The Comanche: A History from Beginning to Present

The Comanche were once the most dominant Native American tribe in the Great Plains of North America. From their homelands on the prairies, they ranged across the American West and South into Mexico. They were also one of the most feared of all Native American people, fighting virtually every other Native American tribe they had contact with and waging successful guerilla wars against invaders from Spain, Mexico, and the Eastern United States.

In the late seventeenth century, the Comanche first acquired horses from Spanish explorers, and they quickly became experts in horse breeding and raising. They were one of the first Native American tribes to use horses on a large scale, and their fearsome mounted warriors caused havoc for more than 150 years. But the Comanche weren’t just fighters. They also had a unique culture and social structure that stressed individual responsibility and individual choice. Comanche chiefs weren’t hereditary rulers but leaders who acted only with the consent of the tribe. Comanche religion was based on a belief in the spirit world and the need to live in harmony with the natural world, even though those captured by the Comanche were often subjected to hideous torture.

To outsiders, the Comanche could seem baffling, primitive, and savage, and few made any attempt to understand Comanche culture. Only relatively recently has there been any attempt to understand their way of life. This is the complex, fascinating, and sometimes tragic history of the Comanche people.