Comancheria
The Comanchería is the Spanish and nowadays common name of the tribal area on the Southern Plains in what is now the USA, which is inhabited jointly by the various Comanche groups . Before the Comanche inhabited this area, it was home to several tribes, particularly the dominant tribe, the eastern Apaches, and was largely known as the Apachería .
geography
The extent and geography of the Comanchería changed considerably during the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century, but the Comanchería soon came to mean large areas of the southern plains of what is now West Texas , the eastern Llano Estacado , the Texas Panhandle , the Edwards Plateau (including the wooded Texas Hill Country ), parts of eastern New Mexico , the Oklahoma Panhandle , the Wichita Mountains and west of the 100th meridian half of Colorado and Kansas . The Comanchería extended in the southeast to the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio , Texas, in the east then northwards along the Cross Timbers , then east of the Rocky Mountains along the Cimarron River and the upper Arkansas River in western Oklahoma and Kansas . In the west and southwest the Mescalero Escarpment (Mescalero steep slope) and the Pecos River and to the north the Caprock Escarpment (Caprock steep slope) formed the boundaries of the Comanchería. In the Texas Panhandle was also the Palo Duro Canyon , a preferred hiding place and settlement area of the Comanche. Important rivers of the Comancheria were from north to south: the Arkansas River, the Cimarron River, the Canadian River , Red River , Brazos River , Colorado River , the Pecos River and the Rio Grande .
history
With the appearance of the Comanche and the related Ute on the Great Plains and their warlike incursions (from 1700–1780) into the eastern areas of the Gran Apachería , the Comanche came into possession of large herds of horses through robbery and trade - they also became the first successful horse breeders and the best riders among the Plains Indians. Soon they were considered the most horse-rich tribe on the plains far and wide. In their fight against the eastern Apache groups, which had dominated the Plains until then, the Comanche allied themselves with the Wichita , Caddo , Tonkawa , Hasinai and several smaller Texan tribes who had suffered particularly from the Apache raids and therefore hated them. By 1740, the Comanche had displaced the Apaches almost entirely from the Southern Plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, and northern Texas. The Jicarilla , Mescalero and Lipan were particularly affected by the strengthening of the Comanche , since every bison hunt now also meant a possible conflict with the Comanche.
In 1746 the Pawnee also served as intermediaries between the Comanche and the French, which enabled their traders to penetrate as far as Santa Fe in New Spain and supply the Comanche with rifles and ammunition. This gave the allied tribes the decisive advantage over the Apaches, who were also mounted but sealed off from the arms trade, and allowed them to finally take them and the Ute (the alliance between Comanche and Ute was broken in 1726) to the mountains of New Mexico, Colorado and Mexico as well as in the outskirts of the Southern Plains in the south to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas. In 1750 the Wichita forged peace between Pawnee and Comanche, and the following year the now allied tribes jointly defeated their enemy, the Osage .
Although many Comanche had moved south of the Arkansas River in 1750, the Yaparuhka and Jupe stayed north of the river, fought Lakota and Cheyenne in the Black Hills until 1775, and robbed the villages of Arikaree along the Missouri River (until 1805 the North Platte River was the northern source of the Platte River , also known as the Padouca / Comanche Fork). The peace between Pawnee and Comanche did not last long, and the former traveled great distances to steal horses from the Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apaches (and occasionally the Apaches). This in turn led to violent clashes and fights between the Comanche and Pawnee, in which the Pawnee were defeated (1790-1793 and 1803).
Despite their defeat in 1751 by the Comanche-Pawnee Alliance, the Osage expanded and expanded their tribal territory significantly north, west and south at the expense of the Pawnee and Comanche. The Pawnee therefore left their territories in Kansas despite their victory and moved north to the Platte Valley in Nebraska , the Comanche oriented themselves further west and south. In addition, the Pawnee suffered from the attacks of the British armed Sioux (Lakota, Nakota ) and Osage, as the French gave up Louisiana in the Peace of Paris of 1763 and the Pawnee lost their most important allies and arms suppliers. The northern groups of the Comanche also increasingly had to fight off attacks by the Sioux and the Osage.
The departure of the Pawnee and Comanche from the Central Plains suddenly created a power vacuum into which raiding raiders from the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho advanced. They successfully asserted themselves against all the tribes that still lay claim to the area (Comanche, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apaches, Pawnee and Ute), became the most important traders on the plains and, from 1840, allies of the Comanche and Kiowa. The Pawnee, however, had to suffer from constant raids and horse thefts of the allied tribes until the defeat of the Arapaho and Cheyenne by the Americans in 1877–1879 .
In 1785 the Eastern Comanche in San Antonio, Texas, and the Western Comanche in 1786 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, formed an alliance with the Spaniards against their enemy, the Apaches. The Spaniards demanded that the Comanche make peace with the Diné , Pueblo , Jicarilla, as well as with their former allies, the Ute. In return, the Spanish markets in New Mexico and northern Mexico were opened to them, where they could exchange their trade goods, such as bison meat and skins, for weapons, ammunition, corn, beans, grain, clothing and other goods. In addition, it was now easier for them to do business with the Pueblo peoples, especially with Taos , which until then had maintained close contacts with the Jicarilla and developed into one of the most important trading posts after the peace treaty. Spanish permits ensured that individual chiefs and their groups could move freely in Spanish territories. The content of the contract, which provided for joint military actions against the Apaches, also included that the Comanche received a bonus for every Apache killed, approx. 100 Pesos for a killed warrior (aged 14 and over), 50 Pesos for a woman and 25 for a child Pesos (at that time one peso was equivalent to about one dollar; after the Mexican-American War , the premiums for Apache scalps were increased significantly to compensate for inflation). Most of the Eastern Comanche adopted slave hunts for Apaches, as there was strong demand for Apache slaves in New Spain and French-occupied Louisiana. In addition, the Spaniards required the Comanche to undertake activities against the Apaches of their own accord.
Since the Apaches were strictly denied access to weapons and trade goods by the Spaniards, they had to move further and further away from the more numerous and better armed Comanche and their allies (the Norteños - Wichita, Caddo, Hasinai and Tonkawa) from the southern plains retreat the mountains and intensify their raids against the Spaniards and Mexicans as well as sedentary, arable Indians - in order to get urgently needed food, goods, horses and slaves. The goods captured in this way were passed on by the Mescalero and the southern and northern Lipan groups to the eastern groups of the Lipan, who exchanged them for weapons and ammunition with the Biloxi , so that the Apaches were soon armed accordingly and their Indian as well as white enemies could better fight back.
The partial annihilation and expulsion of individual tribes (as well as the concentration of once nomadic tribal groups in permanent mission settlements by the Spaniards and Mexicans) by the Apaches, who fled south into the deserts and mountains of northern Mexico in front of the Comanche, resulted in the Apacheria after The South and Southwest expanded extremely, making them much closer (and more dangerous to them) to the white and Indian settlements than ever before. Since the Spaniards and Mexicans were always aware that they could not successfully take action against Apaches and Comanche at the same time (and they feared the Comanche as a potential danger), they tried to prevent any initiation of peaceful relations between the two peoples - and reminded the Comanche even repeatedly at their hostility to the Apaches.
In the years 1780 to 1800 joint campaigns by the Spaniards, Comanche and their allies were undertaken deep into the Apacheria, with the result that the Comanche were able to further consolidate their rule over the plains during this time. At this time they also gained the Kiowa and Kiowa Apaches as allies, and the Comancheria reached its greatest extent.
With the independence of Mexico in 1821 , the northern border collapsed completely. The Comanche no longer felt bound by agreements with the Spaniards and undertook raids deep into northern Mexico, sometimes 1000 km south of the Comancheria. In 1852 the Comanche raids reached their peak. From 1858 the first US troops penetrated the Comancheria to put an end to the constant raids of the Comanche, Kiowa and Kiowa Apaches - but this only led to an escalation of the violence. The Comanche were pushed further and further west and north (first the Penateka and Nokoni ) as the settlement border continued to advance , and the buffalo hunters increasingly deprived them of their food. The last free groups of the Kwahadi -Comanche sought refuge in their old hiding place, the Palo Duro Canyon - but had to bow to the overwhelming force (1874–1875).
Neighboring tribes
In the west, south-west and south-east, the vast areas of the various Apache groups joined the Comanchería, the areas partially overlapped and formed a kind of no man's land that remained fiercely contested between the two peoples. The Comanche also had to cross the dangerous areas of the Apacheria on their raids in Mexico . In the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle, the Kiowa and Kiowa Apaches lived together with the Comanche in the Comanchería. In the northwest were the tribal areas of the Ute and Shoshone , in the northeast those of the Osage, in the north that of the Pawnee. In addition, the allies Wichita, Tawakoni, Waco and Hasinai settled in and adjacent to the Comanchería. The Caddo and later the Cherokee also settled in the east . The former allies settled in the southeast, but Tonkawa became enemies after the Apaches had been ousted from the plains . To the north, the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho forced the Comanche to recognize the Arkansas River as their northern limit. In addition, the Comanche undertook extensive trading ventures to the Pueblo in New Mexico and to San Antonio, Texas. The Comanchero often acted as middlemen. The Comanche language also became the lingua franca of the Southern Plains.
literature
- Pekka Hämäläinen: The Comanche empire (= The Lamar Series in Western History). Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2008, ISBN 9780300151176 .
- B. Ray Mize: The Comancheria: A Kill Line , Bald Cypress Press, 2002, ISBN 0970898444
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.forttours.com/pages/paloduro.asp
- ↑ http://www.texasdar.org/chapters/Comancheria/comanche.html
- ↑ Thomas W. Kavanagh: The Comanches: a history, 1706-1875 , Nebraska Press, 1999, ISBN 080327792X