The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  73. Babcock, “Trans-national Trade Routes,” 65–71; Berlandier, Indians, 133–34 (quote on “bitter warfare” is from p. 134); and García Conde to Melgares, May 11, 1819, SANM II 19:711–13

  (T-2819). The longer quote is from Anonymous, Notes, 64.

  74. The escalation of the Comanche raiding has been pieced together from the following sources: Severino Martinez to Bartolomé Baca, June 10, 1825, in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 2 vols. (New York: Arno, 1976), 1:347; Baron de Bastrop to Austin, Mar. 19, 1825, in Austin Papers, ed. Barker, 2:1058; Cuauhtémoc José Velasco Avila, “La amenaza comanche en la frontera mexicana, 1800–1841” (Ph.D. diss., Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México, 1998), 133, 178, 267; Berlandier, Journey to Mexico, 2:542, 580–81; Vizcaya Canales, ed., La invasión, 40, 43–53; William B. Griffen, Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821–1848 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 138–46; Wilkinson, Laredo, 117–21, 127–28, 144–47; David M. Vigness,

  “Indian Raids on the Lower Rio Grande, 1836–1837,” SHQ 59 (July 1955): 14–23; Ralph A. Smith,

  “The Comanche Bridge between Oklahoma and Mexico, 1843–1844,” CO 39 (Spring 1961): 54–

  69; Ralph A. Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations before the War of 1846,” Hispanic

  416

  Notes to Pages 221–226

  American Historical Review 43 (Feb. 1963): 35–36, 40–42; Ralph A. Smith, Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1793–1862 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 106; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 86; Isidro Vizcaya Canales, Incursiones de indios al noreste en el México independiente, 1821–1885 (Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado de Nuevo León, 1995), 10–20; Martha Rodrí-

  guez, Historias de resistencia y exterminio: los indios de Coahuila durante el siglo XIX (Tlalpan: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 88–92; and Ro-dríguez, La guerra, 112–29. Quotes are from Berlandier, Indians, 123; and Gregg, Commerce, 436.

  For territorial claims, see Irion to Houston, Mar. 14, 1838, IPTS, 1:44. Quote is from Report of G. W. Bonnell, Nov. 3, 1838, reprinted in 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rpt. 171, 43.

  75. For the importance of distance and distinctive zones of conflict and peace for empires, see Charles S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), esp. 20–23.

  76. Marcy, Adventure, 173.

  77. Miguel Ramos Arizpe to Lucas Alamán, Aug. 1, 1830, Herbert E. Bolton Papers, Carton 40, no.

  673, no page, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; Smith, “Comanche Bridge,”

  63–69; and Gregg, Commerce, 436. Quote is from Thomas J. Farnham, Travels in the Great Western Prairies, vols. 28 and 29 of Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1906), 28:151.

  78. For traders promoting raids, see Comer, Ritual Ground, 14. For Comanche war parties collecting supplies in Texas, see Western to Coleman, May 11, 1845, and Sloat to Western, July 24, 1845, IPTS, 2:236–37, 298–99. For Mexican views, see Valerio-Jiménez, “Indios Barbaros, ” 37. For New Mexicans in Comanche war parties, see Griffen, Utmost Good Faith, 139, 159. Quotes are from James Bowie to Henry Rueg, Aug. 3, 1835, in Papers of the Texas Revolution, ed. Jenkins, 1:302; Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations,” 46; and Sloat to Western, Aug. 18, 1845, IPTS, 2:325.

  79. For the Comanche trail system, see Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 54–56; and Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations,” 35–36.

  80. Marcy, Adventure, 160; Smith, Borderlander, 68, 106; and Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 59. Quote is from John Russell Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1854), 2:386.

  81. For the planning and execution of raids, see Neighbors to Medill, Sep. 14, 1847, 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 902; Bartlett, Personal Narrative, 2:447–48; Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 54–

  69; Rodríguez, La guerra, 121, 129; Velasco Avila, “La amenaza comanche,” 130–31; and Babcock,

  “Trans-national Trade Routes,” 82–83. Quote is from Berlandier, Indians, 82.

  82. El Fanal de Chihuahua, Jan. 25, 1835, 67; Griffen, Utmost Good Faith, 143; Gregg, Commerce, 250; Valerio-Jiménez, “Indios Barbaros, ” 37–40, 185; Joseph Milton Nance, After San Jacinto: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836–1841 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 45; Hinojosa, Borderlands Town, 50–53; Vigness, “Indian Raids,” 16–23; Mora-Torres, Mexican Border, 39; and Juan Manuel Maldonado to Arista, Nov. 12, 1840, comandancia general de Nuevo León to minister of war and marine, Dec. 6, 1840, and Maldonado to comandancia general e inspección de Nuevo León, Dec. 13, 1840, in La invasión, ed. Vizcaya Canales, 141–43, 156–59, 165–66. Quotes are from Gregg, Commerce, 250; and Valerio-Jiménez, “Indios Barbaros, ” 38.

  83. Rodríguez, La guerra, 111; Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 63–68; Smith, “Indians in American-

  Notes to Pages 227–231

  417

  Mexican Relations,” 49; James Hobbs, Wild Life in the Far West: Personal Adventures of a Border Mountain Man (1873; reprint, Glorieta, N. Mex.: Rio Grande, 1969), 32, 37; and John Miller Morris, El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination of the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1513–1860 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1997), 301, 303.

  84. DeLay, “Independent Indians,” 53–55; Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 59–68; Velasco Avila, “La amenaza comanche,” 169–72; Víctor Orozco, comp., Las Guerras indias en la historia de Chihuahua: Antología (Ciudad Juárez: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 1992), 201–73; and Weber, Mexican Frontier, 50.

  85. Rodríguez, La guerra, 111; “Circular del Gobierno acerca de la guerra con los bárbaros,” Oct. 31, 1831, in Reseñas históricas del estado de Chihuahua, ed. José M. Ponce de León (Chihuahua: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1910), 261–62; Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 61; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 109–15; Adams, “Embattled Borderland,” 215–16; Berlandier, Indians, 30; and George F. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, 1861), 102.

  86. Anonymous, Texas in 1837, 110. Quote is from Gregg, Commerce, 203n10.

  87. Ralph A. Smith, “The Bounty Wars of the West and Mexico,” Great Plains Journal 28 (1989): 102–

  21; Smith, Borderlander, 75–171, 225–34; Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 201–10, 328–31; and L. R. Bailey, Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest (1966; reprint, Los Angeles: Westernlore, 1973), 50–51.

  88. For Mexico City’s responses, see, e.g., Valerio-Jiménez, “Indios Bárbaros, ” 37–38.

  89. Ibid., 36–38.

  90. Rodríguez, La guerra, 148.

  91. “Treaty with the Comanche,” Oct. 8, 1826, in Documents, comp. Deloria and DeMallie, 153–55

  (quote is from p. 154); Ramón Músquiz to Béxar ayuntamiento, May 1834, and Navarro Angel to Béxar ayuntamiento, Aug. 27, 1835, BA 161:779–80, 166:470; Matthew Babcock, “Trans-national Raid and Trade Routes: Comanche Expansion from the Rio Grande to Durango, 1821–1846”

  (manuscript in author’s possession); Rodríguez, La guerra, 148; and “Convenios celebrados por este Estado y los Generales de las Nacion Comanche y la Caihua, in Reseñas históricas, 270–72.

  92. For treaties, see Rodríguez, La guerra, 151–55; and Martha Rodríguez, “Los tratados de paz en la guerra entre ‘bárbaros’ y ‘civilizados’ (Coahuila 1840–1880),” Historia y Grafía 10 (Jan.–June 1998): 73–77. For Arista’s decree, see Babcock, “Trans-national Trade Routes and Diplomacy,”

  114. Quote is from “Report of a Council,” 412. The treaty violation Santa Anna referred to may have been a fight near Matamoros in late 1844 or early 1845 in which Santa Anna’s band “had been whipped by the Mexicans.” See Neighbors to Western, Jan. 14, 1845, IPTS, 2:167.

  93. Comanches often carrie
d stolen Mexican stock directly to Bent’s Fort and other market outlets in the north. See, e.g., G. Cooke, Journal of an expedition of a detachment of U.S. Dragoons from Fort Leavenworth to protect the Annual Caravan of traders, from Missouri to the Mexican boundary on the road to Santa Fe . . . Commencing May 27th, and ending July 21st, 1843, in “Journal of the Santa Fe Trail,” ed. William E. Connelly, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 12 (Sep. 1925): 240. Quote is from Marcy, Adventure, 173.

  94. For escalating raiding, see Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 57–68; Ralph A. Smith, “The Comanches’ Foreign War: Fighting Head Hunters in the Tropics,” Great Plains Journal, 24–25 (1985–

  86): 22–27; Adams, “Embattled Borderland,” 208–11, 215–16; Nance, After San Jacinto, 189, 443; and Vito Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas: Desde la consumacion de la independencia hasta el

  418

  Notes to Pages 231–234

  tratado de paz de Guadalupe Hidalgo, 2 vols. (Mexico, 1946), 2:235–36; William Bollaert, William Bollaert’s Texas, ed. W. Eugene Hollon and Ruth Lapham Butler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press for the Newberry Library, 1956), 360; Vizcaya Canales, ed., La invasión; and Western to Coleman, May 11, 1845, and Sloat to Western, Aug. 18, 1845, IPTS, 2:236, 325. Quote is from Bent to Medill, Nov. 10, 1846, in California and New Mexico, 184.

  95. Quotes are from James Josiah Webb, Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade, 1844–1847, ed. Ralph P.

  Bieber (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 241; and Ruxton, Adventures, 78, 101–2, 117, 125.

  96. Rodríguez, Historias de resistencia, 92; and Max L. Moorhead, New Mexico’s Royal Road: Trade and Travel on the Chihuahua Trail (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 147–48.

  Quotes are from Gregg, Commerce, 203; El Registro Oficial, periodico del gobierno del departamento de Durango, IV, no. 301, Dec. 29, 1844, cited in Smith, “Comanche Bridge,” 69; José Fuentes Mares, . . . Y México se refugio en el desierto (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, S. A., 1954), 137, cited in Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations,” 62; and Ruxton, Adventures, 102.

  97. For trade, see Ugartechea to the governor of Monclova, Feb. 8, 1835, and secretary of relations to Agustin Viesca, June 10, 1835, in Papers of the Texas Revolution, ed. Jenkins, 1:18, 149; Smith, Borderlander, 47–48, 106–8; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 201–10.

  98. For Apache raiding, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 86; Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 28–

  30; and Gregg, Commerce, 202–3.

  99. For decades after the loss of Texas, Mexico pointed to Comanche raids in northern Mexico as a critical factor that prevented the reconquest of the province. See Informe de la comisión pesquisidora de la frontera del norte al Ejecutivo de la Unión . . . (Mexico City: Imprenta del Gobierno en Palacio, 1877), 267–68. For the debilitating impact of Comanche raiding on Mexico’s plans of reconquest, see Nance, After San Jacinto, 396–97. For Canales’s republic, see Milton Lindheim, The Republic of the Rio Grande: Texans in Mexico, 1839–40 (Waco, Tex.: W. M. Morrison, 1964); and Vigness, “Indian Raids,” 23.

  100. Quotes are from Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Selected Letters, 1839–1865 (New York: Library of America, 1990), 41; and “La Diputación Per-manente de la Honorable Legislatura de Chihuahua á sus comitentes,” Apr. 6, 1848, in Reseñas históricas, ed. Ponce de León, 344. Traditional accounts of the Mexican-American War and the Mexican Cession rarely discuss the impact of Comanche raiding. See, e.g., K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War (1974; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); and Douglas V. Meed, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: Routledge, 2003). But there are exceptions: Smith,

  “Indians in American-Mexican Relations”; Weber Mexican Frontier; José de la Cruz Pacheco Rojas, “Durango entre dos guerras, 1846–1847,” in México al tiempo de su guerra con Estados Unidos, 1846–1848, comp. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, Secretaría de Relaciónes Exteriores, and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998), 197–203; Mora-Torres, Mexican Border, 11–51; Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,”

  JAH 90 (Dec. 2003): 842–43; and DeLay, “Independent Indians.”

  101. For Mexico’s defensive plans and continuing problems with Comanche raiders in the months leading up to the war with the United States, see Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations,” 55–61. In early 1845, only a year before Taylor’s push to the Río Grande, Comanches were still raiding the few remaining settlements in the Nueces Strip. See H. L. Kinney to Anson Jones,

  Notes to Pages 235–237

  419

  Feb. 11, 1845, in Anson Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence Relating to the Republic of Texas, Its History and Annexation (1859; reprint, Chicago: Rio Grande, 1966), 432.

  102. Bauer, Mexican War, 147–48; Weber, Mexican Frontier, 107–21; Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations,” 61–64; Griffen, Utmost Good Faith, 120–21; Neighbors to Medill, Sep. 14, 1847, 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 902; Neighbors to Medill, Nov. 18, 1847, 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rpt. 171, 9; Samuel Chester Reid, The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch’s Texas Rangers (Philadelphia: Keystone, 1890), 66; and Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana to Susan Sanford Dana, July 29, 1846, in Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, Monterrey Is Ours! The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845–1847, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 103. Quote is from Smith, “Indians in American-Mexican Relations,” 60.

  103. For the lack of national response, the sense of abandonment in the Mexican North, and the subsequent fragmentation of common Mexican identity, see Weber, Mexican Frontier, 240; Luis Aboites Aguilar, “Poblamiento y estado en el norte de México, 1830–1835,” in Indio, nación y comunidad en el México del siglo XIX, ed. Antonio Escobar Ohmstede (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos/Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1993), 303–13; Mora-Torres, Mexican Border, 38–40; and DeLay, “Independent Indians,” 54–55. Quote is from 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), 352. Northern provinces did not manage to agree on a unified Indian policy until 1852, and even that effort was aborted the next year when Santa Anna returned to power. See Mora-Torres, Mexican Border, 40–41.

  104. For weak local resistance in northern Mexico and Mexicans cooperating with U.S. troops, see Army of Occupation, Orders, No. 115, Sep. 11, 1846, Army of Occupation, Orders, No. 123, Sep.

  27, 1846, and Army of Occupation, Special Orders, No. 78, June 4, 1846, 30th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 60, 504–5, 507, 522–23; Valerio-Jiménez, “Indios Barbaros, ” 213, 218–21; Bauer, Mexican War, 149–51, 157, 225; N. J. T. Dana to S. S. Dana, Sep. 4, 1846, in Dana, Monterrey Is Ours! 114–15; Gregg to the editors of the Louisville Journal, Dec. 29, 1846, in Josiah Gregg, Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg, ed. Maurice Garland Fulton, 2 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941–44), 1:322; and Weber, Mexican Frontier, 275.

  105. Translation of a Proclamation by the General Commanding the Army of the U.S. of America, 30th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 60, 166–67; and Vigil, Arms, 7.

  106. For American attempts to justify the conquest through racial stereotypes, see David J. Weber,

  “‘Scarce more than apes’: Historical Roots of Anglo-American Stereotypes of Mexicans in the Border Region,” in New Spain’s Far Northern Frontier: Essays on Spain in the American West, 1540–1821, ed. David J. Weber (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1979), 295–307; Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34 (Spring 2003): 10–11; and DeLay, “Independent Indians,” 62–66. The notion that the officials of the invading U.S. Army saw and represente
d themselves as liberators of Mexico from Indian menace has survived in folk-tales and fiction, most famously in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West (New York: Random House, 1985), 33–34. For a penetrating look into one of the most famous postoccupation insurgencies, the Taos Revolt of 1847, see Reséndez, Changing National Identities, 254–63.

  107. “Narrative of Julio Carrillo . . . ,” Antepasados I (Fall 1970), cited in Weber, Mexican Frontier,

  420

  Notes to Pages 240–241

  275. Juan Mora-Torres speculates that the beleaguered settlers of Nuevo León, like those of New Mexico, might have accepted occupation peacefully had the United States attempted it. See Mora-Torres, Mexican Border, 40.

  C H A P T E R 6 . C H I L D R E N O F T H E S U N

  1. For Comanche horse ownership, see Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, Sep. 30, 1774, PINM, 175; Juan Bautista de Anza, “Diary of the Expedition . . . against the Comanche Nation . . . ,” Sep. 10, 1779, and Francisco Xavier Ortiz to Juan Bautista de Anza, May 20, 1786, FF, 139, 323; John Sibley, A Report from Natchitoches in 1807, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1922), 41; Anthony Glass, “On the Winter Hunt, October, 1808–March, 1809,” in Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading Frontier, 1790–1810, ed. Dan L. Flores (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985), 67; Jacob Fowler, The Journal of Jacob Fowler, ed. Elliott Coues (1898; reprint, Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1965), 65; 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), 2:343–44; Albert Pike, Prose Sketches and Poems, ed. David J. Weber (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 47, 50; T. B. Wheelock, “Journal of Colonel Dodge’s Expedition from Fort Gibson to the Pawnee Pict Village,” Aug. 26, 1834, American State Papers, Class 5, Military Affairs, 5:376; Ralph P. Bieber, Southern Trails to California in 1849 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1937), 302–5; Report of Exploration and Survey from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Santa Fe, Made in 1849, by First Lieutenant James H. Simpson, and Report of Captain R. B. Marcy’s Route from Fort Smith to Santa Fe, Nov.