Global InformationComanche information
 Flag of the Comanche Nation[1] | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 17,000[2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| United States (Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico) | |
| Languages | |
| English, Comanche | |
| Religion | |
| Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Shoshone, Timbisha, and other Numic peoples |
The Comanche /kəˈmæntʃi/ or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people"[3]) is a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.[1]
The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. Originally, it was a Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language.[4] The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.[5]
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche lived in most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and western Oklahoma. Spanish colonists and later Mexicans called their historical territory Comanchería.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche practiced a nomadic horse culture and hunted, particularly bison. They traded with neighboring Native American peoples, and Spanish, French, and American colonists and settlers.
As European Americans encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on the settlers and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes.[6] They took with them captives from other tribes during warfare, using them as slaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) to Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe.[5] Thousands of captives from raids on Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers were assimilated into Comanche society.[7] At their peak, the Comanche language was the lingua franca of the Great Plains region.[8]
Diseases, destruction of the buffalo herds, and territory loss forced most Comanches on reservations in Indian Territory by the late 1870s.[5]
In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 members, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma.[2] The Comanche Homecoming Annual Dance takes place in mid-July in Walters, Oklahoma.[9]
- ^ a b "2011 Oklahoma Indian Nations Pocket Pictorial Directory" (PDF). Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. November 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 24, 2012. Retrieved January 2, 2012.
- ^ a b "About Us". Comanche Nation. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
- ^ "Home | Comanche Nation". comanchenation.com. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
- ^ Jean Ormsbee Charney. A Grammar of Comanche. (Nebraska, 1993). Pages 1–2.
- ^ a b c Kavanagh, Thomas W. "Comanche (tribe)". The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved December 23, 2021.
- ^ Fowles, Severin, Arterberry, Lindsay Montgomery, Atherton, Heather (2017), "Comanche New Mexico: The Eighteenth Century", in New Mexico and the Pimeria Alta, Boulder: University Press of Colorado, pp. 158–160. Downloaded from JSTOR.
- ^ Marez, Curtis (June 2001). "Signifying Spain, Becoming Comanche, Making Mexicans: Indian Captivity and the History of Chicana/o Popular Performance". American Quarterly. 53 (2): 267–307. doi:10.1353/aq.2001.0018. S2CID 144608670.
- ^ Hämäläinen, Pekka (January 2008). The Comanche Empire. NewHaven and London: Yale University Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-300-15117-6.
- ^ "The Homecoming Dance". Comanche Nation official website. Retrieved July 11, 2017.