#comanches

[ofjonsafame]

Oh what could’ve been

[dbaydenny]

Escaping horses

strays looking for Comanches

finding companions,

changing Western culture,

endowing many warriors.

.

D W Eldred

[sheilajsn]

Comanche Sunset de Rosanne F Bittner

¡Hola Rinconeros! Este es un libro que pedí por la portada tan cursi con un clon de Fabio incluido. Lo cierto es que me encantan los romances históricos y este se desarrolla en el Viejo Oeste, en Texas. Siempre me ha gustado Texas pues es un lugar Gigante y salvaje. También soy una apasionada de la historia de los pobladores precolombinos de América y los Comanches son de los pueblos que no se…

[brightfametexan]

The Texas Quote of the Day, written in 1885, offers tactical advice on how to fight Comanches. Any mistakes in the transcription are mine, of course:

"In the event of being pursued, immediately after the preparation of depredations; the Comanches move day and night, very often not breaking gallop except to exchange horses (which they do several times) and water the caballada, until they deem themselves safe. Under these circumstances they will travel at least 70 miles a day, which is a long distance with the encumbrance of loose animals.

A party of warriors dressed in their trappings - embellished shields, fancy moccasins, long pig tails bedecked with silver, shoulder belts worked with beads and adorned with shells, fine leggings, ornamented cases for bows and arrows - mounted upon spirited horses, singing a war song, and sweeping over a prairie is a beautiful spectacle to a man with plenty of brave fellows to back him.

Their motions are easy and graceful. They sit a horse admirably, and manage one with a master hand. Charge them and they will retreat from you with double your numbers. But beware when pursuing them; keep your men together, well in hand, with at least half their arms loaded, else you will find when it is too late, the flying Comanches will turn on you and charge you to the very teeth.

A Comanche can draw a bow when on horseback, standing or running, with remarkable strength and accuracy. They have been known to kill horses running at full speed over one hundred yards away.

In the commencement of a fight, the yell of defiance is borne to you loud, long, and startling. The war whoop has no romance in it. It thrills even a stout heart with an indescribable sensation. The excitement of battle is quite as evident among these people as among others. Let the tide turn against them, send lead messengers through some of their warriors, and then the mournful wail is heard; its lubricous notes are borne back to you with uncouth cadence, betokening sorrow, anger, and a determination to revenge.

Never ride upon a bowman's left; if you do, ten to one he will pop an arrow through you. When mounted, an Indian cannot use his bow against an object behind and to his right.

The dead are usually borne from the field. Nothing but the most imminent danger prevents them from performing the incumbent duty of not leaving the body of a comrade in the hands of an enemy. Over a fallen chief they will make a desperate stand. Their caution seems merged in the determination to risk everything to bear him from the field. To attain this object they will fight furiously, bravely, and often.

If they abandon him, it is usually in despair. Flight is no longer methodical and menacing to the pursuer. Retreat degenerates into route. After this they have seldom if ever been known to resume the offensive. They will hide themselves in the first chaparral affording security against discovery, remain during the day, and visit the dead at night, and if not able to remove them will spread blankets or some covering over them.

The bow is placed horizontally in shooting; a number of arrows are held in the left hand; the bow operates as a rest for the arrows. The distance - the the curve the missile has to describe in reaching the object - is determined by the eye without taking aim. At the distance of 60 yards and over, arrows can be dodged, if but one Indian shoots at you at a time. Under forty yards the six-shooter has little advantage over the bow.

At long distances the angle of elevation is considerable. It requires a quick eye to see the arrow and judge the whereabouts of its descent, a good dodger to move out of the way, and a good rider to keep in the saddle. A man is required to keep both eyes engaged in an Indian fight."

---- John Salmon "Rip" Ford, shown in the photo below, gives tactical advice for fighting Indians in "Rip Ford's Texas," 1885

@Traces of Texas

[reasonsforhope]

"On a freezing cold Wednesday afternoon in eastern Kentucky, Taysha DeVaughan joined a small gathering at the foot of a reclaimed strip mine to celebrate a homecoming. “It’s a return of an ancestor,” DeVaughan said. “It’s a return of a relative.”

That relative was the land they stood on, part of a tract slated for a federal penitentiary that many in the crowd consider another injustice in a region riddled with them. The mine shut down years ago, but the site, near the town of Roxana, still bears the scars of extraction.

DeVaughan, an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation, joined some two dozen people on January 22 to celebrate the Appalachian Rekindling Project buying 63 acres within the prison’s footprint.

“What we’re here to do is to protect her and to give her a voice,” DeVaughan said. “She’s been through mountaintop removal. She’s been blown up, she’s been scraped up, she’s been hurt.”

The Appalachian Rekindling Project, which she helped found last year, wants to rewild the site with bison and native flora and fauna, open it to intertribal gatherings, and, it hopes, stop the prison.

The environmental justice organization worked with a coalition of local nonprofits, including Build Community Not Prisons and the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, to raise $160,000 to buy the plot from a family who owned the land generationally.

Retired truck driver Wayne Whitaker, who owns neighboring land and had considered purchasing it as a hunting ground, told Grist he was supportive. “There’s nothing positive we’ll get out of this prison,” he said.

The penitentiary has been a gleam in the eye of state and local officials and the Bureau of Prisons since 2006. It has always sparked sharp divisions in Roxana and beyond and was killed in 2019 after a series of lawsuits, only to be quietly resurrected in 2022. Last fall, the bureau took the final step in its approval process, clearing the way to begin buying land...

In his book Coal, Cages, Crisis, Schept noted that mine sites are considered ideal locations for prisons or a dumping ground for waste, rather than places of ecological value, as some biologists have argued. The Roxana site has been reclaimed, meaning re-vegetated with a forest that now shelters a number of rare species, including endangered bats.

Opponents argue that a prison will bring more environmental problems than jobs. Letcher County was 1 of 13 counties ravaged by catastrophic flooding in 2022, a situation exacerbated by damage strip mining caused to local watersheds. The prison slated for Roxana will exacerbate the problem.

The Bureau of Prisons estimates it will damage 6,290 feet of streams and about 2 acres of wetlands. (The agency has promised to compensate the state.)

DeVaughan said the purchase also is a step toward rectifying the dispossession that began with the forced removal and genocide of Indigenous peoples. The Cherokee, Shawnee, and Yuchi made their homes in the area before, during, and after colonization, and their thriving nations raised crops, ran businesses, and hunted bison that once roamed Appalachia.

In all the time since, coal, timber, gas, and landholding companies have at times owned almost half of the land in 80 counties stretching from West Virginia to Alabama. Several prisons sprang from deals made with coal companies, something many locals consider the continuation of this status quo.

Changing that dynamic is a priority for the Appalachian Rekindling Project, which hoped to buy more land to protect it from extractive industries and return its stewardship to Indigenous and local communities. DeVaughn said Indigenous peoples throughout the region will be welcome to use the land as a gathering place...

DeVaughan sees its work establishing a new vision of economic transition for coalfields, one that relies less on “dollars and numbers” and more on “healing and restoration” of the land and the Indigenous and other communities that live there.

She is working with some personal connections in the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations to acquire a herd of bison and plans to work with local volunteers, scientists, and students to inventory the site’s flora and fauna."

-via GoodGoodGood, February 6, 2025

[gridleyfires]

The Comanche Kid, by James Robert Daniels See, here’s the reason I read the lesser known authors and from the small presses. I’m in the process of trying to sell a manuscript of mine set in the not-yet-domesticated midwest and southwest of the 1880s, and I thought I’d better read something similar, just to, you know, see how well I did. And how it might fare in the agent/editor marketplace. I’ve…

[el-candelabro]

"Los Comanches: Guerreros de las Llanuras y su Legado Histórico"

[coolthingsguyslike]

[neechees]

Native American cradleboards.

Cree / Comanche / Seneca

Crow / Kutenai /Osage

Mohawk / Klikitat / Nez Perce

[mii-ii]

Might be obsessed with drawing Taabe from the movie Prey (2022) now-

EDIT: TYSM FOR ALL THE INTERACTION

[bonermcjoy]

country boy after my own heart

[usnatarchives]

Quanah Parker, a Comanche chief, standing in front of his tent - late 19th century.

Researchers can find information relating to American Indians and Alaska Natives from 1774 through the mid-1990s at National Archives locations throughout the U.S. https://loom.ly/B_zY488

[whencyclopedia]

Coyote Tales of the Comanche

Coyote tales of the Comanche feature the same trickster figure as the Coyote tales of the Shasta nation, the Coyote tales of the Apache, and those of many other Native peoples of North America. Coyote, the most famous trickster figure of Native American lore, appears in the stories of many different nations, usually as the main character, encouraging transformation.

A North American Coyote Howling

USFWS (CC BY)

Sometimes he plays a supporting role in the stories, but even then, Coyote serves as an agent of change. This change can be as simple as teaching the White Man how easy it is to be cheated (as in A Trickster Tale, below) or as dramatic as trying to divide the sun between the daytime animals and nighttime animals (Why the Bear Waddles When He Walks) or, sometimes, it is the trickster who is tricked, as in The Eye-Juggler. Even in stories where Coyote loses – or dies – the story emphasizes the concept of life-as-change. As with the Coyote tales of other nations, the Coyote tales of the Comanche are among the most popular.

Comanche History & Culture

Comanche is the Spanish version of an Ute word for "enemy" (kimantsi or kohmahts); the Comanche refer to themselves as Numunuh ("the People"). They were originally associated with the Eastern Shoshone (Shoshoni) nation of the Great Basin and were a hunter-gatherer society but differed from many others in that women, as well as men, hunted. The Comanche believe in a single Supreme Being, Pahah (Paha), Creator and Sustainer of Life, who is helped by various spirits, each with their own sphere of responsibility. As with other Native American nations, the Comanche also hold that the universe is inhabited by many unseen entities which sometimes make themselves known and walk among the people, including Coyote.

Eventually, those who became known as Comanche broke off from the Shoshone and migrated south to the regions of modern-day Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, which became known as Comancheria ("Land of the Comanche") by c. 1770. The Comanche are understood as the first Native Americans to fully master and utilize the horse, and, by 1795, they were breeding and selling horses. They became as well-known for their horses as for their warriors and skill in warfare.

Comanche Warrior Lancing an Osage

George Catlin (Public Domain)

During the Comanche Wars (1706-1875), the Comanche fought off incursions by Spanish, Mexican, and Euro-American forces while conducting raids against their settlements. The Comanche increased in wealth and power through warfare and trade in slaves and horses and, most likely, would have continued to hold off the Euro-American expansion of the 19th century if not for outbreaks of smallpox, measles, and cholera in 1817 and 1848, which killed over half the population.

Their resistance, already weakened by these losses, was broken in 1874 after their defeat (along with their Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kiowa allies) at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon and then the destruction of at least 1,500 Comanche horses by order of Colonel Ranald Mackenzie of the US Army. The Comanche surrendered in 1875 and were relocated to Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma).

Their best-known chief, Quanah Parker (l. c. 1845-1911), son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a Euro-American captured as a girl by the Comanche, worked to maintain the traditional culture while accommodating the demands of the US government. He argued for freedom of religion for his people in maintaining the Native American Church and its use of peyote in rituals as well as the maintenance of the Comanche language and culture. His efforts were continued by others, and, today, Comanche culture, language, and religion remain intact, including their stories like the three given below.

Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief

National Archives and Records Administration (Public Domain)

Coyote tales of the Comanche are similar to the Coyote tales of other nations, and there is considerable borrowing between their tales and those of the Apache in particular. The same is true of many Native American trickster figures, however, and a reader acquainted with Manabozho tales of the Ojibwe, Glooscap tales of the Wabanaki Confederacy, the Iktomi tales of the Sioux, or Wihio tales of the Cheyenne will recognize the same themes of transformation, illusion vs. reality, and the shifting roles of the central character in the Comanche Coyote tales.

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[majestativa]

I sat here long enough to become an altar where the abandoned monsters come to pray.

— Sy Hoahwah, Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride: Poems, (2021)

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Wife of He Goat, of the Comache people, 1872.

[rollerman1]