The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  C H A P T E R 4 . T H E E M P I R E O F T H E P L A I N S

  1. 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): 238; and H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard, trans., Three New Mexico Chronicles: The Exposición of Don Pedro Bautista Pino 1812; the Ojeada of Lic. Antonio Barreiro 1832; and the Additions by Don José Agustín de Escudero, 1849 (Albuquerque: Quivira Society, 1942), 129, 135.

  2. For the revival of the ranching industry, see Jack Jackson, Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721–1821 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), chs. 9, 10, and 11. For Louisiana, see David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 280–82, 290.

  3. Quote is from Jacobo Ugarte y Loyola to Juan Bautista de Anza, Oct. 5, 1786, FF, 339–40.

  4. For Nolan, see Maurine T. Wilson, “Philip Nolan and His Activities in Texas” (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1932); Dan L. Flores, ed., Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading Frontier, 1790–1810 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985), 10–15.

  For Nacogdoches, see Weber, Spanish Frontier, 222; and Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 134.

  5. For American traders on the southern plains and in Comanchería, see Flores, ed., Journal, 15–18; PV, 206–28; F. Todd Smith, The Wichita Indians: Traders of Texas and Southern Plains, 1540–1845

  (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 89–90; and J. Villasana Haggard, “The Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Texas, 1806–1821,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 28

  (Oct. 1945): 1084–89.

  Notes to Pages 147–150

  397

  6. For Texas trading frontier, see Flores, ed., Journal, 15–18. For Wichitas’ revival, see, e.g., José Cortés, Views from the Apache Frontier: Report on the Northern Provinces of New Spain, ed. Elizabeth A. H. John, trans. John Wheat (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 84–85. For Comanche-Wichita trade, see Pedro Vial, “Diary of Pedro Vial, Bexar to Santa Fe, October 4, 1786, to May 26, 1787,” and José Mares, “Journal of José Mares, Santa Fe to Bexar, July 31 to October 8, 1787,” PV, 277, 296–97.

  7. Reflecting the impact Wichitas’ trading policies in Comanchería, in 1807 a Comanche chief complained to the Americans in Natchitoches how the Wichitas sold them U.S. goods “at a very great profit, they would demand of them a Horse or a Mule for a Narrow Strip of Scarlet Cloth, or a Small Parcel of Vermillion.” See John Sibley, A Report from Natchitoches in 1807, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1922), 75. For the Osage situation, see Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 379–82; and Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 164–205.

  8. For the restored Comanche-Wichita alliance, see, e.g., Vial, “Diary,” 276–77. For the Natchitoches talks, see Sibley, Report, 49–75 (quote is from pp. 56–58).

  9. Sibley, Report, 61–62.

  10. John Sibley to Henry Dearborn, Nov. 20, 1808, in “Dr. John Sibley and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1803–1814,” ed. Julia Kathryn Garrett, SHQ 47 (July 1943): 50; and Sibley, Report, 74.

  11. For Comanche range, see Sibley, Report, 78. Quotes are from Sibley, Report, 55; and James Wilkinson to Dearborn, July 27, 1805, in The Territorial Papers of the U.S., vol. 13, The Territory of Louisiana-Missouri, 1803–1806, ed. Clarence E. Carter, 28 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1948), 169. Also see Wilkinson to Zebulon Montgomery Pike, June 24, 1806, in Zebulon Montgomery Pike, The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, ed. Donald Jackson, 2 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 1:285–86.

  12. For the Glass expedition, see Anthony Glass, “Life among the Indians, August–October, 1808,”

  in Journal, ed. Flores, 47–79. For rumors and reports of American commercial activities among the Comanches, see Bernardo Bonavía to Nícolas Benítez, Oct. 20, 1809, Testimony of Chief Cordero, Oct. 25, 1810, and Manuel María de Salcedo, Questioning of a Comanche Indian, 1810

  [n.d.], BA 43:215–16, 47:6–7, 701–2.

  13. Sibley to William Eustice, Dec. 31, 1811, in “Dr. John Sibley,” SHQ 49 (Apr. 1946): 403; 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): 138; and Smith, Wichita Indians, 112–13.

  14. Quotes are from W. A. Trimble to John C. Calhoun, Aug. 7, 1818, in Jedidiah Morse, Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs (New Haven: S. Converse, 1822), 259; National Intelligencer, Sep. 15, 1820; and Antonio Martínez to Joaquín de Arredondo, May 31, 1818, in The Letters of Antonio Martínez, The Last Spanish Governor of Texas, 1817–1822, ed. and trans.

  Virginia H. Taylor (Austin: Texas State Library, 1957), 136. Also see Bernardo Claudio de Luna to José Menchaca, Feb. 23, 1811, and Ignacio Pérez to Martínez, June 1, 1818, BA 48:107, 61:125–26.

  15. Bonavía to Pedro Maria de Allande, Aug. 13, 1816, SANM II 18:682–83 (T-2667); Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 254; and Nemesio Salcedo, Instrucción reservada de don Nemesio

  398

  Notes to Pages 150–153

  Salcedo y Salcedo, comandante general de Provincias Internas a su sucesor, ed. Isidro Vizcaya Canales (Chihuahua: Centro de Información del Estado de Chihuahua, 1990), 67. Quote is from Juan Antonio Padilla, Report on the Barbarous Indians of the Province of Texas, Dec. 27, 1819, in

  “Texas in 1820,” trans. Mattie Austin Hatcher, SHQ 23 (July 1919): 55.

  16. Stephen F. Austin to [Anastasio Bustamante?], May 10, 1830, in The Austin Papers, ed. Eugene C.

  Barker, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1924), 2:508; and F. Todd Smith, From Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 106.

  17. Anderson, Indian Southwest, 256–57; James Michael McReynolds, “Family Life in a Borderland Community: Nacogdoches, Texas, 1779–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Texas Tech University, 1978), 25–27; and Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 483–84.

  18. Quote is from Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, ed. John C. Ewers, trans. Patricia Reading Leclercq (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1969), 48. Also see David J.

  Weber, “American Westward Expansion and the Breakdown of Relations between Pobladores and

  ‘ Indios Bárbaros’ on Mexico’s Far Northern Frontier, 1821–1846,” NMHR 56 (July 1981): 225; and Dan Flores, Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 107–8.

  19. T. B. Wheelock, “Journal of Colonel Dodge’s Expedition from Fort Gibson to the Pawnee Pict Village,” Aug. 26, 1834, in American State Papers, Class 5, Military Affairs, 5:381; and Sam Houston to Henry Ellsworth, Dec. 1, 1832, and Feb. 13, 1833, in The Writings of Sam Houston, ed.

  Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, 8 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938–43), 1:269–70, 273. Quotes are from Berlandier, Indians, 103, 114, 119; and José Francisco Ruíz, Report on Indian Tribes of Texas in 1828, ed. John C. Ewers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 14.

  20. For Mexico’s relations with removed eastern Indian
s, see Alexander Cummings to R. Jones, Jan.

  18, 1826, in The Territorial Papers of the United States, vol. 20, The Territory of Arkansas, 1825–1829, ed. Clarence E. Carter and John P. Bloom (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1954), 184–85; Lucas de Palacio to comisario particular of Béxar, Apr. 30, 1827, BA 102:928–29; Dianna Everett, The Texas Cherokees: A People between Two Fires, 1819–1840 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 36–48, 61–67; and H. Allen Anderson, “The Delaware and Shawnee Indians and the Republic of Texas, 1820–1845,” SHQ 94 (Oct. 1990): 231–38.

  21. David LaVere, Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 63–72; and Elizabeth A. H. John, “Documentary Evidence and Historical Context Bearing upon Possible Explanations of a Brief, Specialized Settlement on the Eastern Plains of New Mexico,” in Investigations at Sites 48 and 77, Santa Rosa Lake, Guadalupe County, New Mexico: An Inquiry into the Nature of Archaeological Reality, ed.

  Frances Levine and Joseph C. Winter (Albuquerque: Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, 1987), 546.

  22. Wheelock, “Journal,” 375–81; “Treaty with Comanche and Witchetaw Indians,” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, ed. Charles J. Kappler, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1904), 2:435–39

  (quote is from p. 435); C. C. Rister, “Federal Experiment in Southern Plains Indian Relations, 1835–1845,” CO 14 (Dec. 1936): 451–54; and M. Stokes and M. Arbuckle, Journal of the Proceedings of M. Stokes, M. Arbuckle, and F. W. Armstrong, in “The Journal of the Proceedings at

  Notes to Pages 153–155

  399

  Our First Treaty with the Wild Indians, 1835,” ed. Grant Foreman, CO 14 (Dec. 1936): 406–16.

  The landmark diplomatic treaty of Camp Holmes has traditionally been seen as the result of U.S.

  intervention—as well as the fact that the U.S. Senate had dispatched five hundred dragoons under Colonel Henry Dodge to the southern plains to display American power to the Indians. This view ignores the compelling commercial interests that drew removed Indians and plains nomads together and reduces Native American diplomacy to a derivative of American initiatives.

  23. For an illuminating report on the economic conditions in Indian Territory in the early 1840s, see W. M. Armstrong to T. Heartley Crawford, Sep. 30, 1841, 27th Cong., 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 333–

  39.

  24. For exchange between Comanches and removed nations, see Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier, 1830–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1933); 172; Robert A. Irion to Sam Houston, Mar. 14, 1838, A. M. M. Upshaw to Mirabeau B. Lamar, June 18, 1840, and “Statement of J. G. Jowett in Relation to the Difficulties between the Indians of the United States, and the Citizens of Texas,” May 7, 1842, IPTS, 1:43, 114, 128; Arkansas State Gazette, May 4, 1840; M. Duval to William L. Marcy, May 31, 1847, LR:OIA, Seminole Agency, 801:147–48; Randolph B. Marcy, Adventure on Red River: Report on the Exploration of the Headwaters of the Red River by Captain Randolph B. Marcy and Captain G. B. McClellan, ed. Grant Foreman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937), 173; LaVere, Contrary Neighbors, 117, 122–26, 138–39; Victor Tixier, Tixier’s Travels on the Osage Prairies, ed. John Francis McDermott, trans. Albert J.

  Salvan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1940), 151; Grant Foreman, Pioneer Days in the Southwest (1926; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 226–27; Wilson T. Davidson, “A Comanche Prisoner in 1841,” SHQ 45 (Apr. 1942): 339; A. W. Whipple, Report of Explorations for a Railway Route, Near the Thirty-fifth Parallel of North Latitude, from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 1853–54, 33d Cong., 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 78, pt. 3, 16; Sarah Ann Horn, An Authentic and Thrilling Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Horn, and Her Two Children, with Mrs. Harris, by the Camanche Indians (1851; reprint, New York: Garland, 1977), 25–27; Rachel Plummer, “Narrative of the Capture and Subsequent Sufferings of Mrs. Rachel Plummer, Written by Herself,” in Held Captive by Indians: Selected Narratives, 1642–1836, ed. Richard VanDerBeets (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973), 360–62; 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), 307–

  8; and Susan Miller, Coacoochee’s Bones: A Seminole Saga (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003), 99, 112.

  25. Brad Agnew, Fort Gibson: Terminal on the Trail of Tears (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 144–48; Leonard McPhail, “The Diary of Assistant Surgeon Leonard McPhail on His Journey to the Southwest in 1835,” ed. Harold W. Jones, Jr., CO 18 (Sep. 1940): 288–89; and “Treaty with Comanche and Witchetaw Indians,” 435. Quotes are from Tixier, Travels, 150; and Stokes and Arbuckle, Journal, 413. For Osage loss of power, see also DuVal, Native Ground, 195–26.

  26. Tixier, Travels, 150–51.

  27. Arkansas Intelligencer, July 1845, 1; and W. Gilpin to R. Jones, Aug. 1, 1848, and John M. Richardson to Samuel M. Rutherford, Sep. 1, 1848, 30th Cong., 2d sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, 138, 541. Quote is from J. C. Eldredge to Houston, Dec. 8, 1843, IPTS, 1:259. For Santa Fe trade, see Thomas D.

  Hall, Social Change in the Southwest, 1350–1880 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989), 155.

  400

  Notes to Pages 156–159

  28. Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, ed. Max L. Moorhead (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 234, 250–51; Foreman, Pioneer Days, 157–58, 225–26; James Bowie to Henry Rueg, Aug. 3, 1835, in The Papers of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836, ed. John H. Jenkins, 10 vols. (Austin: Presidial, 1973), 1:301–2; and W. H. Clift, “Warren’s Trading Post,” CO 2 (June 1924): 129, 138–

  39.

  29. For hide trade in Comanchería, see, e.g., Telegraph and Texas Register, June 12, 1837; James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians (1898; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1979), 171–72; and Clift, “Warren’s Trading Post,” 134–35. For the commodification of the Great Plains bison in general, see Richard White, “Animals and Enterprise,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner, II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 243–49; and Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 93–122.

  30. Luis Deblanc to Francisco Luis Hector, barón de Carondelet, Feb. 22, 1796, and Carondelet to Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca y Branciforte, marqués de Branciforte, June 7, 1796, in Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, 1785–1804, ed. A. P. Nasatir, 2 vols.

  (1952; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 1:365, 2:439. Nasatir identifies the Ambaricas as Arikaras, but it is clear from the context that they were Yamparikas.

  31. For reports and rumors of American commercial activities in western Comanchería, see José Manrique to Nemesio Salcedo, Mar. 27 and 29, 1810, N. Salcedo to Manrique, May 2, 1810, Manrique to N. Salcedo, Oct. 6, 1810, Bonavía to Pedro Maria de Allande, Aug. 13, 1816, Juan Lobato to Melgares, Sep. 22, 1818, Juan de Dios Peña to Facundo Melgares, Nov. 4, 1818, and Examination of Manuel Rivera, Oct. 8, 1819, SANM II 17:61–63, 66, 90–92, 196–200, 18:682–83, 19:302–4, 433–34, 19:987–90 (T-2308, 2310, 2016, 2363, 2667, 2750, 2768, 2850); John Jamison to the secretary of war, Aug. 19, 1817, LR, Secretary of War, Main Series, RG 107, Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, M221, NAMP, 74:J129(10); Julius De Mun to William Clark, Nov. 25, 1817, American State Papers, Class 1, Foreign Relations, 4:211–13; Pérez to Martínez, June 1, 1818, BA 61:126; Anonymous, Notes Concerning the Province of New Mexico Collected on My Mission to the West, in “Anonymous Description of New Mexico, 1818,” ed. Alfred B. Thomas, SHQ 33 (July 1929): 58–59; and David J. Weber, Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest, 1540–1846

  (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 45–47. Quote is from Manuel Merino y Moreno, Report on the tribes of pagan Indi
ans who inhabit the borderlands of the Interior Provinces of the kingdom of New Spain . . . , in “Views from a Desk in Chihuahua: Manuel Merino’s Report on Apaches and Neighboring Nations, ca. 1804,” ed. Elizabeth A. H. John, trans. John Wheat, SHQ

  85 (Oct. 1991): 171.

  32. Alberto Maynez, Journal of Events, Apr. 1–Dec. 1, 1815, SANM II 18:29–32 (T-2585); Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 180–89; Concha, Instructions, 242; John, “Documentary Evidence,”

  543; and David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 185.

  33. Carroll and Haggard, Three New Mexico Chronicles, 135–36.

  34. Melgares to Alexo Garcia Conde, Oct. 8, 1818, in “Documents Bearing upon the Northern Frontier of New Mexico, 1818–1819,” ed. Alfred B. Thomas, NMHR 4 (Apr. 1929): 156. Quotes are from Anonymous, Notes, 58–59.

  35. Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (1846; reprint, New York: Citadel, 1966), 100–35, 220–56. For a different interpretation of James’s visit, see

  Notes to Pages 160–164

  401

  Charles L. Kenner, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican–Plains Indian Relations (1969; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 70.

  36. James, Three Years, 213–56 (quote is from pp. 227–28); and Arkansas State Gazette, Feb. 28, 1838, cited in Ralph A. Smith, “Mexican and Anglo-Saxon Traffic in Scalps, Slaves, and Livestock, 1835–

  1841,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book 36 (1960): 102–3. Also see Douglas C. Comer, Ritual Ground: Bent’s Old Fort, World Formation, and the Annexation of the Southwest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 92; José María Ronquillo to ayudante inspector, June 28, 1833, MANM 14:930; and Stephen G. Hyslop, Bound for Santa Fe: The Road to New Mexico and the American Conquest, 1806–1848 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 175.