![]() ![]() ![]() In The Comanche Empire, Hämäläinen says they were “conquerors who saw themselves more as guardians than governors of the land and its bounties.” Nonetheless, the geographical extent of the their domains was well known, respected and enforced by the Comanches.Įach Comanche rancheria had its own geographic territory, rigorous socio-military culture and hierarchical organization. Their hunting, pasturing, and trading territories had indistinct geographic borders that were never surveyed or adjudicated Comanches never sought to occupy and permanently control any specifically delineated territory. Nevertheless, the Comanches had a respected, recurring broadly representative council of chiefs that planned and organized extensive raids, trading and other commerce, and military operations. Clearly, in classical political or geopolitical usage, the claim is untenable, at least in part the Comanche empire had neither fixed borders, nor a single self-sustaining centralized supreme authority, nor a durable bureaucracy, nor a definitive political structure. Hämäläinen‘s central argument invites-indeed it obviously provokes-a reasonable dispute about the credibility of his claim for a Comanche empire. ![]() The political, commercial and military supremacy of the Comanches was based principally on their success in adopting and adapting Spanish horses for efficient transportation, military power, and a thriving and lucrative trade in horses throughout the Southwest. A broad coalition of Comanche rancheria chiefs throughout the territory of Comancheria first dominated the Apaches, eventually turned against their Ute allies, and commercially or militarily subjugated numerous lesser tribes.Ĭomanches managed a succession of peace treaties and conflicts with the Spaniards and completely blocked their repeated efforts to extend colonial settlements northward from Mexico. government until the middle of the 19th century. ![]() They blunted the 18th century colonial ambitions of the Spanish in Mexico and the French in Louisiana, and stalled the westward thrust of Americans and the U.S. The Comanche Empire provocatively makes the case that the Comanches created an imposing Southwestern American empire that spanned 150 years. The Comanches arrived obscurely in the American Southwest in 1706. This book will change your mind about how the West was won. “…conquerors who saw themselves more as guardians…” ![]()
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