This was a very interesting article\/book; I never knew there was so much history on the Comanche tribe. I for one never really knew much about them prior to reading this book. Growing up in the Los Angeles County school system, Native American history was limited, and limited to sporadic\u00a0Indian-American events in time. These moments included Pocahontas and her tribe, the Iroquois and Huron during the French and Indian Wars, President Jackson and the Cherokee Trail of Tears, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn, Geronimo and his guerrilla fighters\u00a0against the US cavalry, and finally Wounded Knee. This totally sums up my pre-college native American exposure, minus what I learned from movies, documentaries, TV shows and books. With that said, I found this book to be extremely informative and illuminating considering my Southwest knowledge, pre-college, consisted of: the story of the Alamo, some knowledge on Mexican\/Spanish settlements in the region, Pueblo Indians, Tombstone, the Mexican-American War, and Geronimo. So, yes, my Southwest history was also lacking for\u00a0sure.<\/p>\n

Despite my above lack of knowledge on the Comanche and the Southwest, I was amazed that such a prominent and politically powerful native tribe could have such an effect on the surrounding Anglo settlements and Indian societies. As was said on pages 3-4, “the Comanche empire was not a rigid structure held together by a single central authority, nor was it an entity that could be displayed on a map as a solid block with clear-cut borders.” As such, the Euro-American empires\/republics claimed vast expanses of land, with much of it north of Mexico City, and east of Louisiana, already claimed and populated by native tribes.\u00a0As an example,\u00a0if we look at a map of New Spain from the 1600-1800s, Spain claims all of the Southwest, including parts of Nevada, California, Utah, and Colorado\u00a0depending on the map, yet there was no Spanish citizenry in a majority of these vast regions. In addition, I gathered from Hamalainen\u2019s book that when the Comanche\u2019s first met the Euro-Americans, nothing but bad blood resulted from it. On page 2, he mentioned that the Comanche\u2019s, \u201cmanipulated and exploited the colonial outposts in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and northern Mexico\u2026extracted resources and labor from their Euro-American and Indian neighbors through thievery and tribute. [and that] the Comanche empire was powered by violence\u2026\u201d These acts were not taken kindly by their neighbors; as such, violence continued into the late 1800s.<\/p>\n

Similar to what Diana and David wrote, I struggled to find proof and evidence to Hamalainen\u2019s claims that the Comanche\u2019s were a legitimate threat to Euro-American advances and settlement in the Southwest. He gives an example on page 2, that, \u201cWithout fully recognizing it, the Spaniards, French, Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans were all restrained and overshadowed in the continent\u2019s center by an indigenous empire.\u201d In addition, he claims, the Comanche were able \u201cto reduce Euro-American colonial regimes to building blocks of their own dominant position.\u201d (pg, 3) On one hand, he does does give evidence that the local natives and encroaching Euro-Americans were too busy building their own outpost\/settlements and fighting each other to mount a cohesive resistance against their invasion of the Southwest. (pg, 19) Yet it must be understood that the Euro-Americans and local Indians had their own agendas, and fighting a new native enemy was probably not one of them. Spain, France and England were always jostling for land, resources, positon, and had little time for some insignificant native tribe on the far flung frontier; they had world economics at their forefront. The Americans had to deal with economic downturns, fighting England twice, expanding into Louisiana, and fighting a civil war. So, looking at the evidence the author pieced together, I understand his reasoning and point, but the region the Comanches invaded was militarily weak and undermanned, Euro-American wise. The settlements in New Mexico especially experienced the ferocity of their attacks. It was not until the Americans in the mid-to-late 1800s made a cohesive effort to annex the Southwest did the Comanche\u2019s go against a powerful military force.<\/p>\n

Comanche Empire <\/em>was a well-written book, especially the three chapters we were to read. Hamalainen painstakingly pieced together the history of one of the Southwest\u2019s most militarily, financially, and economically powerful Indian tribes. The chapters Conquest<\/em> and New Order<\/em> were split into Comanche history and Euro-American history, which gave us a deep insight into the Comanche tribe saga. Pekka Hamalainen refers to the Comanche\u2019s as an \u201cEmpire,\u201d yet, his later descriptions make them look and sound like a Confederacy like the Iroquois, because the \u201cempire\u201d was made up of individual bands of Comanche\u2019s. So, in essence, Comancheria should be referred to as The Comancheria Confederacy, not the Comanche Empire. Despite this title issue, Comanche Empire, <\/em>meticulously covers and recounts the vast trade networks the Comanche established. As seen on page 72, the Comanches, \u201cbuilt an exceptionally comprehensive import structure\u2026 they received manufactured goods \u2026 from five colonial markets\u2026from British Canada, Illinois (Spanish Upper Louisiana,) Spanish Lower Louisiana, British West Florida, and Spanish New Mexico.\u201d The Comanche trade network was based on their extensive horse husbandry and buffalo hide trade with these other areas. This book was a strong testament to the strength of the Comanche tribe, not only militarily, but also economically.\u00a0 They were a power house of a people who have been overlooked in the history of the American Southwest, and should be recognized and given the respect they deserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a very interesting article\/book; I never knew there was so much history on the Comanche tribe. I for one never really knew much about them prior to reading this book. Growing up in the Los Angeles County school system, Native American history was limited, and limited to sporadic\u00a0Indian-American events in time. These moments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}