Comanche Tribe

Extremely warlike, the Comanche often raided and looted neighbor camps, were at war with the Spanish Mexicans for over 200 years and fiercely guarded their territory from white settlers. They managed to maintain and even expand their territory and independence in the face of European settlement, but were devastated by epidemics of cholera and smallpox in the mid 1800s.

Fast Facts

1. Population:
   1. Historically: 20,000
   2. Modern: 10,000
2. Region: New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas
3. Language: A Shoshonean dialect of Uto-Aztecan language
4. Related Tribes: The Kiowa, Arapaho and Cheyenne Tribes
5. Fought in: The Comanche War
6. Worked as Code Talkers in both World Wars

Background

The Comanches broke off from the Shoshonean tribes of Wyoming and Idaho around 1700 to move into the southwest and adopt to a Plains lifestyle. They acquired horses around the same time and quickly became accomplished horsemen and buffalo hunters. They did not form a cohesive group like many other tribes, but maintained a loose association of groups that were led by a council of leaders.

The Parkers

Texan settler Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped at the age of nine by the Comanches. She was raised by the tribe and married a Comanche warrior and future chief with whom she had a son named Quanah. Twenty-five years after she had been kidnapped, Parker was kidnapped again by white settlers, who returned her to her white family. She did not readjust well to settler life and often asked to be returned to her Comanche family.

Cynthia Ann Parker's son, Quanah Parker founded and led the Quahadi band of Comanches, which soon became the largest and strongest of the Comanche bands and also the last to accept a treaty with the Americans.

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