The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  406

  Notes to Pages 184–186

  3. For gift distributions, see Miguel Díaz de Luna to Manuel María de Salcedo, Dec. 1, 1810, BA 47:419–33. For “lust for lucre,” see Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 213. For a differing interpretation of gifting in Comanche-Spanish relations in Texas, see Raúl Ramos, “Finding the Balance: Béxar in the Mexican/Indian Relations,” in Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.–

  Mexico Borderlands History, ed. Samuel Truett and Elliott Young (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 47–50.

  4. For attacks, see Odie B. Faulk, “The Comanche Invasion of Texas, 1743–1836,” Great Plains Journal 9 (Fall 1969): 33–34; and N. Salcedo to Elguézabal, Mar. 28, 1803, Elguézabal, Report, Aug. 31, 1803, and N. Salcedo to Elguézabal, Oct. 11, 1803, BA 31:155, 535–36, 712–13. For gifts, accommodation, and peaceful interactions, see N. Salcedo to Elguézabal, Aug. 14 and Sep. 10, 1804, Cordero to N. Salcedo, Sep. 11 and Oct. 5, 1805, Cordero to N. Salcedo, Mar. 12, 1806, N. Salcedo to Cordero, June 3, 1806, Cordero to N. Salcedo, June 20 and 27, 1806, Conference with Comanche Chief Cordero, July 31, 1810, and Bernardo Bonavía to N. Salcedo, Aug. 8, 1810, BA 32:606–7, 656–67, 33:584, 703–4, 34:419–22, 720–22, 821, 46:233–35, 312–13; Thomas W.

  Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 186; J. Villasana Haggard, “The Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Texas, 1806–1821,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 28 (Oct. 1945): 1085; and Francisco Amangual, “Diary of Francisco Amangual from San Antonio to Santa Fe, March 30–May 19, 1808,”

  PV, 467–74. For a panoramic and uniquely comparative analysis of Spanish tribute payments to independent Indians, see David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 190–92.

  5. For the lack of presents in Texas, see M. Salcedo to N. Salcedo, Sep. 18, 1811, and Simón de Herrera to N. Salcedo, Sep. 29, 1811, BA 49:202–5, 245–46. For attempts to increase gifts and maintain peace, see Herrera to N. Salcedo, Aug. 7 and 21, 1811, and N. Salcedo to Herrera, Sep.

  17, 1811, BA 48:989–90, 49:73–74, 195–96. For attacks, see N. Salcedo to Bonavía, Aug. 27, 1810, Bernardo Bonavía, Manuel María de Salcedo, and Símon de Herrera, War Council, Oct. 1810

  [n.d.], José Miguel Arcos to commanders of San Marcos, Colorado, and Brazos, Aug. 4, 1811, Herrera to N. Salcedo, Aug. 13, 1811, Herrera to Joaquín de Arredondo, Aug. 16, 1811, and N. Salcedo to Herrera, Dec. 18, 1811, BA 46:511–15, 47:122–27, 48:64–66, 49:47–48, 53–54, 756–57. For the El Sordo incident, see Proceedings Concerning the Capture of Comanche Chief Sordo and His Followers, Dec. 15, 1811, BA 729–47. For Sargento-Cordero, see John Jamison to the secretary of war, June 10, 1817, LR, Secretary of War, Main Series, RG 107, Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, M221, NAMP, 74:J186(10); and Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (1846; reprint, New York: Citadel, 1966), 136.

  6. For the San Marcos raid, see M. Salcedo to N. Salcedo, Aug. 5, 1812, BA 52:151–55. For troops, see Nemesio Salcedo, Instrucción reservada de don Nemesio Salcedo y Salcedo, Comandante General de Provincias Internas a su sucesor, ed. Isidro Vizcaya Canales (Chihuahua: Centro de Información del Estado de Chihuahua), 17. Quotes are 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; and Faulk, “Comanche Invasion,” 36.

  7. For the 1812–13 revolt and its aftermath, see David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 9–10; and Salcedo, Instrucción, 37. For Comanche raids, see Benito de Armiñán to Arredondo, Mar.

  Notes to Pages 186–189

  407

  22, 1814, Ignacio Pérez to Armiñán, Apr. 15, 1814, Armiñán to Arredondo, Apr. 16 and Aug. 1 and 15, 1814, and Proceedings Concerning the Investigation of Damages Caused by the Comanche Indians around Béxar, BA 53:584–85, 680–83, 715, 54:87–88, 122–23, 126–31; 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): 132; and Juan N. Almonte, “Statistical Report on Texas,” trans. C. E. Castañeda, SHQ 28 (Jan. 1925): 181, 195. For the condition of Texas, see Arredondo to Armiñán, Jan. 31, 1814, Armiñán to Arredondo, Apr. 16, 1814, Anonymous to Arredondo, May 22, 1814, Arredondo to Armiñán, June 29 and 30, 1814, and Armiñán to Arredondo, Aug. 1 and 15, 1814, BA 53:510, 726–27, 924–25, 1027–36, 54:87–90, 122–23. The 1812–13 revolt was preceded, in early 1811, by the Casas Revolt, a Hidalgo Revolt-inspired coup directed against local penisulares, European-born Spaniards, and mal gobierno (bad government).

  The Casas Revolt seems to have had little impact on Comanche-Texas relations.

  8. For Comanche-Lipan peace, see José Francisco Ruíz, Report on Indian Tribes of Texas in 1828, ed. John C. Ewers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 7; and Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, ed. John C. Ewers, trans. Patricia Reading Leclercq (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1969), 132. Quotes in the following paragraph are from Berlandier, Indians, 133; and Antonio Martínez to Arredondo, June 26, 1818, in The Letters of Antonio Martinez, Last Spanish Governor of Texas, 1817–1822, ed. Virginia H. Taylor (Austin: Texas State Library, 1957), 151.

  9. For raids and Spanish responses, see Juan Ignacio Flores to Martínez, July 23, 1817, Martínez to Antonio García de Tejada, Aug. 9, 1817, Tejada to Martínez, Aug. 25 and 27, 1817, and Martínez to Juan de Castañeda, Aug. 29 and Sep. 10, 1817, BA 59:11–13, 184–85, 340, 365–66, 387, 511–12; Omar Valerio-Jiménez, “Indios Bárbaros, Divorcées, and Flocks of Vampires: Identity and Nation on the Rio Grande” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001), 35–36; Instructions Which the Constitutional Ayuntamiento of the City of San Fernando de Bexar Draws . . . , Nov.

  15, 1820, in “Texas in 1820,” trans. Mattie Austin Hatcher, SHQ 23 (July 1919): 62–63; and Martínez to Arredondo, Oct. 4, 1819, in Letters of Antonio Martinez, 269.

  10. Armiñán to Arredondo, Aug. 19, 1814, and José Félix Pérez to Armiñán, Aug. 22, 1814, BA 54:136–

  39, 151–52; Anderson, Indian Southwest, 254–55; Martínez to Arredondo, June 25, 1818, Apr. 5, 1819, and Mar. 2, 1820, in Letters of Antonio Martinez, 149, 219, 307; Instructions . . . of the City of San Fernando de Bexar, 61; Jack Jackson, Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721–1821

  (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 544–50; and David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 299.

  11. Martínez to Arredondo, June 26 and Oct. 20, 1818, and Apr. 1, 1819, in Letters of Antonio Martinez, 150, 185, 218; and Almonte, “Statistical Report,” 181.

  12. For contemporary explanations of raiding, see, e.g., M. Salcedo to N. Salcedo, Sep. 11, 1805, Testimony of Chief Cordero, Oct. 25, 1810, and Manuel María de Salcedo, Questioning of a Comanche Indian, 1810 [n.d.], BA 33:582–83, 47:6–7, 701–2. Quote is from Stephen F. Austin to Anastasio Bustamante [?], May 10, 1830, in The Austin Papers, ed. Eugene C. Barker, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1924), 2:508–9. The idea that American borderland agents used Plains Indians as a tool to weaken and eventually conquer the Mexican Far North is also a well-entrenched theme in Mexican historiography. See James F. Brooks, “Served Well by Plunder: La Gran Ladronería and Producers of History Astride the Río Grande,” American Quarterly 52 (Mar. 2000): 34.

  13. Amangual, “Diary,” 473.

  408

  Notes to Pages 189–193

  14. Salcedo, Instrucción, 46; and 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), 11, 92
–93. Quotes are from Bonavía, M. Salcedo, and Herrera, War Council, BA 47:123. For Comanches’ need for guns in the early nineteenth century, see, e.g., John Sibley, A Report from Natchitoches in 1807, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1922), 74.

  15. For an illuminating example of the dynamics of Comanche-American trade, see Anthony Glass,

  “Life among the Indians, August–October, 1808,” and “On the Winter Hunt, October, 1808–

  March, 1809,” in Journal, ed. Flores, 47–60, 61–80. Also see the previous chapter for Thomas James’s blundering first visit to Comanchería.

  16. As George Bent noted, wild mustangs “made the best mount for hunting buffalo” but their breaking and training took months of careful and intensive labor. See George E. Hyde, Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters, ed. Savoie Lottinville (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1968), 34–37.

  17. According to one early nineteenth-century observer, Comanches’ “wealth consisted of horses and mules; those raised by themselves are generally of superior order. . . . Their fine horses they could scarcely be induced to sell, but those which they had stolen from the Mexicans they would dispose of almost at any cost.” See Houston Telegraph and Texas Register, June 16, 1838. Quote is from 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), 158. Marcy’s remark is echoed by Josiah Gregg who wrote that Comanches “dote upon their steeds: one had as well undertake to purchase a Comanche’s child as his favorite riding-horse.” See Josiah Gregg, Commerce of the Prairies, ed.

  Max L. Moorhead (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 435.

  18. For American squatters, see Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 97–98.

  19. Juan Cortés to Martínez, Oct. 23, 1821, and Manuel Barrera to José Angel Navarro, Dec. 3, 1821, BA 68:664–65, 69:284–85; “Delegation from the Comanche Nation to the Mexican Congress,”

  in Papers Concerning Robertson’s Colony, comp. and ed. Malcolm McLean, 18 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974–93), 4:428; Martha Rodríguez, La guerra entre bárbaros y civilizados: el exterminio del nómada en Coahuila, 1840–1880 (Saltillo: Centro de Estudios Sociales y Humanísticos, 1998), 145–46; and Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo Leon, 1848–1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 37.

  20. Quotes are from “Treaty between the Mexican Empire and the Comanche Nation,” Dec. 13, 1822, in Documents of American Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775–

  1979, comp. Vine Deloria, Jr., and Raymond DeMallie (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 150–52; and “Delegation from the Comanche Nation,” 431.

  21. Ohland Morton, Terán and Texas: A Chapter in Texas-Mexican Relations (Austin: Texas Historical Association, 1948), 68; José Rafael González to Castañeda, Mar. 1, 1825, BA 79:663–64; and Berlandier, Indians, 47–48.

  22. Berlandier, Indians, 31.

  23. Gómez Pedraza to Antonio Elozúa, Nov. 10, 1825, Cayetano Andrade to Elozúa, Nov. 10, 1825, and Elozúa to Andrade, Dec. 16, 1825, BA 85:733–34, 739–40, 86:799–800; Berlandier, Indians, 120; and José María Sánchez, “A Trip to Texas in 1828,” trans. Carlos E. Castañeda, SHQ 29 (Apr.

  1926): 262. Quotes are from González to Castañeda, Mar. 3, 1824, BA 76:939; and Gutierrez

  Notes to Pages 193–197

  409

  de Lara to the governor of San Luis Potosi, July 1824, cited in Rupert Norval Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement: A Century and a Half of Savage Resistance to the Advancing Frontier (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1933), 74.

  24. Natchitoches Courier, May 15, 1826, and Sebastián Camacho to Joel R. Poinsett, June 15, 1826, cited in David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 95, 97. 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): 224–26.

  25. “Colonization Law of the State of Coahuila and Texas, March 25, 1825,” in Robertson’s Colony, 2:276; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 158–65; and Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 28–29, 64–68.

  26. Stephen F. Austin to José Antonio Saucedo, Aug. 26, 1824, Baron de Bastrop to Austin, Mar. 19, 1825, and Austin to Bustamante [?], May 10, 1830, in Austin Papers, ed. Barker, 2:507–8, 1058, 1181–82 (quote is from p. 507); Faulk, “Comanche Invasion,” 39; and José Francisco Ruíz to Elozúa, Aug. 1, 1830, BA 133:30–32.

  27. For the growth of Austin’s colony, see Gregg Cantrell, Stephen F. Austin, Empresario of Texas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 146–49, 195–96, 210, 232, 236–39; and Manuel de Mier y Terán to Guadalupe Victoria, Mar. 28, 1828, in Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas, ed. Jack Jackson, trans. John Wheat (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 33–34. For the distribution of Anglo colonies, see Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 38. For Wichita villages as Comanche staging areas and for the ethnic composition of Comanche war parties, see Anderson, Indian Southwest, 259–60.

  28. Elozúa to Mateo Ahumada, Nov. 12, 1825, Andrade to Elozúa, Nov. 20, 1825, BA 85:860–61, 86:792–93; Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 49; Lester G. Bugbee, “The Texas Frontier, 1820–1825,” Publications of the Southern History Association 4 (Mar. 1900): 119

  and n34; Austin to Ahumada, Sep. 8, 1825, Austin to Saucedo, July 17 and Aug. 14, 1826, James Kerr to Austin, Feb. 26, 1827, and Bustamante to Austin, June 19, 1827, in Austin Papers, ed., Barker, 2:1196–97, 1374, 1424 1607, 1660; Berlandier, Indians, 66, 120; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 231–34. Quote is from Jean Louis Berlandier, Journey to Mexico: During the Years 1826 to 1834, trans. Sheila M. Ohlendorf, Josette M. Bigelow, and Mary M. Standifer, 2 vols.

  (Austin: Texas State Historical Association and University of Texas Press, 1980), 2:343.

  29. Elozúa to Ruíz, July 21, 1831, José María García to Elozúa, May 5, 1832, Juan José Hernández to José Antonio de la Garza, Sep. 22, 1832, Ramón Músquiz to Eca y Músquiz, Sep. 22 and Nov. 19, 1832, and Placido Benavides to Juan Nepomuceno Seguín, Aug. 22, 1834, BA 143:82, 149:789–

  90, 153:307–11, 349–50, 154:21–22, 162:932; Matthew McLaurine Babcock, “Trans-national Trade Routes and Diplomacy: Comanche Expansion, 1760–1846” (M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico, 2001), 99, 101; Domingo de Ugartechea to Martin Perfecto de Cos, Aug. 8, 1835, in The Papers of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836, ed. John H. Jenkins, 10 vols. (Austin: Presidial, 1973), 1:321; and J. B. Wilkinson, Laredo and the Rio Grande Frontier (Austin: Jenkins, 1975), 147. Quotes are from “Fight between Lind and the Comanchees,” in The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, ed. Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., et al., 6 vols. (1920–27; reprint, Austin: Pemberton, 1968), 3:460; and Tadeo Ortiz de Ayala, Report to the President on the Conditions in Texas, Feb. 2, 1833,

  410

  Notes to Pages 198–201

  in “Tadeo Ortiz de Ayala and the Colonization of Texas, 1822–1833,” ed. Louise Kelly and Mattie Austin Hatcher, SHQ 29 (Apr. 1929): 331.

  30. For the revival of ranching, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 209. For raids, see Terán to Elozúa, Aug.

  2, 1830, Principal commander of Coahuila and Texas to the commanders of the companies of Río Grande, Aguaverde, Bavia, Bahía, the major at the Plaza of Béxar, and the commander at Tenox-titlan, Sep. 4, 1830, Mariano Cosío to Elozúa, Aug. 17, 1831, and Elozúa to Ruíz, Sep. 14, 1831
, BA 133:37–39, 134:134, 143:548–49, 857–59. Quotes are from Berlandier, Indians, 122–23.

  31. Sánchez, “Trip to Texas,” 283; Alone Howren, “Causes and Origin of the Decree of April 6, 1830,”

  SHQ 16 (Apr. 1913): 378–422; Almonte, “Statistical Report,” 184, 192–93; Edward L. Miller, New Orleans and the Texas Revolution (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 19–36; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 166–67, 228; and Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 38–40, 105.

  For the failure of Anglo colonies as a barrier against Comanche incursions, see Ortiz, Report, 330–34.

  32. Berlandier, Journey to Mexico, 1:270, 2:412–13, 440, 542; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 89, 92; William Kennedy, Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic of Texas, 2 vols. (London: William Cloves and Sons, 1841), 2:44; Ortiz, Report, 314, 326; and Gilberto Miguel Hinojosa, A Borderlands Town in Transition: Laredo, 1755–1870 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983), 38–46, 123. Quotes are from Sánchez, “Trip to Texas,” 257; Anonymous, Texas in 1837: An Anonymous, Contemporary Narrative, ed. Andrew Forest Muir (1958; reprint, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), 110; Berlandier, Journey to Mexico, 2:429; Ortiz, Report, 314; and Berlandier, Indians, 119.

  33. “Petition Addressed by the Illustrious Ayuntamiento of the City of Béxar to the Honorable Legislature of the State: To Make Known the Ills Which Afflict the Towns of Texas and the Grievances They Have Suffered since Their Union with Coahuila,” in Troubles in Texas, 1832: A Tejano Viewpoint from San Antonio, ed. and trans. David J. Weber and Conchita Hassell Winn (Dallas: DeGolyer Library, 1983), 17.

  34. For discussions on Tejanos’ interests and shifting loyalties, see Jesús F. de la Teja, ed., A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Sequín (Austin, Tex.: State House, 1991), 12–25; Andrés Tijerina, “Under the Mexican Flag,” in Tejano Journey, ed.

  Gerald E. Poyo (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 36–37; Stephen L. Hardin, “Efficient in the Cause,” in ibid., 51; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 176, 251–55; and Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 158–59. Tellingly, the mounting Indian raids and the national government’s inability to stop them also motivated Laredo’s belated decision in 1838 to join the federalist revolutionary movement. See Hinojosa, Borderlands Town, 53.