The Comancheria or Comanchería (Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ Sookobitʉ, 'Comanche land') was a region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s. Historian Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that the Comancheria formed an empire at its peak, and this view has been echoed by other non-Comanche historians.
Geography
The area was vaguely defined and shifted over time but generally was described as bordered to the south by the Balcones Fault, just north of San Antonio, Texas, continuing north along the Cross Timbers to encompass a northern area that included the Cimarron River and the upper Arkansas River east of the Rocky Mountains. Comanchería was bordered along the west by the Mescalero Ridge and the Pecos River, continuing north along the edge of the Spanish settlements in Santa Fe de Nuevo México. It also included West Texas, the Llano Estacado, the Texas Panhandle, the Edwards Plateau (including the Texas Hill Country), Eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma including the Oklahoma Panhandle and the Wichita Mountains, southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas.
History
Background
Before the Comanche expanded out of present-day Wyoming in the early 18th century, the lands that became known as Comancheria were home to a multitude of tribes—most notably the Apaches. Much of the region had previously been known as Apacheria.
Greatest extent and possible empire
Some historians have begun to consider Comancheria, at the peak of its power, as an empire. This concept was based on ideas developed by Pekka Hämäläinen who argues that from the 1750s to the 1850s, the Comanches were the dominant group in the Southwest and developed a form of imperialism. Confronted with Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. outposts on their periphery in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico, they worked to increase their own safety, prosperity and power. According to Hämäläinen, disease was the single most dangerous threat to Native Americans. The Comanche managed to avoid disease, which gave them an upper hand over the Apaches and other tribes in this area. Along with this, the Comanche were able to exchange goods with Europeans. The main thing exchanged for that gave them power was horses. Horses gave the Comanches more military power, and allowed them to hunt more buffalo. The Comanches used this military power to obtain more supplies and labor from the Americans, Mexicans, and Indians through thievery, tribute, and kidnappings. Although powered by violence, the Comanche empire was primarily an economic construction, rooted in an extensive commercial network that facilitated long-distance trade. Dealing with subordinate Indians, the Comanche spread their language and culture across the region.
By the early 1830s, the Comanche began to run out of resources in Comancheria. At this time, they had been conducting raids deep into Mexico and would take what they got back to Comancheria. In the mid 1830s, the Comanche formed a colony in Mexico called the Bolson colony. Conditions in this colony were similar to how they were in Comancheria when it was winter in the north. Eventually, there was a drought, and Comancheria and the Bolson colony struggled. Along with this, the Comanche empire collapsed after their villages were repeatedly decimated by epidemics of smallpox and cholera in the late 1840s; causing their population to plunge from 20,000 to just a few thousand by the 1870s.
The Comanche resolved most of the challenges facing them in the 1830s with adroit diplomacy. Their strategy was flexible. With New Mexico, a Mexican province to their west, they enjoyed friendly trading relations. New Mexico was more of an asset than a threat to the Comanches, and the New Mexicans avoided war with the Indians. In 1841, Governor Manuel Armijo was ordered by the Mexican central government to join a military campaign against the Comanche, but Armijo declined. "To declare war on the Comanches would bring complete ruin to the Department of New Mexico." In 1844, New Mexican officials learned of but did nothing to prevent a Comanche raid on Chihuahua.
