The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  6. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–1782 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 146–66, 211–15; and Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Chaves, Diary, in “Inside the Comanchería, 1785: The Diary of Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Chaves,” ed. Elizabeth A. H. John, trans. Adán Benavides, Jr., SHQ 88 (July 1994): 37–38, 49.

  7. Fenn, Pox Americana, 211; and Croix to Anza, Feb. 24, 1783, SANM II 11:567–58 (T-858).

  8. François Luis Hector, barón de Carondelet, “Military Report on Louisiana and West Florida,”

  Nov. 24, 1794, in Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France, and the United States, 1785–1807: Social, Economic, and Political Conditions of the Territory represented in the Louisiana Purchase, as portrayed in hitherto unpublished contemporary accounts by Dr. Paul Alliot and various Spanish, French, English, and American Officials, ed. and trans. James Alexander Robertson, 2 vols.

  (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1911), 1:297.

  9. For the genesis of Spain’s Indian policy, see Weber, Spanish Frontier, 227–30, 282–83.

  10. Ibid., 279–83.

  11. Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s World: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 660–

  66; and F. Todd Smith, The Wichita Indians: Traders of Texas and the Southern Plains (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 75–79.

  12. Vial and Chaves, Diary, 36–37 (quotes are from p. 37).

  13. Ibid., 37–38. Each Comanche ranchería had its own camp crier, tekwawapi̲. See Jean Luis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, ed. John C. Ewers, trans. Patricia Reading Leclercq (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1969), 44; and Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 215.

  14. Vial and Chaves, Diary, 38–39.

  15. Ibid., 40, 43.

  16. Ibid., 44.

  17. Ibid., 44–45.

  18. Ibid., 45.

  19. Ibid., 45–46.

  20. Cabello to Joseph Antonio Rengel, Nov. 25, 1785, BA 17:68–72. Quotes are from Vial and Chaves, Diary, 51; and “Treaty with the Eastern Comanches, October 1785, from the report of Pedro

  392

  Notes to Pages 117–122

  de Nava Commandant General of the Interior Provinces, Chihuahua, July 23, 1799,” in Border Comanches: Seven Spanish Colonial Documents, 1785–1819, ed. and trans. Marc Simmons (Santa Fe: Stagecoach, 1967), 21–22.

  21. Cabello to Rengel, Nov. 25 and Dec. 9, 1785, and Jan. 10 and Mar. 14, 1786, and Cabello to Ugarte, July 31, 1786, BA 17:73–74, 88–92, 181–87, 324–25, 609–11; Garrido, “Account,” 320; and John, Storms, 694–95. Quote is from Cabello, Responses, BA 17:420.

  22. Rengel to José de Gálvez, Dec. 31, 1785, Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Spain, Guadalajara, legajo 286, microfilm, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman; and Garrido, “Account,” 298–99.

  23. Vial and Chaves, Diary, 46; and Garrido, “Account,” 295.

  24. For Ecueracapa as Cota de Malla, see Garrido, “Account,” 295; and Ugarte to Cabello, Aug. 17, 1786, BA 17:707. The notion that Ecueracapa of the western Comanches was indeed Cota de Malla of the eastern Comanches is supported by Ecueracapa’s detailed knowledge of the eastern Comanche-Texas peace process. In 1787 Pedro Vial encountered Ecueracapa in eastern Comanchería, which also supports the idea that he was attached to both eastern and western Comanche divisions. See Garrido, “Account,” 320; and Pedro Vial, “Diary of Pedro Vial, Bexar to Santa Fe, October 4, 1786, to May 26, 1787,” PV, 280. On the other hand, Ugarte later reported that Ecueracapa and Cota de Malla may have been two different men after all. See Ugarte to Anza, Oct.

  5, 1786, FF, 341–42. For even more confusion regarding the identity of Camisa de Hierro/Cota de Malla, see Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 120–21, 124. Both Elizabeth A. H. John and Gerald Betty identify Ecueracapa as Camisa de Hierro. See John, Storms, 668–69; and Gerald Betty, Comanche Society: Before the Reservation (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 188–89. Quotes are from Garrido, “Account,” 295, 299.

  25. Quotes are from Garrido, “Account,” 296.

  26. Ibid., 297.

  27. Ibid., 297–98.

  28. Ibid., 300.

  29. Garrido, “Account,” and “The Spanish Comanche-Peace Treaty of 1786,” FF, 300–301, 329–32.

  My interpretation differs from the traditional interpretation of the 1786 treaty as merely an outcome of Spain’s Indian policy. For previous interpretations, see, e.g., Max L. Moorhead, Apache Frontier: Jacobo Ugarte and Spanish Indian Relations in Northern New Spain, 1769–1791 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 143–69; Charles L. Kenner, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican–Plains Indian Relations (1969; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 51–60; and John, Storms, 583–92, 668–74.

  30. Garrido, “Account,” 300–301. For winter hunting west of the Pecos River, see ibid., 319–20.

  31. Ibid., 301, 306.

  32. Ibid., 302. This is the first mention of medals in Spanish-Comanche diplomacy. Spanish officials did not start distributing medals to Indian leaders until the late eighteenth century, but the practice quickly became a standard part of Bourbon Indian policy. Specially minted medals were routinely handed out in New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana. See David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 186–89.

  33. For the importance of physical gestures and touching in Spanish-Indian diplomacy, see Juliana

  Notes to Pages 122–127

  393

  Barr, “A Diplomacy of Gender: Rituals of First Contact in the ‘Land of the Tejas,’” William and Mary Quarterly 61 (July 2004): 393–434.

  34. For the Pecos council, see Garrido, “Account,” 303–5 (quotes are from pp. 303–4).

  35. Ibid., 305–6, 318–19 (quotes are from p. 306).

  36. Ibid., 304, 306 (the quote “just rule” is from p. 304).

  37. Pedro Garrido y Duran, “Account received of what was done in the Province of New Mexico by Governor Don Juan Bautista de Anza to break the secret alliance which the Navajo nation maintained with the Gila Apaches, their separation, and allegiance of the former to our side having been assured,” FF, 345–48 (quote is from p. 348). See, too, James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2002), 114–15.

  38. Garrido, “Account,” 296–97; Concha to Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, conde de Revillagigedo II, May 6, 1793, in Border Comanches, ed. Simmons, 25–26; Fernando de la Concha, Instructions drawn up by Colonel Don Fernando de la Concha, former governor of the Province of New Mexico, so that his successor, the Lieutenant Colonel Don Fernando Chacón, may adapt what part of it that may seem to him suitable for the advantage, tranquility, and development of the aforesaid province, in “Notes and Documents: Advice on Governing New Mexico, 1794,” ed. and trans. Donald E. Worcester, NMHR 24 (July 1949): 239–41; and Charles Bent to William Medill, Nov. 10, 1846, in California and New Mexico: Message from the President of the United States Communicating Information Called For by a Resolution of the Senate (New York: Arno, 1976), 183.

  39. Bernardo de Gálvez, Instructions for Governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain 1786, trans.

  and ed. Donald E. Worcester (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1951), 43, 79; Weber, Spanish Frontier, 231–32; and Kenner, Comanchero Frontier, 79.

  40. Garrido, “Account,” 311–12.

  41. Ibid., 310–18 (quote is from pp. 317–18).

  42. Ibid., 313–14. In colonial America, Native and colonial peoples often adopted children into communities as i
nsurance of peace, but there is no evidence to suggest that Tahuchimpia’s adoption stemmed from this logic. For adoptions in the Southwest, see Juliana Barr, “From Captives to Slaves: Commodifying Indian Women in the Borderlands,” JAH 92 (June 2005): 23.

  43. Garrido, “Account,” and Ugarte to Anza, Oct. 5, 1786, FF, 319, 332–36, 340 (quotes are from pp. 335–36, 340).

  44. Anza to Ugarte, Nov. 18, 1786, and Ugarte to José de Gálvez, Jan. 4, 1787, AGN:PI 65:2, 66R,V, 64R–65V; and Moorhead, Apache Frontier, 156–59.

  45. For the San Carlos experiment, see Anza to Ugarte, Oct. 20, 1787, Ugarte to Concha, Jan. 22, 1788, and Concha to Ugarte, June 26, 1788, in “San Carlos: A Comanche Pueblo on the Arkansas River 1787: A Study in Comanche History and Spanish Indian Policy,” ed. and trans. Alfred B.

  Thomas, Colorado Magazine 6 (May 1929): 86–99, 90–91 (quote “affection for their possession”

  is from p. 88); and Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 160–62. The longer quote is from Ronald J.

  Benes, “Anza and Concha in New Mexico, 1787–1793: A Study in New Colonial Techniques,” in The Spanish Borderlands: A First Reader, ed. Oakah L. Jones (Los Angeles: Lorrin L. Morrison, 1974), 158–59.

  46. Concha to Ugarte, Nov. 10, 1787, June 26, 1788, and July 6, 1789, AGN:PI 65:1, 50R–52V, 65:5,

  394

  Notes to Pages 128–134

  1R–3R, 65:15, 2R,V; and John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540–1840 (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1979), 407–9. Quotes are from Gálvez, Instructions, 72; Fernando de Chacón, Report, in “The Chacón Report of 1803,” ed. and trans. Marc Simmons, NMHR 60 (Jan. 1985): 87; and Concha, Instructions, 251.

  47. Quote is from Concha, Instructions, 246. For ciboleros, see Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 218.

  48. For campaigns, see Garrido, “Account,” and “Tally Sheet,” FF, 307–9, 312, 316, 319–21, 324–25; Juan Bautista de Anza, Tarja, in Alfred Barnaby Thomas, “An Eighteenth-Century Comanche Document,” American Anthropologist 31 (Apr.–June 1929): 294–98; Moorhead, Apache Frontier, 164–67; and Ugarte to Manuel Antonio Flórez, Mar. 13, 1788, in Border Comanches, ed. Simmons, 23. For captives, see Ugarte to Concha, Jan. 23, 1788, SANM II 12:22–23 (T-993); and Barr,

  “From Captives to Slaves,” 45–46. For Apache capitulation, see Weber, Bárbaros, 193; and Moorhead, Apache Frontier, 200–69.

  49. Cabello to Ugarte, July 30, 1786, BA 17:607–8; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 110, 148–49.

  50. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 185–89; and Elizabeth A. H. John, “Nurturing the Peace: Spanish and Comanche Cooperation in the Early Nineteenth Century,” NMHR 59 (Oct. 1984): 345–52.

  51. For Lipans, see Anderson, Indian Southwest, 137–38. For Taovaya relocation, see Cabello to Rengel, Apr. 16, 1786, BA 17:383–84.

  52. Martínez Pacheco to Juan de Ugalde, Jan. 21, 1788, and Pedro de Nava to Manuel Muñoz, Jan.

  4, 1791, and Revillagigedo II to Muñoz, Jan. 5, 1791, BA 18:800–1, 21:92–93, 96; Fernando de la Concha, Ynforme, Apr. 20, 1791, AGN:PI 65:16, 2R,V; Nava to Concha, July 22, 1791, SANM II 12:604 (T-1135); F. Todd Smith, From Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 40–46; and Anderson, Indian Southwest, 139–41.

  53. Max L. Moorhead, The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 256–66; and Weber, Bárbaros, 193–94.

  54. For trails, see PV, 262–87, 316–68. For baptisms, see Kenner, Comanchero Frontier, 64. For missionization plans, see Richard E. Greenleaf, “The Nueva Vizcaya Frontier, 1787–89,” in Spanish Borderlands, ed. Jones, 151–53.

  55. Ortiz to Anza, May 20, 1786, FF, 324.

  56. For a fascinating discussion of Spain’s evolving Indian policy in the late eighteenth century and the Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la Ameríca, see Weber, Bárbaros, chs. 4 and 5.

  57. Gálvez, Instructions, 40–42.

  58. Ibid., 48–49.

  59. Garrido, “Account,” 302, 317.

  60. Gálvez, Instructions, 50; and Concha, Instructions, 240, 242. I have followed the slightly different translation of Concha’s advice that David J. Weber provides in Bárbaros, 191.

  61. Quote is from Nava to Concha, Dec. 31, 1793, in Border Comanches, ed. Simmons, 31. For the succession of western Comanche head chiefs, see Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 5, 143–

  45, 292; Carroll and Haggard, Three New Mexico Chronicles, 130; and Alejo García Cónde to Facundo Melgares, Nov. 9, 1818, SANM II 19:438–40 (T-2771). For Comanche chiefs pledging loyalty and vassalage to Spain, see, e.g., Garrido, “Account,” 306–7.

  62. Quotes are from Concha, Instructions, 238; and José Cortés, Views from the Apache Frontier:

  Notes to Pages 134–138

  395

  Report on the Northern Provinces of New Spain, ed. Elizabeth A. H. John, trans. John Wheat (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 82. Also see Carroll and Haggard, Three New Mexico Chronicles, 132, 135–36. For contemporary scholarly interpretations, see John, Storms, 735; and Jack August, “Balance-of-Power Diplomacy in New Mexico: Governor Fernando de la Concha and the Indian Policy of Conciliation,” NMHR 56 (Spring 1981): 141–60.

  63. For New Mexico’s revitalization, see Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 119–76. For political changes among nomadic societies, see William Irons, “Political Stratification among Pastoral Nomads,”

  in Pastoral Production and Society, ed. L’équipe écologie et anthropologie des sociétés pastorales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 362; and Thomas J. Barfield, “The Shadow Empires: Imperial State Formation along the Chinese-Nomad Frontier,” in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, ed. Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D’Altroy, Kathleen D. Morrison, and Carla M. Sinopoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34.

  64. For an illuminating ethnohistorical analysis that makes a clear distinction between Comanche leaders’ authority in external and internal affairs, see Morris W. Foster, Being Comanche: A Social History and an American Indian Community (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991), esp.

  54–69. Also see Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 125–26.

  65. For glimpses into the political roles and actions of Ecueracapa’s followers, see Fernando de Chacón to Nava, Nov. 18, 1797, SANM II 14:233 (T-1404); Alfred Barnaby Thomas, ed.,“Documents Bearing upon the Northern Frontier of New Mexico,” NMHR 4 (Apr. 1929): 156; and José Antonio Arce, Message to Chihuahua Legislature, Feb. 1, 1826, MANM 5:451. For Ugarte’s prediction, see Ugarte to Anza, Feb. 8, 1787, AGN:PI 65:2, 67V–68R.

  66. Joaquín Real Alencaster to Nemesio Salcedo, Nov. 20, 1805, SANM II 15:1028 (T-1925). This document has been translated in Border Comanches, ed. Simmons, 33–34. Somiquaso hardly became a pliant tool for Spanish imperialism. When a New Mexican interpreter named Alejandro Martín visited the newly elected Yamparika general’s ranchería in 1806, his party was mistreated and robbed, and Martín failed “in getting the general to make the Indians return what was stolen.”

  See Alencaster to N. Salcedo, Jan. 4, 1806, PV, 441.

  67. See, e.g., Nava to Concha, Dec. 31, 1793, and Alencaster to the commanding general of the Interior Provinces, Nov. 20, 1805, in Border Comanches, ed. Simmons, 31, 33; and Chacón to Nava, Nov. 18, 1797, SANM II 14:233 (T-1404).

  68. For fluid band membership, see Vial and Chaves, Diary, 49; David G. Burnet, “David G. Burnet’s Letters Describing the Comanche Indians with an Introduction by Ernest Wallace,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book 30 (1954): 124; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 125–26. For the centrality of the consensus principle in Comanche politics, see Vial and Chavez, Diary, 38–45; and Garrido, “Account,” 295. Also see Martha McCollough, Three Nations, One Place: A Comparative Ethnohistory of Social Change among the Comanches and Hasinais during Spain’s Colonial Era, 1689–1821 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 104.
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  69. Comanches’ political evolution in the late eighteenth century is a revealing example of what Marshal Sahlins has called “the structure of the conjucture”: it is a case of culture change that was triggered by external forces and yet indigenously orchestrated. See Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), viii.

  70. Rudolph C. Troike, “A Pawnee Visit to San Antonio in 1795,” Ethnohistory 11 (Autumn 1964): 383–87; Frank, From Settler to Citizen, 132–36; Ugarte to Anza, Oct. 5, 1786, FF, 342; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 148–49, 181–82.

  396

  Notes to Pages 138–146

  71. For the rhetoric and language of the alliance, see, e.g., Vial, “Diary, Béxar to Santa Fe, Oct. 4, 1786–May 26, 1787,” 277–78; and Cabello to Rengel, Nov. 25, 1785, and Testimony Given by Chief Cordero, Oct. 25, 1810, BA 17:72–73, 47:6–7.

  72. For ransoming, see, e.g., José Mares, “Itinerary and Diary of José Mares, Bexar to Santa Fe, January 18 to April 27, 1788,” PV, 307–8. For attacks, see Odie B. Faulk, The Last Years of Spanish Texas, 1778–1821 (London: Mouton, 1964), 70; and Robert S. Weddle, The San Sabá Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas (1964; reprint, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 190. For slave traffic, see Barr, “From Captives to Slaves,” 44–46. For Sabinal, see Concha to Ugarte, July 13, 1789, and Concha to Revillagigedo II, July 12, 1791, SANM II 12:289–91, 559–63 (T-1086), 1132; and Concha, Instructions, 240.

  73. Juan de Dios Peña, Diary, June 12–Aug. 8, 1790, and Chacón to Nava, Nov. 19, 1797, SANM II 12:262–65, 14:234 (T-1089, 1090, 1200, 1405). Quote is from Concha to Nava, Nov. 1, 1791, in Before Lewis and Clark, ed. Nasatir, 1:148.

  74. John, Storms, 754–55; Concha to Ugarte, Nov. 18. 1789, SANM II 12:211–12 (T-1064); and Concha to Revillagigedo II, May 6, 1793, in Border Comanches, ed. Simmons, 25–26 (quote “Regrettable are the consequences” is from p. 26). Quote “hate the Comanches” is from Concha, Instructions, 241.