Comanche
The Comanche, or Nʉmʉnʉʉ, are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. 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. Originally, it was a Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language. 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. Spanish colonists and later Mexicans called their historical territory Comanchería.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche practiced a nomadic horse culture and hunted, particularly bison. They traded with neighboring Native American peoples, and Spanish, French, and American colonists and settlers.
As European Americans encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on the settlers and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes. They took with them captives from other tribes during warfare, using them as slaves, selling them to the Spanish and to Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe. Thousands of captives from raids on Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers were assimilated into Comanche society. At their peak, the Comanche language was the lingua franca of the Great Plains region.
Diseases, destruction of the buffalo herds, and territory loss forced most Comanches onto reservations in Indian Territory by the late 1870s.
In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 enrolled citizens, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma. The Comanche Homecoming Annual Dance takes place in mid-July in Walters, Oklahoma.
Name
The Comanche's autonym is nʉmʉnʉʉ, meaning 'the human beings' or 'the people'. The earliest known use of the term "Comanche" dates to 1706, when the Comanche were reported by Spanish officials to be preparing to attack far-outlying Pueblo settlements in southern Colorado. The Spanish adopted the Ute name for the people: kɨmantsi, spelling it Comanche in accord with the Spanish pronunciation. Before 1740, French explorers from the east sometimes used the name Padouca for the Comanche since it was already used for the Plains Apache and the French were not aware of the change of tribe in the region in the early 18th century.Government
The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is located in Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Greer, Jackson, Kiowa, Tillman, and Harmon Counties. Their current tribal chairman is Forrest Tahdooahnippah. The tribe requires enrolled citizens to have at least one-eighth blood quantum level.In 2025, their administration was:
- Chairman: Forrest Tahdooahnippah
- Vice Chair: Diana Gail Doyebi-Sovo
- Secretary-Treasurer: Benny Tahmahkera, Jr.
- Committee Member: Jordan Fox
- Committee Member: Darrell Kosechequetah
- Committee Member: Alice Kassanavoid
- Committee Member: Hazel Tahsequah
Economic development
- Comanche Nation Casino in Lawton, Oklahoma
- Red River Casino in Devol, Oklahoma
- Comanche Spur Casino in Elgin, Oklahoma
- Comanche Star Casino in Walters, Oklahoma.
- Comanche Cache Casino in Cache, Oklahoma
- Comanche Nation Travel Plaza Casino in Devol, Oklahoma
Cultural institutions
In 2002, the tribe founded the Comanche Nation College, a two-year tribal college in Lawton. It closed in 2017 because of problems with accreditation and funding.
Every year on the third Saturday in April, the Annual General Council is held in which the annual budget is approved, new leadership is nominated for election, and tribal members are able to present resolutions to be voted on. Each July, Comanches gather from across the United States to celebrate their heritage and culture in Walters at the annual Comanche Homecoming powwow. The Comanche Nation Fair takes place every September. The Comanche Little Ponies host two annual dances—one over New Year's Eve and one in May.
History
Formation
The Proto-Comanche movement to the Plains was part of the larger phenomenon known as the "Shoshonean Expansion" in which that language family spread across the Great Basin and across the mountains into Wyoming. The Kotsoteka were probably among the first. Other groups followed. Contact with the Shoshones of Wyoming was maintained until the 1830s when it was broken by the advancing Cheyennes and Arapahoes.After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, various Plains peoples acquired horses, but it was probably some time before they were very numerous. As late as 1725, Comanches were described as using large dogs rather than horses to carry their bison-hide "campaign tents".
Horses became a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture. They were of such strategic importance that some scholars suggested that the Comanche broke away from the Shoshone and moved south to search for additional sources of horses among the settlers of New Spain to the south. The Comanche have the longest documented existence as horse-mounted Plains peoples; they had horses when the Cheyenne still lived in earth lodges.
The Comanche supplied horses and mules to all comers. As early as 1795, Comanche were selling horses to Anglo-American traders. and by the mid-19th century, Comanche-supplied horses were flowing into St. Louis via other Indian middlemen.
Their original migration took them to the southern Great Plains, into a sweep of territory extending from the Arkansas River to central Texas. The earliest references to them in the Spanish records date from 1706, when reports reached Santa Fe that Utes and Comanches were about to attack. In the Comanche advance, the Apaches were driven off the Plains. By the end of the 18th century, the struggle between Comanche and Apache had assumed legendary proportions; in 1784, in recounting the history of the southern Plains, Texas Governor Domingo Cabello y Robles recorded that some 60 years earlier, the Apache had been routed from the Southern Plains in a nine-day battle at La Gran Sierra del Fierro, the "Great Mountain of Iron", somewhere northwest of Texas. but no other record, documentary or legendary, of such a fight has been found.
They were formidable warriors, who developed strategies for using traditional weapons for fighting on horseback. Warfare was a major part of Comanche life. Their raids into Mexico traditionally took place during the full moon, when they could see to ride at night. This led to the term "Comanche Moon", during which the Comanche raided for horses, captives, and weapons. Comanche raids, especially in the 1840s, reached hundreds of miles deep into Mexico, devastating northern parts of the country.
Divisions
Kavanagh has defined four levels of social-political integration in traditional Comanche society before reservations:- Patrilineal and patrilocal nuclear family
- Extended family group
- Residential local group or "band", comprised one or more nʉmʉnahkahni, one of which formed its core. The band was the primary social unit of the Comanche. A typical band might number several hundred people. It was a family group, centered around a group of men, all of whom were relatives, sons, brothers, or cousins. Since marriage with a known relative was forbidden, wives came from another group, and sisters left to join their husbands. The central man in that group was their grandfather, father, or uncle. He was called paraivo, "chief". After his death, one of the other men took his place; if none was available, the band members might drift apart to other groups, where they might have relatives and/or establish new relations by marrying an existing member. No separate term was used for or status of peace chief or war chief; any man leading a war party was a war chief.
- Division.
Before the 1750s, the Spanish identified three Comanche Naciones : Hʉpenʉʉ, Yaparʉhka, and Kʉhtsʉtʉhka.
After the Mescalero Apache, Jicarilla Apache, and Lipan Apache had been largely displaced from the Southern Plains by the Comanche and allied tribes in the 1780s, the Spanish began to divide the now-dominant Comanche into two geographical groups, which only partially corresponded to the former three naciones. The Kʉhtsʉtʉhka , which had moved southeast in the 1750s and 1760s to the Southern Plains in Texas, were called Cuchanec Orientales or Eastern Comanche, while those Kʉhtsʉtʉhka who remained in the northwest and west, together with Hʉpenʉʉ , which had moved southward to the North Canadian River, were called Cuchanec Occidentales or Western Comanche. The Western Comanche lived in the region of the upper Arkansas, Canadian, and Red Rivers, and the Llano Estacado. The Eastern Comanche lived on the Edwards Plateau and the Texas plains of the upper Brazos and Colorado Rivers, and east to the Cross Timbers.
They were probably the ancestors of the Penatʉka Nʉʉ.
Over time, these divisions were altered in various ways, primarily due to changes in political resources. As noted above, the Kʉhtsʉtʉhka were probably the first proto-Comanche group to separate from the Eastern Shoshone.
The name Hʉpenʉʉ vanished from history in the early 19th century, probably merging into the other divisions; they are likely the forerunners of the Nokoni Nʉʉ, Kwaarʉ Nʉʉ, and Hʉpenʉʉ local group of the Penatʉka Nʉʉ. Due to pressure by southward-moving Kiowa and Plains Apache raiders, many Yaparʉhka moved southeast, joining the Eastern Comanche and becoming known as the Tahnahwah. Many Kiowa and Plains Apache moved to northern Comancheria and became later closely associated with the Yaparʉhka.
In the mid-19th century, other powerful divisions arose, such as the Nokoni Nʉʉ , and the Kwaarʉ Nʉʉ . The latter originally were some local groups of the Kʉhtsʉtʉhka from the Cimarron River Valley and descendants of some Hʉpenʉʉ, who had pulled both southwards.
The northernmost Comanche division was the Yaparʉhka. As the last band to move onto the Plains, they retained much of their Eastern Shoshone tradition.
The power and success of the Comanche attracted bands of neighboring peoples, who joined them and became part of Comanche society; an Arapaho group became known as Saria Tʉhka band, an Eastern Shoshone group as Pohoi band, and a Plains Apache group as the Tasipenanʉʉ band.
The Texans and Americans divided the Comanche into five, large, dominant bands – the Yaparʉhka, Kʉhtsʉtʉhka, Nokoni Nʉʉ, Penatʉka Nʉʉ, and Kwaarʉ Nʉʉ ', which in turn were divided by geographical terms into first three regional groupings: Northern Comanche, Middle Comanche, Southern Comanche, Eastern Comanche, and later Western Comanche. These terms, though, generally do not correspond to the native language terms.
File:DodgeComancheEmissary.png|thumb|Comanches meeting the U.S. dragoons near the Wichita Mountains in 1834, by George Catlin
The Northern Comanche label encompassed the Yaparʉhka between the Arkansas River and Canadian River and the prominent and powerful Kʉhtsʉtʉhka, who roamed the High Plains of Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles between the Red and Canadian Rivers; the famous Palo Duro Canyon offered their horse herds and them protection from strong winter storms and enemies, because the two bands dominated and ranged in the northern Comancheria.
The Middle Comanche label encompassed the aggressive Nokoni Nʉʉ between the headwaters of the Red River and the Colorado River in the south and the Western Cross Timbers in the east; their preferred ranges were on the Brazos River headwaters and its tributaries, and the Pease River offered protection from storms and enemies. Two smaller bands shared the same tribal areas: the Tahnahwah and Tanimʉʉ . All three bands together were known as Middle Comanche because they lived "in the middle" of the Comancheria.
The Southern Comanche label encompassed the Penatʉka Nʉʉ , the southernmost, largest, and best-known band among Whites as they lived near the first Spanish and Texan settlements; their tribal areas extended from the upper reaches of the rivers in central Texas and Colorado River southward, including much of the Edwards Plateau, and eastward to the Western Cross Timbers; because they dominated the southern Comancheria, they were called Southern Comanche.
The Western Comanche label encompassed the Kwaarʉ Nʉʉ , who is the last to develop as an independent band in the 19th century. They lived on the hot, low-shadow desert plateaus of Llano Estacado in eastern New Mexico, and found shelter in Tule Canyon and Palo Duro Canyon in northwestern Texas. They were the only band that never signed a contract with the Texans or Americans, and they were the last to give up the resistance. Because of their relative isolation from the other bands on the westernmost edge of the Comancheria, they were called the Western Comanche.
Much confusion has occurred and continues in the presentation of Comanche group names. Groups on all levels of organization, families, nʉmʉnahkahni, bands, and divisions, were given names, but many band lists do not distinguish these levels. In addition, alternate names and nicknames could exist. The spelling differences between Spanish and English add to the confusion.