Comanche

By Daniel J. Gelo and Teferi A. Adem

Numunuu or Numu(self-name) , Padouca, Ietan. All these names have alternative forms.

The Comanches are an American Indian ethnic group of Shoshonean stock. In their native language Comanches call themselves "Our People." The name Comanche entered English from Spanish, derived from a Ute term signifying "other." The Siouan Padouca was applied by the French and the Americans to Comanches and Apaches in the 1700s and 1800s. Ietan, usually considered a derivative of Ute, also appears in French sources. Other names from neighboring tribes are recorded, many corresponding to the sign language designation "snake." The historical Comanches occupied the southern Great Plains grasslands across southeastern Colorado, eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma, and western Texas. Some traveled widely beyond this range. In the year 2000 the tribal headquarters was north of Lawton, Oklahoma; tribal members lived in this vicinity and in several U.S. cities.

Prereservation population estimates by Spanish and American observers are questionable and vary between 6,000 and 20,000. The population declined markedly under the American advance, reaching 1,382 in 1884 and 1,171 in 1910, after which the population rebounded. In 2000 the tribe counted about 11,000 members.

The Comanche language is in the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan family in the AztecTanoan phylum. Comanche and Shoshone are similar enough to be considered dialects of the same language; among Comanche bands there is dialectal variation. Supplemented with sign language, Comanche was a regional trade medium in the 1800s. Spanish and English loan words reveal a Comanche interest in trade and technology. Comanche speakers served as U.S. Army Signal Corps "code-talkers" in Europe during World War II. About eight hundred fluent speakers, mostly elderly, remained in 2000. In 1989 the tribe mounted vigorous language preservation efforts.

The first historical reference to the Comanches appears in a Spanish source from 1706. The Comanche earlier separated from the Wyoming Shoshones and spent several generations adapting to the plains, initially as pedestrian hunters. In approximately 1650 they acquired horses from Spaniards and Indians around Santa Fe and quickly developed a classic horse culture. Through the 1700s they alternately fought and allied with the Spanish while displacing the Apaches. Moving southward and eastward ahead of enemies and in search of horses and trade, Comanches entered Texas by 1743. During that era they also made contact with French traders from the east and then with Anglo-American horse dealers and established friendly relations with Caddo and Wichita farmers on the Red River drainage. Competitors included Kiowas and Cheyennes who followed from the north and Pawnees and Osages to the east. Hostilities with the Kiowas and Cheyennes ended by 1840 in a lasting alliance against encroaching Anglo-Americans and supplanted eastern Indians. Comanches increased their raiding in Texas and Mexico after 1840 to obtain livestock and captives for trade. Those raids also stalled Anglo expansion. In 1855 a small reservation was made in Texas for the southernmost Comanches, but settlers drove out the inhabitants in 1859. U.S. military control of the Comanche homeland was not secured until after the Civil War. The 1865 Treaty of the Little Arkansas bound Comanche signatories to a reservation that included much of the Texas panhandle. The Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty of 1867 involved more Comanche leaders and superseded the previous agreement, providing instead for a joint Kiowa-Comanche-Apache (KCA) reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Resistance continued, notably in the illfated 1874 attack on the Adobe Walls trading post in the Texas panhandle. Many Comanches avoided the reservation until they were forced to move there by a concerted army campaign in 1874-1875. Under the Dawes Act, from 1901 to 1906 the KCA Reservation was allotted to the Indians in severalty and the "surplus" was opened to white settlement. Gradual if incomplete incorporation into the Euro-American economy and culture followed in the twentieth century. In 1969 Comanches formed a sovereign tribal government, the Comanche Nation, separate from the KCA coalition.

The nomadic Comanches did not maintain settlements before the reservation era. They frequented campsites in the Texas panhandle and central hill country, southwestern Oklahoma, and elsewhere. Reservations were established in Throckmorton County, Texas, from 1855 to 1859 and over present Comanche County, Oklahoma, and adjacent areas from 1868 to 1906. Oklahoma Comanche town centers include Apache, Fletcher, Cyril, Lawton, Cache, Indiahoma, Geronimo, Faxon, and Walters. Dwellings were hide, and later canvas, tipis. By 1890 canvas wall tents were prevalent, and after about 1920 wood frame houses were the norm.

Plains life was predicated on the great bison herds. Buffalo provided muscle and organ meat; leather for rawhide, tanned robes, and tipi covers; and bone and horn for implements. Buffalo were stalked or driven en masse, on foot or horseback, and killed with a bow and arrow or a lance thrust underhand. Seasonal movements and congregations of the buffalo determined the location and size of camps. Another determinant was forage for the large horse herds that enabled hunting and raiding and provided trade stock. Individuals amassed herds numbering in the hundreds. Mustangs were captured and broken, using ingenious methods; domesticated animals were taken from other Indians and Euro-American settlers. Comanches made rope from horsehair and ate horse flesh, particularly in times of scarcity and on raids. Thus, although Comanches were technically hunter-gatherers, they resembled pastoralists. Other animals important in the diet included elk, deer, pronghorn, and small mammals. Comanches disdained fowl, fish, and reptiles but ate whatever necessary, except that canines were taboo in deference to the mythological Coyote. They thought beef inferior but came to depend on it as a buffalo substitute. Before the reservation era Comanches did no cultivating and depended on trade for corn, beans, and squash. A wide range of wild fruits, nuts, and tubers supplemented the diet. During the reservation period the hunter-gatherer lifestyle faded. Indian travel was inhibited, game was exterminated by encroaching whites, and dependence grew on government-provided rations such as flour and beef on the hoof. Those rations were meager, and hunger was rampant through the 1880s. Cultivation of vegetables in household gardens and cattle raising became common in the 1890s to supplement rations. These practices, however, were largely forsaken after allotment, as the area market economy grew; after about 1920 store-bought foods purchased with cash from tribal distributions, leases, or wage work were the core of Comanche subsistence. By 2000 few Comanches pursued any of the earlier practices.

Gift exchange, barter, and redistribution were traditional modes of transaction. In the period 1885-1901 reservation leaders leased grazing to Texas cattlemen for "grass money." Agriculture was begun on the reservations as a civilizing measure, but cultural attitudes that disfavored sedentarism, environmental conditions, and lack of capital hindered its direct adoption. Comanches instead often leased their lands or hired out to white farmers, practices that continued in the 1990s. Oil and gas production has yielded royalties for some landowners, notably around 1980. Urban migration for blue- and white-collar work began during World War II and continued under federal relocation programs. Bingo became an important source of tribal revenue after 1983.

Comanches have excelled in fashioning clothing and containers from rawhide and buckskin. This craftwork remained a component of some household economies in the 1990s. Wood crafting was involved in bow, arrow, and saddle making. Basketry and pottery were not practiced.

Comanches inherited a prehistoric trade network when they occupied the Southern Plains. Continuing the established pattern, they brought hides and meat to Puebloan and Caddoan villages in exchange for corn and pumpkins. By 1800 Comanches were major distributors of horses northward to other tribes and also had begun moving stock eastward to supply settlers. After 1786 New Mexican borderers carted meal, trinkets, and hardware onto the plains to trade for Indian horses, hides, and meat. These "Comancheros" later supplied guns and whiskey, receiving contraband cattle and human captives in return. French and Anglo-American traders established posts. Trade was disrupted after the Civil War as Comanches were driven to the reservation and the buffalo were exterminated.

Women collected plants and small animals and took the primary role in child care. They were mainly responsible for butchering and cooking, processing hides, and fabricating tipi covers, clothing, and containers. Women owned and erected the lodges and organized the transportation of households. Men pursued large game, managed horse herds, and conducted raiding and trading expeditions. They crafted tipi poles, weapons, and tack. Cooperation and overlap were not unusual. Children, adolescents, and elderly people aided in household work and tended livestock. Captives were made to herd horses and repair equipment and were taken on raids, contributing to their acculturation. In 2000 many traditional labor patterns continued in modern form, as women were expected to cook and keep house, men worked outdoors, and grandmothers cared for children. After allotment, however, adults and older children of both sexes all might provide household income as opportunities allowed.

Land use was corporate until the KCA Reservation was opened to white settlement, after which time each Comanche was given provisional ownership of 160 acres in severalty. These parcels often were sold to non-Indians or fragmented through inheritance and sometimes recombined.

Comanches reckon descent bilaterally and do not recognize clans. Kin ties generally reach horizontally though two marriage relationships from ego. Flexibility in the extension of terms allows the construction of networks involving consanguines, affines, and fictive kin, formerly including captives.

The kinship system is a bifurcate merging type but does not distinguish between cross cousins and parallel cousins. Ego extends the spouse term to his or her spouse's unmarried siblings, foreshadowing plural marriage, the levirate, and the sororate. Formulations such as mother's brother with father's sister's husband reflect the possibility of interfamilial exchange marriage. Siblings are distinguished as older or younger. Terms cover relatives three generations above ego and three below; reciprocal terms are used beyond one generation. Address terms are employed creatively to negotiate social distance.

Polygyny was the idealized form, with monogamy a realistic option. Polygynous households promised greater security for all their members and testified to the man's abilities as provider. Sisters were said to make the best cowives. A favorite wife, often the first or oldest, supervised the others. Both the levirate and the sororate were present to perpetuate family structure and interfamily ties. The custom of addressing unmarried siblings of spouses as spouses was sometimes the basis for a man's sharing sexual access to his wife with his younger brother, a practice that has been called "anticipatory levirate." Thus, polyandry has been reported. Courters met outside of camp or crawled between tents at night. Older relatives might serve as go-betweens. Comanche marriages have been characterized as alliances between fraternal cores. Relationships thus required sanction from the woman's brothers, something that was desirable even in cases of elopement. Arrangements were confirmed by the giving of horses by the man to the woman's male guardians and were sustained with bride service. Marriages were publicized through cohabitation and only rarely with a ceremony such as a blessing from a shaman. Postmarital residence was normally neolocal, though it could be virilocal in interband marriages. Marriages between individuals with any recognized degree of genetic relationship were prohibited. Plural marriage ceased in the early 1900s, and the predominant pattern became serial monogamy. Christian or civil wedding ceremonies occurred frequently in the twentieth century. Divorce was pursued in cases of abuse or adultery. Men ended their involvement with a verbal proclamation. They also had latitude for physical coercion, including mutilation of the wife's nose for adultery. Women divorced by seeking protection with their brothers or a prospective alternative spouse who might fight or pay compensation to the prior husband.

With the basic family consisting of a man and one or more wives, plus their dependents (parents, children, captives), households included one tipi or more set up adjacently. The male occupied one lodge with the favorite wife and their offspring, with secondary wives and their offspring living next door. Boys had their own lodges after puberty to avoid their sisters and establish independent identities. Such multiple-dwelling households could be compounded bilaterally. Twentieth-century households in permanent dwellings replicated prior patterns to some extent.

Apart from the custom of redistributing any property not left with the decedent's corpse, rules for inheritance were indefinite until about 1900, when land ownership necessitated recognition of U.S. inheritance laws.

Children were valued and indulged and were subject to little corporal punishment. Supervision was light and fell mostly to the oldest sister. Experimentation and individualism were encouraged, although children rehearsed adult tasks in standardized play and were taught by their grandparents. A male or female child could be deemed the favorite by its parents and distinguished with gifts and privileges. At puberty boys began avoiding their sisters, and both sexes were expected to primp and strive for chances at adult distinction. Adulthood came for boys with sufficient raiding experience-the qualification for marriage-and for girls with marriage and childbearing.

Five age grades defined the life course, equivalent to baby, child, adolescent, adult, and elder. The ideal adults were dependable providers and honorable. Status in old age depended on adult achievements and the extent of one's kin support. Horse wealth prompted a distinction between rich and poor families. Individuals and nuclear and extended families affiliated at will in bands, with the size of the unit varying according to current conditions. Men's military societies fostered some cross-kin solidarity. Reservation authorities discouraged band formation, but after allotment smaller kin-based residence groups became important organizing features. In 2000 some general continuities were obvious. Class distinctions based on factors such as wealth, educational level, and commitment to traditional values were recognized, as were roles associated with age grades, and sodalities continued to promote interfamilial cooperation.

Comanches never constituted a single political unit in prereservation times. Bands combined into larger autonomous units that scholars have termed divisions. Divisions sometimes achieved tribal functions and degrees of integration. Three divisions are known in the 1700s: Jupe (Timber People), Kotseteka (Buffalo Eaters), and Yamparika (Root Eaters). In the 1800s there were six: Kotseteka and Yamparika plus Kwahadi (Antelope), Nokoni (Wanderers), Penateka (Honey Eaters, Wasps), and Tenewa (Downstream People). Band leadership was a matter of charisma, and leaders could be changed; a pattern of inherited authority was at best incipient. Prominent males met in council to forge a consensus. Division leaders were band heads who could marshal and reward wider collective activity in the face of shifting external circumstances. On the reservation prior political methods initially applied as leaders mediated the distribution of annuities and rations to band subunits, but these leaders were co-opted or bypassed by Indian agents. After allotment an elected joint Kiowa-Comanche-Apache business committee represented local interests before the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Corporate political activity was discouraged by agency superintendents to further assimilation, but eventually the KCA committee assumed the profile of a tribal government such as those promoted under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Support for a discrete Comanche political organization grew in the 1960s. The resultant modern Comanche Nation consists of an elected business committee (tribal council) with legislative and executive functions and a supporting staff. This body regulates tribal membership, administers federal programs, and pursues tribal land claims and economic development.

Internal conflicts were mediated through communal pressure invoked by leaders. The kin of a wrongdoer might handle punishment and restoration. Alternatively, cases of sorcery, wife absconding, adultery, and homicide were pursued by the aggrieved parties and the supporters they could muster, who would demand damages. Penalties included fines and corporal or capital punishment, administered in accordance with precedents drawn from collective memory. Communal pressure was sufficient to curb blood feuding. Military societies sometimes assumed police power during marches and hunts, but not to the degree characteristic of other Plains Indian groups.

A war ethos pervaded Comanche culture, defining male roles and shaping female roles. Martial training began in boyhood. Combat was waged for territory, trade access, livestock, and revenge. Small-party raids were conducted continually, and large campaigns periodically, all organized by individuals seeking honor. Early Comanches fought in formation with hide armor and long shields. With the introduction of firearms and more horses, combat became individualized, stylized, and even paradoxical. Scalps were taken as trophies and torture and battlefield atrocities were employed to humiliate the enemy, yet great prestige was gained by simply touching a live opponent in defiance. Attackers sought to minimize their casualties above all, but self-sacrifice was celebrated and death in battle was considered the greatest honor.

Traditional belief posits a creator deity termed "Big Father" and associated with the sun. This being is largely disinterested in human affairs, and supernatural agency is more a matter for spirits that manifest themselves to humans as animals, miniature people, or ghosts. The spirits impart supernatural power, equated with the life force, which can be manipulated and transferred by humans for their own welfare. Cosmogony is transmitted in tales featuring the trickster Coyote. Christian missionaries began to work among the Comanche in 1881. Many Comanches affiliate with Methodist, Dutch Reformed, and other denominations, practicing these religions exclusively or syncretically.

Specialists in the manipulation of power cure and advise fellow tribe members. These shamans are called "power possessors" in Comanche and "medicine men or women" in English. Their vocation comes in a series of involuntary dreams or sought visions and is legitimated by success in curing. Women can take this role only after menopause. Christian clergy, including some of Comanche extraction, have played an influential role in community life since reservation times.

The vision quest conducted by individuals in isolation is the scene of active power acquisition. Ritual then centers on the transmission of power between individuals, including doctoring. Communal ceremonies are less characteristic and are best understood as elaborations of shamanic process. Individuals who share power from one spirit benefactor dance together to acknowledge their affiliation. A group curing ceremony harnessing beaver power was staged in some bands until the 1930s. Sun dances were held at least occasionally until 1878. Comanches developed and taught peyotism, which has been practiced intertribally since the 1870s. From 1900 on Christian services have steadily supplemented traditional practices; these services often include nativelanguage hymns and Indian symbolism. In the twentieth century powwows, often deemed "secular" dance events, became major venues for sacred activity.

Visual art involved pictography and the decoration of leather goods with painted geometric designs and intricate beadwork. Since the mid-1800s Comanches have participated in the development of engraved nickel silver "peyote" jewelry and have led in the growth of powwow dancing and singing traditions. Bead work and feather work displayed on dance regalia were major artistic media in 2000. In the twentieth century some Comanches pursued sculpture, Southwestern-style silversmithing, and fine art painting.

The English word "medicine" evokes two Comanche terms, one referring to therapeutic substance and the other to spiritual power, indicating a connection between physical and metaphysical treatment. The Comanche pharmacy contains numerous plant and animal materials, including prickly ash, sneezeweed, milkweed, peyote, and lard. Cedar and sage are used as ceremonial fumigants. Ocher paint is applied to the body for protection. To cure witchcraft, shamans suck on the patient's afflicted body part to extract a harmful object that has been magically injected. After about 1900 scientific medicine was used conjointly or alternatively.

Mortality rates were formerly high owing to the hardships of nomadism, warfare, smallpox, and cholera. Infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, and suttee have been reported. Those surviving to old age were left alone as they became infirm. Burial was in a crevice (ideally on a hill west of the death place) and less commonly in a tree or scaffold. Women mutilated themselves in mourning. Concepts of the afterlife as reward or punishment are not central in traditional theology; some notions of paradise as a pleasant campground were promulgated. Since reservation times Christian ideas and funerary practices have been adopted.

Documents referred to in this section are included in eHRAF World Cultures and are referenced by author, date of publication and eHRAF document number.

In addition to this culture summary, the NO06 Comanche collection consists of 16 documents, all of them in English except Canonge (1958, No. 12) which also includes stories and folktales in the Comanche language. The documents provide a variety of cultural, historical and environmental information from two widely contrasting historical periods, except DeMallie (2001, no. 38) which lists all references cited or consulted by scholars involved in the “Handbook of Native Americans” book project. The first is the period covering Comanche’s long history from antiquity to their first contact with Europeans in 1701 and finally to their defeat by the US army in the 1870s. The second is from 1875 to the 1990s, and includes important bench marks like the 1875 when the Comanche were finally confined to a reservation, and 1901-1906 when that reservation was broken into scattered allotments and the remaining land was opened to Anglo homesteads. Hoebel (1940, no.1) and Wallace and Hoebel (1952, no.3) provide a thorough description of pre-reservation Comanche culture and society, but mostly on materials collected in the 1930s and 1940s. Information from these two works can be supplemented by other documents which focus on a specific theme including the Sun Dance (Linton, 1935, no. 6, and Hoebel, 1941, no. 8), law (Hoebel, 1969, no. 29), kin behavior (Gladwin, 1948, no.9), language, stories and folktales (Casagrande, 1965, no, 17, and Canonge, 1958, No. 12), medicine women (Jones, 1972, no. 31), and traditional uses of plants (Carlson and Jones, 1939, no. 5). The remaining 6 works discuss changes and continuities that occurred after the Comanche were confined to a reservation. Brief overviews of these changes can be found in Wallace (1953, no. 20) and Kavanagh (2001, no. 37). For analysis and critical discussion of earlier interpretations of these changes, however, one has to consult the works of Foster (1991, no. 39) and Gelo, 1986, no. 39) which are highly informed by recent theoretically advances in anthropology relating to “ethnicity” and “identity.” Materials used in these last two works came from a decade of ethnographic fieldwork carried out by the authors in the 1980s.

Church denominations – use "MISSIONS (797)" and "RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS (795)"

Community gathering - use "COUNCILS (623)"

Dancing societies - use "DANCE (535)" and "SODALITIES (575)"

Interband relations – use "INTER - COMMUNITY RELATIONS (628)", possibly with "SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND GROUPS (571)"

Peyote (a hallucinogenic cactus used in peyote religion) - use "RECREATIONAL AND NON - THERAPEUTIC DRUGS (276)", possibly with "CONGREGATIONS (794)"

Peyote men (medicine men, power possessor men) – use "SHAMANS AND PSYCHOTHERAPISTS (756)", possibly with "MAGICIANS AND DIVINERS (791)"

Peyotism (adherence to peyote religion) – use "GENERAL CHARACTER OF RELIGION (771)", possibly with "CONGREGATIONS (794)" and "RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS (795)"

Puha (spirit) – use "SPIRITS AND GODS (776)"

Powwow (celebration featuring dancing, singing, feasting and gift-giving) - use "REST DAYS AND HOLIDAYS (527)", possibly with "ORGANIZED CEREMONIAL (796)"

Reservation – use "PUBLIC WELFARE (657)", and "SETTLEMENT PATTERNS (361)"

Sun dance – use "DANCE (535)", possibly with "REST DAYS AND HOLIDAYS (527)" and "ORGANIZED CEREMONIAL (796)"

Tipi (also spelled as Teepee, small buffalo skin-covered lodge) – use "DWELLINGS (342)"

War Chief – use "MILITARY ORGANIZATION (701)"

Wokwikahni (peyote house) – use "RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURES (346)"

This culture summary is from the article, "Comanche" by Daniel Gelo, in the Encyclopedia of World Culture Supplement, 2002. Melvin Ember, Carol Ember and Ian Skoggard, eds. MacMillan Reference, USA. The synopsis and indexing notes were written by Teferi Abate Adem in July 2006.

Foster, Morris W. (1991). Being Comanche. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Hagan, William T. (1976). United States-Comanche Relations: The Reservation Years. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Jones, David E. (1972). Sanapia: Comanche Medicine Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Kavanaugh, Thomas W. (1996). Comanche Political History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Wallace, Ernest, and E. Adamson Hoebel (1952). The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.