In keeping with my great interest in indigenous America, and particularly this year, with Southern Plains cultures, I picked up this book, billed as a reenvisioning of shaping of the frontier, with much excitement. The cover was stamped with the ubiquitous editorial comment by Larry McMurtry, who calls this "cutting edge revisionist Western history," which I find to be a bit hyperbolic, but it is nonetheless a fantastic, informative read which does run quite contrary to what image many may hold about the expansion of America and the interplay of European powers priors to said expansion.




First of all, as the title would suggest, the book is predicated on the treatment of the Comanche Indians as an empirical power which, for a period of nearly 200 years, subsisted on the southern Great Plains, from where they were able to drastically alter the evolution of invasive cultures in the New World. The book relies heavily on Spanish sources to describe the burdgeoning superpower in the 1700's, a fact which greatly alleviates the typical hindsight view we get of enterprising Americans' commentary on Indian influence. The Americans in the mid-to-late 1800's saw a culture at its apex and then its sudden, drastic decline into abject poverty and total subjugation, but the Spanish and later Mexican officials dealt with a different sort of entity, one which was always evolving and could never be successfully described in a single model. This book illustrates with impressive thoroughness that the Comanches, though at face value a mere loose confederation of Indians sharing a language and simple culture spread across an immense landscape, did in fact engage in extensive international politics, as well as the warfare for which they are renowned, in whatever way might have best suited their various needs.

The 'empire' sprang from a partnership with the Utes to become an expansive, cross-border entity in the span of a mere few decades. They were able to push away the semi-sedentary Apaches whose reign on the area had been significant for a couple hundred years already and bolster ties with nearby agrarian cultures such as the Wichitas to supplement their fairly unilateral diet of bison and forage foods. Once the Comanches' population boom, and most importantly, acquisition of the Spanish horses after 1680, had transformed them into populous mounted warrior-nomads, they effectively stopped the penetration of both Spanish and French empires into middle America. This is where the book's defining characteristic comes into play, and where the layman's understanding may be challenged.

We are perhaps inclined to think of American occupation as a simple struggle between Eurocentric cultures to acquire as much land and resources as possible with some extension of their homeworld conflicts taking place on a new stage, with the regrettable and sometimes barely noteworthy conflicts with indigenous peoples as a sort of speed bump to the story of American industrial/capitalistic supremacy from coast to coast. But where do the Comanches fit into this model? As the book illustrates over and over through countless details, this expansive tribe was able to maintain its autonomy, and in fact authority, in spite of and at times because of the pressing upon them by alien cultures.

For instance, the initial chapters detail the relationship between Spanish New Mexico and the Comanches which was very often turbulent, but always underwritten by trade relations. The Comanche civilization was able to assert its dominance whenever the Spaniards could not support conciliatory gift-giving practices, and they could engage in long-standing multi-ethnic trade fairs whenever relations were suitably appeased (and often when they were not). The Comanches were not always welcomed at trading fairs at local Spanish-controlled Pueblo sites such as Taos because of their various hostilities, but those places became crucial centers for indigenous groups to benefit from each others' various subsistence methods, and Spanish policy was often overlooked. Throughout the 18th century Comanches often displayed a 'trade and raid' attitude, that is, take what they wanted if they were not allowed to enter market areas or given gifts that they were accustomed to receiving from officials. Rather than interpreting this behavior as duplicitous, as the Spanish and later Mexicans and Americans would, the author sees the Comanches as a much more sophisticated diplomatic power than any indigenous nation has likely been given credit for. Finally some genius (Juan Batista de Anza) had the good insight to promote a lasting peace with the Comanches for the benefit of the Spanish colony, after the killing of an important chief in one of the few Spanish campaigns into Comanche territory. The peace which Anza forged with the chief Ecueracapa in the 1780's lasted for something like fifty years, during which time trade relations and some minor joint military affairs were able to prosper in the Comanche's effort of good will.

There are many interesting asides which enter the author's narrative thrust, incorporating passing views of the influence of a Spanish-French alliance (the Bourbon Reforms in New World policy were apparently largely responsible for the shift in diplomatic tide which Anza was able to bring about), the futile policies of Mexico to incorporate American immigration into their brief ownership over the province of Texas, the effects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Comanche trade-and-diplomatic ties, and more details which are treated passingly but with relevant insight. Interestingly, the author describes in extraordinary detail the ways in which the Comanche empire had already begun to crumble from the inside, why it was essentially unsustainable, before the final efforts of the American military made them a subjected people. This is another way in which the conventional, shortsighted view of the American West is challenged.

The book is thorough to the point of near repetitiveness, but is set up in such a way that its overall thrust is well documented in an introduction, and explained in exhaustive detail piece by piece, so that by the time we reach its conclusion the cumulative effect of the text makes clear how we have arrived at certain points of view about the role of these people. This made the book ultimately very rewarding for me despite some difficulty when I lagged somewhere in the middle of its near four-hundred pages of text. The note section and bibliography make up about another 110 pages. The notes direct an interested reader to often very obscure sources, such as old Spanish and Mexican records which I am powerless to consult, but otherwise state very clearly and extensively where his observations can be verified.

Well, I find it very difficult to paraphrase the whole breadth of the book's assertions and still maintain any brevity for this review (too late), but without a doubt the author has achieved an expansive and deeply satisfying review of this nation of Indians which held the tide of Spanish, French, Mexican, and American frontiers until the last quarter of the 19th century. I should mention that I was already well acquainted with the subject matter when I read this, but don't see that it would be difficult for anyone to penetrate even without any prior exposure to the material. To someone looking for new ideas about the development of the American continent past the Mississippi, and for an update of the Indians to an anthropocentric rather than Eurocentric point of view, I can hardly imagine a more useful or interesting volume.



(And sorry for my haphazard reviewing. I tell myself to try because I enjoy the material so much, and I would like to generate some interest in what seem to be little-known areas of our history wherever I can, but I am not trained or proficient at representing my ideas about a book. Please ask questions if so inclined, and I can probably provide better information.)