sat tense waiting for their world to end, the Comanche took advantage of the situation to raid several ranches and villages in Texas, which of course did nothing to help the overall standing of things. However, Sam Houston did try to help things out with the Comanche in Texas when he wrote to Congressman James Collinsworth, “If any plan can be devised by which the Comanche can be approached by headwaters of Brazos and they induced to fall down and range upon the Laredo route to Bexar and steal horses, it will be important.” Later he wrote, “Let the Comanches be approached” and later still “Comanche and Lipatlan can be enlisted.” However, this did nothing for the state of affairs at the time. Time and time again, treaties were developed that promised the Comanches, who were becoming beleaguered with the constant fighting and warfare, everything they wanted, and all they had to do was to conform with the United States of America, the Confederate States of America, or Mexico. Every time, cash fell short, and the promises set forth by the governments of the countries were broken, leaving the Comanches angrier and more resentful towards the white men that had taken their land.
Several of the promises ended in battle. The Texas Rangers were very well known for stalking Comanche parties across state and country lines. In one particular instance, the battle at Crooked Creek, they engaged the Comanches and defeated more than 83 of a particular party. Since the Comanches were still very nomadic at this time, this was a heavy blow dealt indeed to the welfare of that particular band or division of the main tribe.
There was a lull in the action on the Great Plains when the Civil flared up in the 1860’s. However, the respite was not long enough for the various tribes that constantly waged war against the United States to rebuild their numbers. The Colorado militia had swooped down and crushed Native American villages without regard to peace, war, or innocence. This was about the same time that Kit Carson effectively beat the Navajo into submission. With both of these, huge forces fresh of victories, they turned their attention to the Comanche, who were wreaking havoc along the Santa Fe Trail. During 1864, virtually every wagon train heading down this artery to the West from the East was attacked; some parties were even massacred at the hands of the Comanche. Carson was ordered to attack the “savages” that kept attacking and murdering the “innocent” American settlers.

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