Comanche: The Mongols of America
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Hello, my friends, Ducker Yee here, and welcome back to another episode of the History of Everything podcast. And welcome back, I say here to a show by myself. I will apologize right now for a couple of things. One, I know this episode is late. At the time I'm recording this, it's actually Tuesday morning because I had to finish writing this thing last night, the same day that it was actually supposed to go out.

And the thing is, when we were planning on doing stuff this weekend, we were going to have everything done well ahead of time. But then we kind of had a bit of a medical emergency. And my wife is now incredibly sick and she is not able to actually do the show today. So as a result of that, I am going to be doing things here myself. But because of that, I figured, you know, hey, why not talk about something then that would normally happen?

heavily disturb her. Something that she probably would not feel as comfortable with talking about here anyway. So, you know, that's kind of where we are today. I thought we were going to be diving into something extra spicy that I have wanted to talk about for a while. And when I say that, I mean, ever since I actually started doing TikTok in the first place.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer brutal nature of what we are talking about and how graphic it gets, this is something that I couldn't really talk about before for multiple reasons, at least outside of the podcast. It could get taken down in the first place on YouTube or on TikTok for its graphicness. I really did struggle to figure out how to jump into the subject, which is about the Comanche Empire of the Americas, arguably the closest equivalent thing to the Mongols or the Huns within the Western Hemisphere.

And no, I'm not actually kidding with that comparison. As S.C. Gwynne, author of Empire of Summer and Moon, which is about the rise and fall of the Comanche, would say quite simply, quote, End quote.

Yeah, that's going to sound pretty harsh. But you see, the Comanche were exceptional warriors. They were renowned for their horsemanship and guerrilla tactics. And it's not just a matter of their fighting capability, like their actual raw ability to fight, but their ability and willingness to wield terror as a weapon to break the wills of their opponents before a fight had even begun.

They used their mobility and tactical skill to launch surprise attacks and raids, which often resulted in significant casualties and captives, whom oftentimes would meet terrible fates. And if it sounds like I'm being harsh here, no, I'm not.

I need to specify this right now when I go into this. And I know that some people are going to get offended or upset, but this is the brutal reality of history. And I hope that you would understand considering how many times I have talked about different groups of people in the past that I am not being discriminatory here.

There is this old archaic idea that persists to this day when talking about Native Americans, the idea of the, quote, noble savage, and the perceived innocence of natives in different regions around the world. Now, understanding this myth is crucial to understanding not only the Comanche, but pretty much any kind of group in history, especially when it comes to different natives of different areas.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the myth of the noble savage is this romanticized idea that depicts uncivilized people as naturally good and noble, uncorrupted by the evils of civilization. And this concept, oftentimes attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, suggests that humans in a state of nature are inherently virtuous, which contrasts with the perceived degeneracy of civilized society, which oftentimes will breed corruption and social problems.

Essentially, the idea is that the noble savage is depicted as living a simple life, a natural life, one that is free from greed, from envy, of any of the complexities, ills, or problems that are created by modern society and life.

And now this myth has been used in various ways throughout history, from justifying colonialism and racism back in the day to the more modern problem of romanticizing indigenous cultures, freeing them of any kind of fault or behavior. It can contribute to the misrepresentation of indigenous peoples and their relationship with themselves and their tribe, other tribes, or even the environment.

As these societies had their own internal complexities, political schemes, and if you want to say, quote, evils, in the exact same way that every single society on Earth has had since the beginning of time.

Have I gone on a rant about this for a while? Yes, I have. But it's relevant when addressing the history of Native Americans in the United States, because all too often in media, in online discourse and more, do we see people infantilizing and romanticizing human beings while not actually understanding them on a deeper level? Like the primary example that I can give of this, if I'm just going to pull one off the top of my head, and I am not being political here when I say that.

I'm actually quite proud to say that no one out there will ever actually know my political beliefs or understand things. I try to have an understanding of everything from all sides to know what specifically is going on. The primary example I can give here is Ben and Jerry's ice cream a few years ago, which called upon the United States to return the Black Hills to the Lakota tribe because the U.S. is built on stolen land.

Which then after that raises a very interesting question. Once that transfer takes place, will the Lakota then turn around and give the Black Hills back to the tribes that they took the land from in the first place as well? And then will that tribe give it to the tribe that they took it from? And so on and so forth.

Yeah, it's never a good idea to get history lessons from a hippie ice cream maker that sold out to a multinational conglomerate a long time ago. You can like their ice cream and I've had it. It is delicious. I would not advise that someone gets historical or political opinions from a company. Generally speaking, that is not a good idea, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you are on.

Look, I don't want to get anyone the wrong idea about what I'm saying here. I am not in any way calling the United States government and settlers innocent. Far from it, if you have ever heard some of my earlier episodes, there is no doubt that U.S. dealings with Native Americans were characterized by a multitude of things. Conquest, landfills,

Land greed, trickery, violations of treaties. Yeah, all that is absolutely true. And I could do so many episodes on times that the U.S. government and settlers and different entities were total assholes to different native groups.

In fact, you know what I say that now? Right now? That's my next episode. I'm calling it right now. The problem with Ben and Jerry's view is that it ignores any kind of complexity and relies on ahistorical condescending beliefs in the inherent innocence and peaceableness of Native Americans.

of which, mind you, there were estimated to have been over a thousand different tribes in the U.S., all with their own religious, social, and diplomatic beliefs and customs. That's like if back in the day we thought of Greece as a giant monolith, but then there were various obvious differences between the different city-states. Athens and Sparta completely

completely different entities, and you are not going to compare the democracy, and we will say to a degree, freer society within Athens to the much more militaristic and slave oppressive Spartans. That is a harsh reality that one needs to just understand.

Okay, I've ranted about this way too long at this point. All in all, everything I've said here is relevant from when we were talking about the Comanche, which is, for all intents and purposes, the Mongol Empire of America. So here then, we can explain their story, their rise and their fall. And I know that was a long intro, but it's absolutely necessary to explain.

Going into this then, my friends, without written history, things are somewhat difficult to say for certain, but anthropological evidence indicates that originally the Comanche were a mountain tribe, a branch of the northern Shoshones, which I am going to butcher pronunciation of different things in here. Keep in mind, I have read so many different stories. I have read so many different mythoses all going into the past, and I have not looked up the pronunciation for every single thing that I am going to be going into here. But...

That's something I'm going to skip past right now. Leave the angry comments for later. Anyway, they roamed the Great Basin region of the western United States as hunters and gatherers. Both cultural and linguistic similarities do actually confirm that the Comanches did have Shoshone origin. Not only that, but their language is derived from the Uto-Aztecan language

which are the family. And that is virtually identical to the language of the Northern Shones. And this is the same family, if you caught it from the name, that the Aztecs of Mexico belong to. So yeah, that is absolutely fasting right there. I love when you can go and look at different linguistic families and see how widely they are spread out. Yet you then understand that these families

different languages that are a part of the same family, were at one point likely either the same or similar tribe that were together at one point or in the same kind of area. Either way, though, the history of the Comanche does not really hit its big transition, its transformation into empire, until the introduction of a very simple thing that changes the life of the Great Plains natives forever. The horse.

Yes, the reintroduction of horses to North America began with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, notably Hernan Cortes, who landed in Mexico in 1519. The Spanish brought horses with them, which were crucial for their military campaigns and exploration, and were a vital source for conquest. I say reintroduction because there were horses in prehistoric America, but they were hunted to extinction.

Horses began to spread northward from Mexico, supplemented by later imports from British, French, and other European colonists along the east and west coast, and native peoples quickly acquired these horses through trade, capture, or breeding, and began to develop their own distinct horse cultures.

A significant event then that accelerated the spread of the horses to different Native American tribes, especially the Comanche, was the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which we can talk about varying different native revolts as another episode. That actually probably would be a fascinating one. But during this revolt, the Pueblo peoples would go and expel the Spanish from New Mexico for around a dozen years, which left behind thousands of horses.

These horses were then acquired by various Native American tribes, including the Comanche. And I will say this, the acquisition of horses completely and utterly transformed Comanche society from a foot-based, semi-nomadic lifestyle to a fully nomadic, horse-centric war culture.

Horses became essential for hunting, warfare, transportation, anything and everything you could think of, they relied upon the horse, allowing the Comanche to cover vast distances and dominate the southern plains. When I say that, you need to understand just how rapid a transition this was. As late as 1725, Comanches were being described as using large dogs, not horses, to carry their bison hide campaign tents. They moved on foot.

Within 50 years, full-blown Mongol horse lords leading campaigns of terror across the plains to drive out or exterminate every other tribe and raiding European settlers to acquire more slaves and goods became the norm. Like, that is just what the Comanche became, all within the span of like two generations.

After their arrival on the Great Plains, the Comanche began a southern migration that was encouraged by a combination of factors. By moving south, they did have greater access to the horses of the southwest, and the warm climate as well as abundant buffalo were additional incentives. They could move south, they could rely on the buffalo, they had food.

At that point, trade relations with French traders, which allowed them to get firearms. They were able to barter with the Wichita Indians on the Red River. And this was something that was beneficial for them. They were able to develop their power at this time.

Of course, pressure from more powerful and better armed tribes to the northeast, especially the Blackfoot and Crow Indians, would also encourage them to move south. But a vast area of the South Plains, including what is now a majority of north, central, and west Texas, soon became Comanche Country, or as the name would be called, Comancheria.

Only after their arrival on the southern plains did the tribe come to be known as the Comanches, a name which is derived from the word mentitia, meaning enemy, or literally, and I'm not kidding with this, anyone who wants to fight me all the time. Like, that is the literal name. I am...

I can't begin to make this up. It just sounds absolutely insane, but it showcases at that point as to just how much of a warrior culture this was, or at least how rapidly that was developing. The Spaniards in New Mexico who came to contact with Comanches in the 18th century gave the tribe the name by which they're known today.

Later on to both to the Spanish as well as the Americans. Although the tribe did become known as the Comanche, they called themselves the Yamuna or the people, which is actually something that pretty much I'm not going to say every tribe around the United States did this, but you can bet if you want to look at the origin of a name of a tribe, the likelihood that their name in their native language just means people or the people is

It's more likely than you think. Of course, my friends, when I go and talk about all this, I am most certainly simplifying things, and I do apologize. I need to stress that the Comanche, even though we refer to them as a tribe, they did not arrive on the southern plains as a unified body, but rather in numerous different family groups or bands. And this is important to specify here right now, especially for later. The band structure of Comanche society was not a rigid thing.

Bands would come together, they would break apart, all depending upon the needs and goals of their members. If that was something that was needed for a raid and they needed a larger amount of forces, they could come together, but as soon as that raid was complete, they could fall apart. It just entirely depended.

As many as 13 different Comanche bands were identified during this time period, and more than likely there were others, they just never were really identified. And among those 13, there were five major bands that were arguably the biggest, with like the Pereteca, the Naconi, you had the Cotosotecas, you had the Yamtericas, and more.

The Comanche remained a nomadic people throughout their free existence. Buffalo, which was pretty much everything for them. It was their food, their clothing, their shelter, every single thing you could imagine, this would sustain them. Their predominantly meat-based diet would be supplemented with wild roots, nuts, fruits, or produce that could be obtained by trade with neighboring agricultural tribes or settlers.

And from that, they would be able to barter their buffalo products, their horses, captives that they had obtained and were then holding for ransom in order to get manufactured items and foodstuffs. This is just the norm of how they would operate. But among all these things, it was the horse that most clearly defined the Comanche way of life. Every single thing about the Comanche was dependent upon the horse because the horse allowed them to get buffalo.

Getting buffalo allowed them to get food, and from this, it sustained them in their ability to fight and raid to get more horses, more weapons, more everything that they could then use to get more buffalo, and then trade. It's a massive, repeating cycle. It gave them the mobility to follow the buffalo herds, the advantage of hunting and conducting warfare from horseback that many tribes didn't adopt.

Horses also became a measure of Comanche wealth, similar to what you'd have with other pastoral societies that look at cattle, and horses became an extremely valuable trade commodity.

For horsemanship, the Comanche had no equal among the varying tribes. Like if you could describe a culture as skilled in horses, it was the Comanche, even in comparison to other plains people. Children had to learn to ride at a very early age, and both men and women would develop exceptional skills for horseback riding.

By the early 18th century, Comanche bands had migrated into what is now northern Texas. In 1706, Spanish officials in New Mexico would document the presence of numerous Comanches on the northeastern frontier of the province. And as the Comanches moved south, they came into conflict with tribes that already lived on the southern plains, especially the Apache, who had dominated the region before the arrival of the Comanches.

Now, it's funny when we go and talk about this stuff with history, because many people think about, oh, yes, Native Americans, they would fight and compete with one another for resources just in the same way as other peoples did. Yes, but there were some groups that were exceptionally more brutal. And this is why we mentioned things with the Comanche. The Comanche didn't just defeat the Apache and claim some hunting ground. They tried to actively exterminate them.

In their efforts to flee from the Comanche, the Apache were forced south and the two became mortal enemies. The first documented evidence of Comanches in Texas would occur in 1743 when a small band, which likely at that point was a scouting party, appeared at the Spanish settlement of San Antonio looking for the Apaches. Now, there was no fighting that took place at that time, but it was very obvious that the Comanche believed that the Spanish and the Apache were allies. This should have been a warning sign.

But 15 years would pass before the Spanish would learn just how strong the Comanche were in the region. In 1758, a force of around 2,000 Comanches and allied tribes would attack a Spanish mission built for the Apaches on the San Saba River near present Menard. Santa Cruz de San Saba mission was sacked and burned, and eight of its inhabitants, including two priests, were killed.

A year later, a Spanish punitive expedition led by Colonel Diego Ortiz Paria would meet a decisive defeat at the hands of the Comanche and their allies in a day-long battle on the Red River near the present Spanish fort.

The Spanish could do nothing in order to stop them. They just didn't have the power or presence. And so by the mid 18th century, the armed and mounted Comanches were such a formidable force that Spanish officials were forced to just try and pursue peace with them. They would not defeat them.

What this did was create a peace policy, something that would utilize trade and gifts to promote friendship and authorize military force only to punish specific acts of aggression. And that's all. The Spanish could not launch efforts to try and invade and pacify different regions. They could only launch minor punitive measures. And that's, again, only for specific individuals, not against the overall tribe.

The only thing they could really do was try and buy away a degree of peace. And this is the same way that things would remain for the remainder of Spanish rule in Texas.

In fact, the first success of the new Spanish policy came in 1762, when Fray José Calahora Sáñez negotiated a treaty with Comanche, who agreed not to make war on missionized Apaches. That being Apaches who had basically given up their tribal lifestyle for the most part and become Christians and part of the overall colony.

Of course, continued fighting between the Apache and Comanche would occur, which made it impossible for this promise to be kept. And ultimately, it led the Spanish officials to advocate a Spanish Comanche alliance that would aim at exterminating the Apache just to create a degree of peace.

That policy would officially be implemented in 1772 and eventually would result in the Comanche chief, Povea, signing a treaty in 1772 at San Antonio, which would commit his band to peace with the Spaniards. Awesome, right? Yeah, no, here's the problem. Remember that thing that I mentioned here earlier about we're not talking about an overall tribe, we're talking about bands?

This was the band of this particular joven chief. Other bands would continue to raid Spanish settlements. It was very hard to negotiate any kind of real peace settlement when there was no overall structure that could allow for peace, because any small little war party could be a completely separate entity that you would have to establish a separate treaty with.

Comanche attacks would escalate in the early 1780s, and Spanish officials outright were afraid that the entire province of Texas was just going to be lost. To avoid that, the governor of Texas, Domingo Cabello Herroles, was instructed to negotiate peace with them.

He dispatched Pedro Vial and Francisco Javier y Chavez to Comancheria with gifts and proposals for peace. And this mission was largely successful, with the emissaries returning to San Antonio with three major Comanche chiefs who were authorized by their people to make peace. The result was a Spanish Comanche Treaty of 1785-1780.

A document which the Comanches honored, we will say here, with over time only minor violations until the end of the century. So a period of around 15 years, which admittedly, when we talk about varying different conflicts among native groups and settlers and governments, that is actually quite a good amount of time.

Unfortunately, afterwards, as the Spanish began to weaken in power as the 1700s wore on, they weren't able to offer nearly as much in the way of gifts, horses, trade goods, etc. And Comanche aggression, in the wake of not being bought out for peace, became common again.

Comanche would raid Spanish settlements for horses to trade with now-arriving Anglo-American traders that were entering Texas from the United States. And those Americans would then give the Comanches more goods than the Spanish were capable of. Arms and ammunition, they would provide a thriving market for horses, pretty much anything you could think of you could get from the Americans.

Anyway, this brings us to the next big transition, Mexico getting its independence from Spain, which it does so in 1821. But the thing is, even with Mexico getting its independence from Spain, it doesn't mean that the new officials were able to really do anything. The changing government doesn't really have much of an impact with the Comanches.

Though Mexican authorities in Texas would continue the Spanish policy of trying to get peace with the Comanches, the very unstable government in Mexico City would oftentimes fail to provide the resources that were necessary to accomplish that job, whether that was ammunition or guns to be able to defend settlers, or whether that was just providing goods that were necessary to pay off the Comanches. As a result, the Comanches would continue to dominate much of Texas, whether that was through trade or warfare or more.

What is interesting to note is that in the late 1820s, several prominent chiefs of the Comanche would establish a tenuous peace with Mexican officials, possibly because of pressure that were coming from other native tribes such as the Osage and other hostile tribes to their north, which was a constant problem as the Comanche would raid and pillage quite literally everyone around them.

But when two of the major peace chiefs died in the early 1830s, relations with Mexico would deteriorate once again. And as a result, Mexico would try to play other native tribes off of each other in order to get them, such as the Shawnee, the Cherokee and more to fight Comanche for them. The Mexican government during this time would then, of course, make a fatal error, which would definitely backfire on them in the future.

They opened up the gates for immigration from the east. The United States had expanded west of the Mississippi River for only a few years prior, thanks to the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. And now they shared a border with Mexico. It's at this point that the border is just opened up wide and Anglo immigrants are brought in as Mexico needs to repopulate the region.

Now, the thing is, the Mexican intention for this was for the new American settlers to act as a buffer to help defend against the Comanche raiding. They weren't just going to be accepting random Americans either. There was rules that were put into place that like, oh, when you are coming in, you are not members of the United States anymore. You are becoming Mexican citizens. You are swearing to become Roman Catholic. You are adopting Mexican cultural norms.

That is not what happened. The American immigrants were mostly southerners that didn't really care about ranching or Catholicism. They did not move into the interior of Texas as Mexican officials had hoped. Instead, they would buy land along the Gulf Coast where they would create massive cotton plantations and also small scale farming and would even try to bring in slaves, which was something that Mexico had outlawed, outlawed, creating further tensions.

The effect was that already in 1830, English speakers significantly outnumbered Spanish speakers in Texas, but Spanish speakers that were in the interior and had ranches were still bearing more of the attacks of the Comanche. And so as the American population grew in Texas, relations between those individuals and the Comanche began to deteriorate.

The friendlier relations that had developed in earlier years through trade very quickly fell apart when the newly arrived Texans began to survey land that the Comanche considered their traditional hunting ground, and soon the two groups became enemies. I mean, they already would have been fighting before, but this is where things really stepped up. And it is here then, my friends, that I need to talk about the military and terror tactics of the Comanche so you understand what I am talking about and just how effective they were.

Again, I have been speaking in very general terms over the course of this episode, but here is where we get in some of the specifics and you understand just the sheer level of brutality and terror that could be inflicted. As historian T.R. Fehrenbach, author of Comanche, The History of a People, would tell, there was a specific story of a raid on an early settler family called the Parkers, who with other families had set up a stockade known as Fort Parker.

In 1836, 100 mounted Comanche warriors would appear on the outside of the fort's walls, with one of them waving a white flag to trick the Parkers to come out. As the story goes, Benjamin Parker would go outside to parlay with them, and the people inside the fort saw the riders suddenly surround him and drive their lances into him. Then, with loud whoops, mounted warriors would dash towards the gate. Silas Parker was cut down before he could bar the entry, and horsemen would pour inside of the walls.

Survivors of the massacre would describe the slaughter. Quote, The two Frosts, father and son, died in front of the women. Elder John Parker, his wife, Granny, and others tried to flee. The warriors scattered and rode them down. John Parker was pinned to the ground where he was scalped and his genitals were ripped off. Then he was killed. Granny Parker was stripped and fixed to the earth with a lance driven through her flesh while several warriors raped her as she screamed.

Silas Parker's wife Lucy fled through the gate with her four small children, but the Comanche overtook them near the river. They threw her and the four children over their horses to take them as captives.

This is what you need to understand. That wasn't something that was outside of the norm. That was the norm. Anyone above a certain age was killed in a Comanche raid. They would just slaughter them. Women oftentimes could be killed as well, but they could also be taken back in order to be turned into wives or concubines.

The other thing is that children above a certain age or below a certain age were also killed. If they were within a set range where they were young enough to be taught and adopt Comanche ways, but not so young that they were a burden to the tribe, they could be taken. Anyone above and below that age would be slaughtered.

This is how the Comanche operated, and they were so incredibly brutal and cruel in the way that they performed things that just about every kind of raid by Native Americans in this region, even if it was not the Comanche, were blamed on them.

Texans, Mexicans, other Native American tribes all lived in fear of the Comanche, especially the full moon, which is known as the Comanche moon, because that was a time that the Comanche would come in the night for cattle, horses, and captives where you could see better at night. When you had been captured by the Comanche, they were infamous for inventing new types of torture to protect

scar people. And when I say that, it wasn't even typically the men who did this. It was women. The Comanche women were oftentimes in charge of torture. And they would do...

burying different things, roasting captive American and Mexican soldiers to death over open fires. Others were castrated and scalped while they were still alive. The most agonizing tortures would include burying captives up to their chin, cutting off their eyelids, and then facing them to the sun so that their eyes would be burned by the sun as they slowly starved to death. Again,

This is part of the accounts that would describe actions, and perhaps some are exaggerated, but this comes from American, Mexican, and other native sources that describe their acts. Contemporary accounts would also describe them staking out male captives spread eagle and naked over a red ant bed. Sometimes this was done after excising the victim's private parts, putting them in his mouth, and then sewing his lips together so that he couldn't scream.

One band was even famous for sewing up captives in untanned leather and then leaving them out in the sun. The green rawhide would then slowly shrink with time, squeezing the prisoners to death.

Fehrenbach would quote a Spanish account that has a Comanche torturing a Tonkawa Indian captive by burning his hands and feet until the nerves in them were destroyed, amputating those extremities, and then starting the fire treatment all over again on fresh wounds. Yeah, yeah, that's just how it would go. In order to stop them from screaming, the Tonkawas would have their tongues torn out before being scalped.

Here's the thing that you need to understand. There is a decent chance that some of these things are blown out of proportion, that they are exaggerations or can even be made up. But the sheer number of stories and sources that say this from varying different entities, again, from the Spanish, from the Mexicans, from the Spanish, from the Spanish, from the

from the Americans, from the very native tribes around, all showcased the same thing, that the Comanche were utterly brutal in their efforts to drive out their enemies, to exterminate them, and to torture those that remained in order to encourage others to leave. In the 1840s, the Comanche were at the peak of their power. They had brought Mexico practically to their knees and were the undisputed masters of the southern plains of North America.

But the big thing is, despite being the dominant tribal entity, this didn't really ever follow through with major military and economic consolidation. There was no political class overall that was created. There was no consolidation.

Had they made some kind of effort to create a proper state, they could have lasted for longer, potentially, yes, but also this effort may have been pointless in the first place. Because considering everything that had happened, as well as what Mexican and American policy was like, neither were going to be accepting of any kind of independent indigenous state.

This also, at the same time, was a complete contradiction to the Comanche way of life. They were true nomads, and they would not submit to any kind of central power, even if they came together as a unifying body. This body would likely split apart, just as so many other bands in previous years have. Because that's just it.

The main social unit with Comanche society was the band, or the venceria as the Spanish would call them. This was a group of anywhere between 1 to 2 or maybe even upwards of 300 people living and traveling together. The limiting factor for any Comanche group, as with any pastoralist group all over the world, no matter who it is you're thinking of, was access to pasture for their horses.

A 100-person band could easily have over a thousand horses, and those horses require a large area of pasture in order to be able to sustain themselves. A Comanche band as it was would only stay a few days in a single spot before moving on and searching for new grazing lands.

In theory, all Comanche adult males were equal, but in practice, the band was led by a chieftain who was a wealthy older male, and this is important to specify because wealth among the Comanche, as was in all pastoral societies, was determined by the amount of livestock they had, which for many cultures around the world was cattle, but for the Comanche, that was horses.

Horses were the primary capital of the entire tribe. It was essential for their economy, for hunting, for warfare, for everything. A raiding expedition usually required three to four horses per warrior. One dedicated warhorse, two to three traveling horses, perhaps a horse from that would be used to carry loot. Others would be a spare that would allow one to ride faster for longer periods of time.

Young warriors, though, did not have the required number of horses, and instead what they had to do is they had to rent horses from older men in exchange for part of the plunder. Young men were dependent upon raiding, since that was the only way they had to accumulate horses and wealth of their own.

Horses were not only required for raiding and hunting, these were used to pay the bride price that was necessary in order to get married. And a married warrior with a household of his own needed more horses to transport his wife and children. You see the problem? There was an inherent size limit for groups, but you always needed more of everything to continue to grow. And once it reaches a certain point, the group would break apart into separate entities, which in turn would start the whole cycle all over again.

Few people could really imagine it at the time, but eventually, after the Mexican-American War, this was something that was going to be pretty much the end of the Comanche. I say the end. It was more like it spelled the end for Comanche and their society. Whether it was their people, whether it was their economy, everything about the Comanche was dependent upon the Bisons.

And with the victory of the Americans in the Mexican-American War and the opening up of even more land to settlers, this is something that would create many more problems for the natives. But also at the same time, something that people don't normally recognize is that even then the growth of the Comanche created their own issue as well.

Comanche would kill countless numbers of bison for sustenance, yes, but they would also kill many more in order to be able to trade. The meat, the hides, everything. Even worse, they would go and invite their allies, whether other native tribes, New Mexicans, more, to hunt bison on their land as a kind of diplomatic gesture, which in turn would open up even more hunting, reducing numbers.

The bottom line is that this was a massive number of bison that were killed each year, with the number growing in line with Comanche expansion. The more the Comanche grew, the more land that they took, the more the tribe expanded, the more hunting took place. And the Comanche were expanding upon the back of a resource that seemed infinite, but it really wasn't. It was all bound to come to a halt sooner or later.

And I know that you're probably looking at me right now and going, wait, Stack, are you blaming the natives for the death of the bison? That's not accurate. And no, I am not. I am pointing out how it was a dependency that was going to come back and bite them. Because ultimately, the halt of this growth ended up being very sudden.

What is important to note is that over the course of the 1830s heading into the early 1840s, this was unusually wet for the North American plains, which led to above average grass growth. And because of that, pasture land was rich for bison. This was a very fertile time, which meant that the bison grew in large numbers. And because of that, the Comanche could hunt even more in order to be able to grow themselves further and also continue their lifestyle.

but it was dependent upon these fertile times continuing.

In 1845, a drought period started that would last for 20 years. The first few years of the drought would only somewhat affect Comanche, partly because this coincided with the Mexican-American War, but also because the Comanche would continue to hunt bison as before, with the not insignificant difference that the bison population could not recover like before. Yes, they were still going to hunt, but it's not like they were going to take out millions by themselves.

and suddenly the bison were going to be gone. No, but their numbers were going to go down. And before the end of the 1840s, many Comanche were facing starvation. Epidemics of cholera and smallpox would reduce population numbers, but available bison resources were even more reduced. The problem then is that with bison hunting being the mainstay of their economy, this was not something that could obviously last. And so the Comanche had to turn to their other mainstay, raiding.

But there were more problems then. Despite being on the winning side of the Mexican-American War, the Comanche found themselves cheated of their victory because Article 11 of the Peace Treaty demanded that the Americans shut the border to all cross-border raiding. There had been accusations in previous years that the Americans would purposely lead the Comanche to raid the Mexicans in order to further weaken them.

The American border guard was never able to fully seal the border, but they did make life more difficult to continue raiding, thus reducing effectiveness. And so increasingly, Comanche turned to raid north of the border in Texas. But here they met a very aggressive and expansionist and powerful force, something that was completely different than what they had seen in their clashes in the 1810s, 20s and 30s.

Texas had grown rapidly over the course of the years that it was annexed into the United States. The population had quadrupled between 1847 and 1860, and the much smaller, much weaker Comanche bands couldn't really do anything against this kind of force that was increasingly larger in number and significantly better organized as well as better equipped, with modern weaponry coming into the play. U.S. Army forts began to pop up all over the region.

At the same time this was happening, the Comanche were pressed hard from the north. U.S. policy would aspire to place Indians in reservations, and many tribes in the central plains had accepted this, willing or not. Some of these reservations were placed on land that the Comanche regarded as theirs, which of course meant war. And since the reservation Indians were given food and weapons from government Indian agents, the odds were not in favor of the Comanche.

Of course, the American Civil War would create a brief break for the Comanche. After all, the U.S. Army was going to be occupied in other areas, which allowed them to come back again.

But the real crackdown came after the Civil War, and this is where something very interesting happens. Texas was one of the Confederate states, and it was a hostile state to the United States, of course, in the Civil War, meaning that all Texas militias in the aftermath of it were disarmed.

And so with the U.S. Army busy with occupation duties in the main population centers, that meant that the Comanche, for a time, had basically free reign of the Texas frontier again. It was just like the old days. For a few years in the second half of the 1860s, northwest Texas was Comanche territory again, and the Raiders had a free-for-all.

But this unrestricted raiding was not going to last forever, and pressure was mounting to get the Comanche into reservations, as most other indigenous people had been forced onto by this time. A Comanche reservation was organized in Indian Territory, the future state of what is today Oklahoma, and the Comanche, being nomads at heart, refused to do this. They would visit in the winter to collect their government provisions, but most of the year they just continued to roam the prairie in the same way that they already had. The major death blow then

does come from the buffalo. It comes from the bison in 1873. This was the year when commercial buffalo hunters would first appear in the southern plains. Advancements in hide processing had made buffalo hides attractive for industrial processing, and new railroads would connect the plains to the industrial center of the east.

The result was a buffalo rush in which professional hunters did their utmost to kill as many buffaloes as possible, oftentimes being encouraged by the government as a way to drive the natives out, though hunters would usually only take the skin and leave the rest of the carcass to rot, thus massively wasting resources. The Comanche were horrified by this and they made many attempts to fight back.

At the Second Battle of the Adobe Walls, at least 700 Comanche warriors attacked a camp of 28 buffalo hunters. And that sounds completely lopsided, but here's where you have to remember something. Despite their overwhelming numerical superiority, they just couldn't defeat these modern hunters. The hunters were equipped with long-range rifles that could shoot at the attacking Comanche from a much greater distance than the attackers could with their bows or older muskets that had been traded for decades prior.

There were further clashes between Comanche bands and army patrols, but with time, the Comanche just could not break through, and the bison almost became extinct. The loss of the bison was such a massive blow for their economy that everything fell apart in rapid order. Despite the introduction of cattle after the 1840s, Comanche society was still dependent upon its nomad nature and bison hunting.

More than just the economy, the bison was significant for their social norms, for religion, for everything, for society. A Comanche without bison was pretty much nothing at all. And so the end of the bison was the end of the Plains Indians. By 1875, the last band of free Roman Comanche would go back to the reservation in Indian territory. Without the bison, they faced starvation on the plains and government handouts in the reservation became the only means by which they could sustain themselves.

All remnants of the Comanche nation were thus resigned to the reservation. And that was it. There had been tens of thousands of Comanche in the late 18th century, but in the census of 1890, there was only 1,598 left. Over 90% of them were gone. Now, of course, I say that the Comanche still exists today, and this is the thing that we will leave you here on. The reservation period came to an end in 1901, when the Comanche reservation was broken up into allotments.

According to the provisions of the Jerome Agreement, each man, woman, and child would receive 160 acres of land with additional acreage set aside for church, agency, and school use. Now, Comanche leaders would protest the allotment on multiple grounds, but the federal government upheld the agreement. Lands not allotted to the Indians were thrown open to the public, and whites soon outnumbered Indians on former reservation territories.

The post-allotment period was a difficult time for the Comanche, who with time would continue to lose land. Many were forced to leave the old reservation to seek employment elsewhere, and those who remained were divided in their beliefs. World War II would accelerate this breakup as members of the tribe would leave to find jobs in the defense industry or join the military outright. And in the years post-war, the Comanche population would continue to disperse and spread across the country.

Today, the Comanche still exists. In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has around 17,000 members that are enrolled, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdiction areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma. But that was the rapid rise and fall of the Comanche Empire. Comanchería.

With that, my friends, we're going to be ending things here today. Thank you all very much for watching, or I say watching, listening. I'm saying this like it's the end of a YouTube video since I'm by myself. I will see you all here next time. Let me know what other kinds of things we should dive into next. Let me know if there's other kinds of tribes or other stories that you'd like to hear. And besides that, my friends, I will see you all here next time. Goodbye.

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