The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

  6. For dietary overlap, see Flores, “Bison Ecology,” 481. For Comanche camps and their ecological impact, see George E. Hyde, Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters, ed. Savoie Lottinville (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 51–59; 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, 35; and Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 133–39.

  7. Human predation could have profound effects on bison’s migration and settlement patterns: when pressured, the herds migrated more erratically, aggregated into larger and more mobile herds, and sometimes even shifted their core home range. See Douglas B. Bamforth, “Historical Documents and Bison Ecology on the Great Plains,” Plains Anthropologist 32 (Feb. 1987): 1–16.

  For wild horses, see Flores, “Bison Ecology,” 481. For pastores, see James H. Simpson, Report of Exploration and Survey Route from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Made in 1849, and Report of Captain R. B. Marcy’s Route from Fort Smith to Santa Fe, Nov. 20, 1849, 31st Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 45, 17–18, 46–48; and Whipple, Report, 38–39. For the Santa Fe trade and bovine diseases, see West, Way to the West, 54–79.

  8. Antonio José Martínez, Esposición que el Presbítero Antonio José Martínez, Cura de Taos en Nuevo México, dirije al Gobierno del Exmo. Sor. General D. Antonio López de Santa-Anna. Proponiendo la civilisación de las Naciones bárbaras que son al canton del departamento de Nuevo-México (Taos: J. M. B., 1843), 4, facsimile in Northern Mexico on the Eve of the United States Invasion: Rare Imprints Concerning California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, 1821–1846, ed.

  David J. Weber (New York: Arno, 1976). Quote is from George F. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, 1861), 266.

  9. David W. Stahle and Malcolm K. Cleaveland, “Texas Drought History Reconstructed and Analyzed from 1698 to 1980,” Journal of Climate 1 (Jan. 1988): 65; Kevin Sweeney, “Thirsting for War, Hungering for Peace: Drought, Bison Migrations, and Native Peoples on the Southern Plains,

  Notes to Pages 297–300

  431

  1845–1859,” Journal of the West 41 (Summer 2002): 71–75; Flores, “Bison Ecology,” 482; and West, Way to the West, 79–80. Quotes are from Neighbors to Medill, Oct. 12, 1847, 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 905; and Marcy, Adventure, 172. In the massive hunts of the 1870s, American hide hunters slaughtered an estimated 3.3 million bison on the southern plains. It seems probable that the bulk of the other half of the estimated peak number of 7 million bison had disappeared from the southern plains by 1860. As will be shown below, Comanches’ population dropped in the 1850s and 1860s from around 20,000 to below 5,000, a collapse that may have eased the pressure enough for the bison to establish new ecological equilibrium for those two decades. For the toll of Anglo-American hunting, see Frank Gilbert Roe, North American Buffalo: A Critical Study of the Species in Its Wild State (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 436–41. Seen from a macroscale perspective, the long drought that began in 1845 marked the end of the Little Ice Age, a global cooling period from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. For the southern plains, then, the Little Ice Age ended with exceptional abruptness, putting enormous stress on the bison herds.

  10. For the restrictions on ciboleros’ hunting, see Charles L. Kenner, The Comanchero Frontier: A History of New Mexican–Plains Indian Relations (1969; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 108. For Comanche hunting, see Whitfield to Mix, Jan. 5, 1856, LR:OIA, Upper Arkansas Agency, 878:104. Quote is from Whitfield to George W. Manypenny, Sep. 4, 1855, 34th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 437.

  11. For fluctuations of bison numbers and droughts, see West, Way to the West, 80; and Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 185–86, 199–200, 252. For social taboos and waste, see Isenberg, Destruction, 65, 84; and Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 142–43.

  12. Flores, “Bison Ecology,” 484–85; Dobak, “Killing the Canadian Buffalo,” 49–50; and Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 200–201. Quote is from Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years’ Personal Experience among the Red Men of the Great West (1883; reprint, New York: Archer House, 1959), 286.

  13. For Native American conceptions of nature, animals, and conservation, see Krech, Ecological Indian, 149.

  14. Quotes are from Capron Horace to George T. Howard, Sep. 30, 1852, LR:OIA, Texas Agency, 858:1068, 1071; and Whitfield to Manypenny, Sep. 4, 1855, 34th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 437.

  15. W. H. Clift, “Warren’s Trading Post,” CO 2 (June 1924): 135–36; Hyde, Life of George Bent, 93–95, 104–8; and Lewis H. Garrard, Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail, ed. Ralph P. Bieber (1850; reprint, Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1938), 330. For the bison decline on the central plains, see West, Way to the West, 51–83.

  16. John H. Moore, The Cheyenne Nation: A Social and Demographic History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 197–203; Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998), 198–200, 285; Morris W. Foster and Martha McCollough, “Plains Apache,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, The Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, 2 parts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 2:928; Andrews to Manypenny, Sep. 6, 1855, LR, Southern Superintendency, RG 75, Records of

  432

  Notes to Pages 301–303

  the Bureau of Indian Affairs, M640, NAMP, 833:379–80; A. H. McKisick to Elias Rector, Oct. 21, 1855, LR:OIA, Wichita Agency, 928:22–23; and F. Todd Smith, The Caddos, the Wichitas, and the United States, 1846–1901 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996), 42–59.

  17. For the 1854 treaties, see “Treaty with the Delawares, 1854,” “Treaty with the Shawnee, 1854,”

  “Treaty with the Sauk and Foxes of Missouri, 1854,” and “Treaty with the Kickapoo, 1854,” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, ed. Charles J. Kappler, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1904), 2:614–26, 634–36; and Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 118–19. For the 1854

  battle, see James Bordeaux to Alfred Cumming, Sep. 27, 1854, 33d Cong., 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 297–98 (quote is from p. 298). For subsequent hostilities between Comanches and immigrant Indians, see Whitfield to Manypenny, Sep. 4, 1855, 34th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 437. For Comanche-Osage relations, see Manypenny to R. McClelland, Nov. 26, 1855, and C. W. Dean to Manypenny, Sep. 1, 1855, 34th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 330–31, 441–42.

  18. For Calhoun’s actions, see James S. Calhoun to Orlando Brown, Jan. 25, Mar. 31, and July 15, 1850, and Calhoun to Luke Lea, July 28, 1851, in The Official Correspondence of James S. Calhoun While Indian Agent at Santa Fé and Superintendent of Indian Affairs in New Mexico, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1915), 104–5, 181–83, 226, 390–91. Some Mexican writers have argued that U.S. officials deliberately refrained from suppressing cross-border raids in order to weaken northern Mexican provinces and prepare them for future incorporation. See David B.

  Adams, “Embattled Borderland: Northern Nuevo León and the Indios Bárbaros, 1686–1870,”

  SHQ 95 (Oct. 1991): 217.

  19. Quote is from John Greiner to Lea, Apr. 30, 1852, in Correspondence of James S. Calhoun, 529.

  Also see Greiner to E. V. Sumner, Apr. 4, 1852, in ibid., 519–20; and John Greiner, “The Journal of John Greiner,” ed. Annie Heloise Abel, Old Santa Fe Magazine of History, Archaeology, Genealogy and Biography 3 (July 1916): 192–93.

  20. Kenner, Comanchero F
rontier, 107–12; John Ward, Journal, June 6, 1853, in “Indian Affairs in New Mexico under the Administration of William Carr Lane,” ed. Annie Heloise Abel, NMHR 46

  (Apr. 1941): 345–46; Greiner, “Journal,” 199; and Whipple, Report, 31, 33.

  21. For epidemics, see 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), 159, 259n523; Albert G. Boone to W. P. Dole, Feb. 2, 1862, LR:OIA, Upper Arkansas Agency, 878:625; and James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians (1898; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1979), 173, 176, 311.

  22. For food raiding, see Christopher Carson to David Meriwether, July 26, 1855, LR:OIA, New Mexico Superintendency, reel 547 (no frame number); and A. H. Blake to W. T. Magruder, July 20, 1855, and R. Johnson to R. Williams, Sep. 26, 1855, Registers of Letters Received and Letters Received by Headquarters, Department of New Mexico, RG 393, Records of United States Army Continental Commands, M1120, NAMP, 4:594, 614–15. For demands to restrict hunting, see Clint Padgitt, interviewed by William V. Ervin, WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 345. For deer, elk, and bear hunting and horse eating, see Whitfield to Mix, Jan. 5, 1856, LR:OIA, Upper Arkansas Agency, 878:104–5; Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie (New York: Antiquarian, 1961), 279; William Bollaert, William Bollaert’s Texas, ed. W. Eugene Hollon and Ruth Lapham Butler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 361; and Robert S. Neighbors, “The Na-

  Notes to Pages 304–307

  433

  Ü-Ni, or Comanches of Texas; Their Traits and Beliefs, and Divisions and Intertribal Relations,”

  IPTS, 3:356. For sheep and goats, see Simpson, Report, 16. According to Whitfield, thirty-two hundred Comanches living in the upper Arkansas basin used two thousand deer, one thousand elk, and five hundred bear a year. The large number of killed deer is particularly revealing, for Comanche traditions state that deer hunting was an emergency measure used only when whole camps were out of food. For deer hunting and food taboos, see Wallace and Hoebel, Comanches, 67, 70. For population, see W. B. Parker, “Census of the Tribes of Southwestern Texas in 1854,”

  IPTS, 3:217; and Whitfield to Mix, Jan. 5, 1856, LR:OIA, Upper Arkansas Agency, 878:106–8.

  Quotes are from Thomas Fitzpatrick to A. Cumming, Nov. 19, 1853, 33d Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex.

  Doc. 1, 363; and Wallace and Hoebel, Comanches, 70.

  23. Ralph P. Bieber, “The Southwestern Trails to California,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 12 (Dec. 1925): 359–62; and Walker Wyman, “Freighting: A Big Business on the Santa Fe Trail,”

  Kansas Historical Quarterly 1 (Nov. 1931): 17–27.

  24. “Treaty with the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache, 1853,” in Indian Affairs, ed. Kappler, 2:600–2; Fitzpatrick to Cumming, Nov. 19, 1853, 33d Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 361–64 (quotes are from p. 363); and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 348–50.

  25. For Comanches along the Arkansas, see Whitfield to commissioner of Indian Affairs, Sep. 4, 1855, 34th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 435–38; Robert C. Miller, “Report,” ARCIA, 1857, 141–43; Whitfield to Cumming, Aug. 15, 1855, LR:OIA, Upper Arkansas Agency, 878:17; and Miller, Invoices of Goods Received for Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Indians of the Arkansas River, May 12, 1858, RCS 5:198–221. For the Colorado gold rush, see West, Contested Plains, 145–70.

  26. Whitfield to Manypenny, Sep. 4, 1855, 34th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 437; and Meriwether to Manypenny, Sep. 1855, LR:OIA, New Mexico Superintendency, reel 547 (no frame number).

  27. Whipple, Report, 38–40; Kenner, Comanchero Frontier, 120–37; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 370–73.

  28. T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (New York: Collier, 1968,) 279–

  324.

  29. Rudolph Leopold Biesele, “The Relations between the German Settlers and the Indians in Texas, 1844–1860,” SHQ 31 (Oct. 1927): 116–29; J. Pinckney Henderson to W. L. Marcy, Aug. 22, 1847, IPTS, 5:33–34; and Terry G. Jordan, German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-Century Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 40–54, 118–91.

  30. Neighbors to Medill, Mar. 2, 1848, 30th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rpt. 171, 16–19; and Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 61, 71–73. Quote is from Telegraph and Texas Register, Dec. 10, 1845.

  31. Quotes are from Bordeaux to Cumming, Sep. 27, 1854, 33d Cong., 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 299; and Russell Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1854), 2:424. For Nuevo León, see Adams, “Embattled Borderland,” 220.

  32. For Comanche raids in Texas and Mexico, see P. H. Bell to U.S. Congress, Feb. 7, 1850, G. M.

  Brooke to W. Scott, May 28, 1850, J. H. Rollings to Brooke, Sep. 25, 1850, Bell to the Legislature, Feb. 12, 1852, H. Redmond to W. Mann, Apr. 16, 1852, and “Report of Indian Commissioners H. W.

  Berry and W. J. Moore,” Jan. 1, 1857, IPTS, 3:114–20, 155–56, 158–59, 264–65; George Archibald McCall, New Mexico in 1850: A Military View, ed. Robert W. Frazer (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 103; Kevin Mulroy, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida,

  434

  Notes to Pages 307–310

  the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1993), 67–73; Ralph A. Smith, “The Comanches’ Foreign War: Fighting Head Hunters in the Tropics,” Great Plains Journal 24–25 (1985–1986): 31–41; J. Fred Rippy, “The Indians of the Southwest in the Diplomacy of the United States and Mexico, 1848–1853,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2

  (Feb. 1919): 384–90; and Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León, 1848–1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 36–51.

  Quotes are from Neighbors to Medill, Nov. 21, 1853, LR:OIA, Texas Agency, 859:304, 306; and Julius Fröebel, Seven Years’ Travel in Central America, Northern Mexico, and the Far West of the United States (London: R. Bentley, 1859), 22.

  33. For Texas Rangers, see Brooke to Bell, Jan. 30, 1850, and Bell to M. Fillmore, Aug. 20, 1852, IPTS, 3:75, 179. For army officials’ views on Comanches, see, e.g., Brooke to Scott, May 28, 1850, IPTS, 3:120. For the army and garrisons, see T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People (New York: Da Capo, 1974), 402–3, 417–18.

  34. For the dispersal, see William J. Hardee to George Deal, Aug. 29, 1852, LR:OIA, Texas Agency, 858:890; and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 385. Quote is from R. B. Marcy, Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1866), 210.

  35. For Ketumsee’s petition, see “Negotiations between the United States and the Comanche, Lipan, and Mescalero Tribes of Indians,” Oct. 26, 1851, IPTS, 3:145. For rations, captives, and disputes, see Howard to Lea, Feb. 27 and June 1, 1852, and John A. Rogers, Report, June 28, 1852, LR:OIA, Texas Agency, 858:966–68, 999–1007, 1129; and “Report of R. B. Marcy and R. S. Neighbors to P. H. Bell,” Sep. 30, 1854, IPTS, 3:189. Quotes are from Horace Capron to Howard, Sep. 30, 1852, and Hamilton W. Merrill to Rogers, Mar. 29, 1852, LR:OIA, Texas Agency, 858:1069, 1119.

  36. For the land policies of Texas, see Fehrenbach, Lone Star, 282–83.

  37. For negotiations, see Parker, Notes, 199–201 (quote is from pp. 199–200). For the reservation, see George W. Manypenny, “Report,” ARCIA, 1856, 14–15; and Neighbors to Manypenny, Feb.

  20 and Mar. 19, 1856, John A. Baylor to Neighbors, Mar. 1, 1856, John A. Baylor, Census Roll of Comanche Indians, Apr. 30, 1856, and Neighbors to Manypenny, May 14, 1856, LR:OIA, Texas Agency, 860:509–10, 533–34, 623–25, 637, 640–41.

  38. For raids, see Neighbors to Mix, Oct. 20, 1854, LR:OIA, Texas Agency
, 859:874; E. M. Pease to P. F. Smith, June 20, 1855, W. E. Jones to Pease, July 5 and 7, 1855, Bexar County committee to Pease, Sep. 1, 1855, “Petition to E. M. Pease for Rangers in Goliad County,” Sep. 13, 1855, “Petition from Bandera to E. M. Pease,” Sep. 21, 1855, Jones to Pease, Sep. 22, 1855, “Petition from Medina to E. M. Pease,” Oct. 5, 1855, “Statement of Rufus Doane and J. F. Crosby,” Nov. 13, 1855, and

  “Report of Indian Commissioners H. W. Berry and W. J. Moore,” Jan. 1, 1857, IPTS, 3:219, 222–23, 231–33, 238–46, 248–49, 259–60, 264–65; Douglas Cooper to Rector, May 26, 1858, LR, Southern Superintendency, RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, M640, NAMP, 834:422–23; and A. Montgomery to Samuel Cooper, Mar. 13, 1858, 35th Cong., 2d sess., H. Ex. Doc. 2, 415–

  16. For trade, see Neighbors to Manypenny, Sep. 18, 1856, ARCIA, 1856, 175. For white “Indian raiders,” see Doyle Marshall, “Red-Haired ‘Indian’ Raiders on the Texas Frontier,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book 61 (1985): 88–105. Quote is from Ross to Neighbors, Oct. 7, 1855, IPTS, 3:250–51.

  39. Pease to citizens of Bexar county, July 25, 1855, Pease to J. H. Callahan, July 25, 1855, “Newspaper Item Concerning Indian Depredations,” Aug. 6, 1855, Ross to Neighbors, Oct. 7, 1855, and H. R.

  Runnels to the Senate, Jan. 22, 1858, IPTS, 3:228–31, 250–51, 270–71; and Gary Clayton Ander-

  Notes to Pages 310–314

  435

  son, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 264–68. Quotes are from D. C. Buell to Captain W. J. Newton, Jan. 30. 1855, cited in Anderson, Conquest of Texas, 266; and Neighbors to J. W. Denver, Sep. 16, 1857, 35th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 11, 551–52.

  40. For a Comanche war of extermination in Texas, see John Smiley to Neighbors, Nov. 3, 1857, LR: OIA, Texas Agency, 860:1159. For connections between raiding parties and reservation bands, see John S. Ford to Runnels, Feb. 27, 1858, TSA:RR, box 301–27, folder 3; and Robert C. Millar to A. M. Robinson, Aug. 17, 1858, 35th Cong., 2d sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, 450. Ketumsee and other reservation chiefs repeatedly tried to prevent the raiding parties from entering the reservation. See, e.g., Baylor to Neighbors, Oct. 7, 1858, IPTS, 3:251–52. Quotes are from Neighbors to Denver, Sep. 16, 1857, 35th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 11, 551; and Ford to Runnels, Feb. 27, 1858, TSA:RR, box 301–27, folder 3.