Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado  

The Comanche Empire ruled West Texas for 140 years
November, 14, 2010

Dr. Pekka Hamalainen of the University of California at Santa Barbara published The Comanche Empire in 2008. It won the 2009 Bancroft Prize (and 13 other prizes awarded for works in history), and was saluted as "a landmark study that will make readers see the history of Southwestern America in an entirely new way" by Dr. David J. Weber, the foremost scholar in "borderlands history."

Comancheria (the Spanish name for the empire) was the strongest economic force in the region from Saltillo to Chihuahua to Santa Fe to  St. Louis to New Orleans  from 1720 to 1860. The fortunes of the Spanish settlers in much of north central Mexico, New Mexico and Texas  ebbed and flowed on the whims of the Comanches. After Texas became a republic and then a state, it continually suffered a serious economic drain brought on by the Comanches. Not until 1871 did the U.S. Army strike deep in the heart of Comancheria.

The Comanches supplied the United States with mules. Most mules used on the cotton plantations of the Deep South originated as stock stolen from Mexico. The famed Missouri mule originally was a Mexican mule delivered by Comanches through middlemen. In return the Comanches received arms and ammunition, blankets, iron cookware and other domestic supplies.  Comanches supplied New Mexico and many of the tribes in Indian Territory with buffalo meat as well, receiving in exchange corn and other agricultural products.

Comanches were superb adaptive imperialists, quickly learning the military, trading and hunting changes brought by the proliferation of horses. They moved out of the southern Rocky Mountains to the bottomlands of the upper Arkansas River on the edge of the Great Plains in the early 1700s. By the 1770s they were the most power force in the region outlined above. In the 1860s they moved the heart of their economic web to the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, as the settlement of Colorado expanded with the discovery of gold and silver in 1858. By 1875, the Comanche empire had crumbled.

S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon (published in 2009) was not written by a historian. Although quite readable and accurate on the flow of the events of Comanche history, its perspective was a reiteration of the attitudes that crystallized in the American mythos. Gwynne considers Comanches little more than gangsters. Hamalainen's book states: "Comancheria was the political and economic nucleus, a core surrounded by more or less peripheral societies and territories whose fortunes were linked to the Comanches through complex webs of cooperation, coercion, extortion, and dependence."  

Powered by violence, the Comanches  maintained "an extensive commercial network that controlled nearby border markets and long-distance trade, swung surrounding groups into their political orbit, and spread their language and culture across the midcontinent. the Comanches created a centralized multilevel political system, a flourishing market economy, and a graded social organization that was flexible enough to sustain and survive."

A reviewer on Amazon.com comments; "This work is an easy read and stuffed full of facts not normally found in books on the Comanches, or for that matter, on any Indian tribe. All too often, the Indians are simply the enemy and described from the viewpoint of the settler or Army officer, or if the work is coming from academia, it's a discourse on victimhood and how the Indians were mistreated, cheated, and faced with genocide. This book shows them to be real human beings, warts and all, aggressive and defensive, merciful and cruel. There is much to learn here, and if the reader re-assesses his opinions and attitudes towards American Indians as a result, it is all to the good."

Along with Thomas Kavanagh's Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective 1706-1875, readers can now have a deeper understanding of the Comanches, the "Lords of the Plains."  Every West Texan knows the name Quanah Parker, but few of us recognize the names of other important leaders in their history, where they ranged, how they lived, and how they helped shaped the course of history.  With the new push to create a "Quanah Parker Historical Trail" across our region and on into Oklahoma, our regional society is beginning to acknowledge and learn more about these important people in our history. We should all know the stories of Sanaco, Ten Bears, Mow-way, and of their people.