![]() ![]() By the start of the 1800s they made up a population of around 30,000 people. They still followed a nomadic lifestyle, living in tepees, moving around, with no interest in agriculture. These bands had names like Root Eaters, Loud Talkers, Eat Everything, Buffalo Eaters, Timber People, Antelope Eaters, Steep Climbers, Honey Eaters, Bad Campers, or Hospitable Ones among others, each hinting at their general location or habits. They all shared the same language and culture and rarely fought each other. They never did organize themselves into a single cohesive tribe, but lived in a loose confederation of about a dozen or more bands. Being a strong influence in the region, the Comanche held control of territories of what are now central and northern Texas, eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma and Kansas, and parts of Colorado – called Comancheria. It’s somewhat strange to talk about an empire when it comes to Native North Americans, especially during the 18 th and 19 th centuries, but Rhodes Professor of American History Pekka Hämäläinen, among others, calls what the Comanche had just that: an empire. It’s a Spanish corruption of the Ute word “Kohmahts,” which translates to “those who are against us,” or simply “the enemy.” 8. While they called themselves Numunuu, meaning “the People,” the term Comanche means something completely different. Their infamy quickly grew among the other tribes, as it’s shown in their name. They even nearly drove the Apaches, who previously inhabited the area, into extinction. ![]() And with their newfound mobility and speed, they were able to drive back many of the other Native American tribes in the region and expand their hunting territories. Their Mustangs were the same: small, fast, and tough. The Comanche were shorter in stature than the other Indian tribesmen, but bulkier and with a firm grip, making them a sort of perfect jockey. The horse was to them what electricity and steam power was to the rest of the world. In less than one hundred years, from the 1680s to about 1750, they would go on and take much of the southern Great Plains, showing that the horse was exactly what was missing. With them they became expert hunters of bison and suddenly prospered like never before. The Comanche bred, trained, and captured Mustang horses from both the wild and from other people. No other tribe or nation in North America would surpass them in horsemanship, with many experts even going as far as saying that they were the best light cavalry the world had ever seen. And this was possible all because of the horse. Very few nations in the world, let alone in North America, have had such a meteoric rise to power like the Comanche. Left behind by the Spanish settlers to the south, the Comanche came across the horse around 1680, and with it they engraved their name into the history books as legendary mounted warriors. ![]() However, what else they discovered on these plains would change their destiny forever. But they also had to compete with the already existing tribes for these resources. Contrary to the barren mountain valleys from which they came, the Great Plains offered them a chance to hunt the many bison and antelopes found in abundance. ![]() They were the typical, small hunter-gatherer tribe of people, with basic culture, almost no social organization, and weak military power as shown by their constant migration up until that point. But up until this point there wasn’t anything special or out of the ordinary about this particular tribe of Native Americans. These Eastern Shoshone turned into the Comanche by the late 17 th century. Coming into contact and conflict with other tribes like the Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, and Cheyenne, they started moving further south, some as far as central Texas. Around 1500 AD, some of them emerged from the Rocky Mountains and onto the Great Plains, in what are now Idaho and Wyoming. Belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language family, the Comanche were once part of the larger Shoshone Native American tribe which originated from the western Great Basin. ![]()
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