![]() They were also the only tribe to fully incorporate horses into their style of warfare, which became a huge advantage. They were the only tribe to breed horses, giving them a resource advantage, as horses became currency on the Great Plains. While all of the Great Plains tribes eventually utilized horses, no tribe mastered the technology quite like the Comanche. This inadvertent technology transfer, from a dominant colonial power to a stone age civilization, would forever change the history of America’s Great Plains. Brought to North America by the Spanish Empire in the 16th century, the Comanche’s acquisition of the horse would kick start 250 years of brutal combat. Those power dynamics were about to change though, and the instrument of that change was the horse. They had been driven off more appealing lands by rival tribes, relegated to second tier territory, reflecting their lack of power. ![]() They lived primarily in present day Wyoming, and not by their own choice. Up until the mid 1600’s the Comanche weren’t particularly noteworthy. While this is admittedly a deviation from what I’ve been writing about recently, if you stick with me I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s impossible to understand the history of Texas without talking about the Comanche. I’ve spent the last few days in Texas and Oklahoma, and seen plenty of cool sites worth writing about, but this story keeps staring me in the face. The Comanche, the most influential Indian tribe in American history. The Comanche Homecoming Annual Dance takes place in mid-July in Walters, Oklahoma.Why did the Spanish Empire’s North American expansion stop near present day Mexico? Why did France not expand West from the Louisiana Territory? Why did Mexico invite American settlers into Texas? Why were the Great Plains the last part of America to be settled? All these questions have the same answer. At their peak, the Comanche language was the lingua franca of the Great Plains region.Decimated by European diseases, warfare, and encroachment by Europeans on Comanchería, most Comanche were forced to live on reservations in Indian Territory by the late 1870s.In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 members, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma. Thousands of captives from raids on Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers assimilated into Comanche society. They took captives from other tribes during warfare, using them as slaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe. They traded with neighboring Native American peoples, and Spanish, French, and American colonists and settlers.Īs European Americans encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes. Spanish colonists and later Mexicans called their historical territory Comanchería.ĭuring the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche practiced a nomadic horse culture and hunted, particularly bison. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.In the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche lived in most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and western Oklahoma. ![]() Originally, it was a Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. ![]() Wikipedia Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes ![]()
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