The Comanche:
Lords of the Horse

If the Plains equestrian revolution gave rise to many exceptional mounted nations, one of them rose above all the others through the sheer radicalism and speed of its transformation: the Comanche. In less than a century, a people of mountain hunters who traveled on foot became the dominant military, economic, and political force of the American Southwest, a power that historians no longer hesitate to call an empire.

From Rocky Mountain Shoshone to Lords of the Plains

The Comanche story begins far from the great prairies, in the highlands of what is today Wyoming and Colorado. They were originally a group closely tied to the Eastern Shoshone, speaking a neighboring Numic language, a linguistic kinship that leaves no doubt as to their common origin.

At the end of the 17th century, part of this group broke away and began migrating south, following the eastern flank of the Rockies, drawn by the immense bison herds of the Southern Plains and, above all, by the horses that were beginning to circulate in the region after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

By 1705, the Comanche were acquiring horses from the Ute, their allies of the moment. That moment set off an unprecedented metamorphosis. In a single generation, this people who had traveled on foot mastered riding, mounted hunting, horseback combat, breeding, and the capture of wild mustangs.

The speed of that transformation remains one of the most astonishing in human history. As the historian Pekka Hämäläinen, whose The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2008) is the global reference on the subject, writes: "In almost an instant, the world had become smaller and its resources more accessible."

By the 1710s, the Comanche had enough horses to invade the rich bison prairies. They drove out the Apache, themselves remarkable horsemen, but whose mixed hunting-and-farming economy proved militarily vulnerable to fully mounted nomads. Within a few decades, the Comanche controlled an immense territory: the Comanchería.

The Comanchería: An Empire of 240,000 Square Miles (620,000 km²)

The Comanchería, named as such by the Spanish themselves, stretched across roughly 240,000 to 250,000 square miles (620,000–650,000 km²), a territory covering most of present-day Texas, eastern New Mexico, Oklahoma, southern Kansas, and eastern Colorado. Larger than the whole of France.

It was not merely a hunting ground. It was a structured empire, with trade networks, tributaries, diplomatic alliances, an organized raiding economy, and relations with the European colonial powers of a sophistication that was long underestimated.

As Hämäläinen sums it up: "For roughly a hundred years, from about 1750 to 1850, the Comanche were the dominant people of the Southwest."

The Spanish, then the Mexicans, then the Texans: all had to negotiate with them, fight them, or capitulate. The Anglo-American colonization of Texas was held back for decades by Comanche resistance, a reality that the mythology of the Wild West long obscured.

At their height, the Comanche recognized as members of the confederation were estimated at around 40,000 people. Their horse herds were among the largest on the entire continent. A Comanche chief might own hundreds of horses, where a Lakota chief owned perhaps forty.

Horsemanship Without Equal

It was their level of riding that most struck their contemporaries, and that continues to fascinate historians and horsemen alike.

Comanche children were placed on a pony as early as age three, led by hand by their parents, then left alone in the saddle as soon as they could control their mount. To be born Comanche meant being raised in an environment where superior horsemanship was fundamental to survival and success. By adulthood, the line between rider and mount was almost imperceptible.

It must be stressed (because history has too often obscured it) that this mastery was not the domain of men alone. Comanche girls rode from the same age as boys. Contemporary observers described the women as riders every bit as skilled, able to rope antelope and bring down bison from horseback. The Bullock Texas State History Museum (Austin, Texas) reports that "Comanche women were equally skilled riders, moving possessions, children, and elders from camp to camp on horseback, some fighting on horseback alongside the men." George Catlin's painting of 1834–1835, Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat, now held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.), shows these women at the heart of an economy organized entirely around the horse.

The Comanche empire was their work too.

The most famous account of Comanche riding comes from that same George Catlin. He described what he saw with unreserved astonishment, and his words, preserved by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, have remained the reference:

"Amongst their feats of riding, there is one that has astonished me more than anything of the kind I have ever seen, or expect to see, in my life: a stratagem of war, learned and practiced by every young man in the tribe, by which he is able to drop his body upon the side of his horse at the instant he is passing, effectually screened from his enemies' weapons as he lies in a horizontal position behind the body of his horse, with his heel hanging over the horse's back; by which he has the power of throwing himself up again, and changing to the other side of the horse if necessary. In this wonderful condition he will hang whilst his horse is at fullest speed, carrying with him his bow and his shield, and also his long lance of fourteen feet [about 4.3 m] in length, all or any of which he will wield upon his enemy as he passes; rising and throwing his arrows over the horse's back, or with equal ease and equal success under the horse's neck."

This technique (hanging along the horse's flank at a gallop, the body hidden behind the animal, to shoot the bow beneath the neck or over the back) was mastered by every young man in the tribe. It demanded exceptional physical strength, perfect balance, and total partnership with the horse.

American cavalry officers would later admit that no mounted unit of the regular army could match the Comanche on horseback.

The Art of Capturing and Training Mustangs

The Comanche did not simply own horses. They excelled at capturing and training them from the manadas of wild mustangs that roamed their territories.

Their capture technique was formidably effective: dozens of coordinated riders could drive an entire herd of wild mustangs toward a narrow ravine where others waited with ropes. Accounts of the time report that a single horse escaped from a capture of a hundred head, and that it was brought back tamed in less than two hours.

Training rested on a precise method: rope the mustang, work it to exhaustion, then (the animal on the ground) breathe into its nostrils and remove the "wild hairs" around its eyes. A rough hackamore was fitted. The horse was then tied to a calm mare, free to follow her everywhere. A few days later, the trainer rode it for the first time in deep water or a stream with a sandy bottom, to cushion the horse's reactions and protect the rider.

The method, built on fatigue followed by bonding, was remarkably effective and fast.

A Legacy That Raises Questions

The Comanche trajectory raises a fundamental question that Hämäläinen had the merit of posing clearly: why did American history so long refuse to name an empire what had all the attributes of one?

The Comanche dominated a territory larger than many European states. They imposed their will on colonial powers. They developed an equestrian culture without equal. They resisted the American conquest until 1875, a decade after the end of the Civil War.

Their final defeat did not come on the battlefield. It came from the systematic destruction of the bison herds by white hunters, a deliberate strategy to break the food base of the Plains nations.

When the bison disappeared, the Comanche lost their economic foundation.

But their equestrian legacy is indelible, etched into the history of North America, however long that fact went unwanted.