The Comanche (), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (, 'the people'), are 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.
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.Jean Ormsbee Charney. A Grammar of Comanche. (Nebraska, 1993). Pages 1–2. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Spanish and later Mexican colonists called the Comanche domain Comanchería. Some historians have called it an empire. The Comanche lived in present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and western Oklahoma. The 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. At their peak, the Comanche language was the lingua franca of the southern Great Plains region. There are approximately 17,000 enrolled tribal members in the Comanche Nation.
The Comanche waged war and raided Hispanic and Anglo-American settlements as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes.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. Especially noteworthy were their large-scale raids in the 1840s and 1850s, which penetrated hundreds of miles into Mexico to capture livestock they mostly sold to Anglo-Americans in Texas. They also took many captives, using them as slaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) to Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe. Thousands of captives from raids, including a few Anglos, were assimilated into Comanche society.
Epidemics of diseases, destruction of the bison herds, and defeat by the U.S. army forced the Comanche onto reservations in Indian Territory in the mid-1870s.
In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 enrolled citizens, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma. The Comanche Homecoming Annual Dance takes place in mid-July in Walters, Oklahoma.
Name The Comanche's autonym is , meaning 'the human beings' or 'the people'. The earliest known use of the term "Comanche" dates to 1706, when the Comanche were reported by Spanish officials to be preparing to attack far-outlying Pueblo settlements in southern Colorado.Governor Cuervo y Valdez Report, 18 Aug 1706 The Spanish adopted the Ute name for the people: ('enemy'), spelling it Comanche (or Comanchi, Cumanche, Cumanchi) in accord with the Spanish pronunciation.Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel. 1952. The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains (University of Oklahoma Press). Before 1740, French explorers from the east sometimes used the name for the Comanche since it was already used for the Plains Apache and the French were not aware of the change of tribe in the region in the early 18th century.
Government The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is located in Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Greer, Jackson, Kiowa, Tillman, and Harmon Counties. Their current tribal chairman is Forrest Tahdooahnippah. The tribe requires enrolled citizens to have at least one-eighth blood quantum level (equivalent to one great-grandparent).
In 2025, their administration was: Chairman: Forrest Tahdooahnippah Vice Chair: Diana Gail Doyebi-Sovo Secretary-Treasurer: Benny Tahmahkera Jr. Committee Member: Jordan Fox Committee Member: Darrell Kosechequetah Committee Member: Alice Kassanavoid Committee Member: Hazel Tahsequah
Economic development The tribe operates its own housing authority and issues tribal vehicle tags. They have their own Department of Higher Education, primarily awarding scholarships and financial aid for citizens' college educations. They own 10 tribal smoke shops and six casinos: Comanche Nation Casino in Lawton, Oklahoma Red River Casino in Devol, Oklahoma Comanche Spur Casino in Elgin, Oklahoma Comanche Star Casino in Walters, Oklahoma. Comanche Cache Casino in Cache, Oklahoma Comanche Nation Travel Plaza Casino in Devol, Oklahoma
Cultural institutions
The Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton has permanent and changing exhibitions on Comanche history and culture. It opened to the public in 2007.
In 2002, the tribe founded the Comanche Nation College, a two-year tribal college in Lawton. It closed in 2017 because of problems with accreditation and funding.
Every year on the third Saturday in April, the Annual General Council is held in which the annual budget is approved, new leadership is nominated for election, and tribal members are able to present resolutions to be voted on. Each July, Comanches gather from across the United States to celebrate their heritage and culture in Walters at the annual Comanche Homecoming powwow. The Comanche Nation Fair takes place every September. The Comanche Little Ponies host two annual dances—one over New Year's Eve and one in May.Comanche Nation Tourism Center. Comanche Nation. (16 February 2009)
History
Formation
The Proto-Comanche movement to the Plains was part of the larger phenomenon known as the "Shoshonean Expansion" in which that language family spread across the Great Basin and across the mountains into Wyoming. The Kotsoteka ("Bison Eaters") were probably among the first. Other groups followed. Contact with the Shoshones of Wyoming was maintained until the 1830s when it was broken by the advancing Cheyennes and Arapahoes.
After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, various Plains peoples acquired horses, but it was probably some time before they were very numerous. As late as 1725, Comanches were described as using large dogs rather than horses to carry their bison-hide "campaign tents".Kavanagh 66
Horses became a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture. They were of such strategic importance that some scholars suggested that the Comanche broke away from the Shoshone and moved south to search for additional sources of horses among the settlers of New Spain (rather than search for new herds of buffalo). The Comanche have the longest documented existence as horse-mounted Plains peoples; they had horses when the Cheyenne still lived in earth lodges.Kavanagh 7
The Comanche supplied horses and mules to all comers. As early as 1795, the Comanche were selling horses to Anglo-American traders.Kavanagh 63 and by the mid-19th century, Comanche-supplied horses were flowing into St. Louis via other Indian middlemen (Seminole, Osage, Shawnee).Kavanagh 380
Their original migration took them to the southern Great Plains, into a sweep of territory extending from the Arkansas River to central Texas. The earliest references to them in the Spanish records date from 1706, when reports reached Santa Fe that Utes and Comanches were about to attack. In the Comanche advance, the Apaches were driven off the Plains.The Comanche displaced many indigenous tribes, not just the Apache. By the end of the 18th century, the struggle between Comanche and Apache had assumed legendary proportions; in 1784, in recounting the history of the southern Plains, Texas Governor Domingo Cabello y Robles recorded that some 60 years earlier (i.e., circa 1724), the Apache had been routed from the Southern Plains in a nine-day battle at La Gran Sierra del Fierro, the "Great Mountain of Iron", somewhere northwest of Texas. But no other record, documentary, or legendary, of such a fight has been found.
They were formidable warriors who developed strategies for using traditional weapons for fighting on horseback. Warfare was a major part of Comanche life. Their raids into Mexico traditionally took place during the full moon, when they could see to ride at night. This led to the term "Comanche Moon", during which the Comanche raided for horses, captives, and weapons.Wallace and Hoebel Comanche raids, especially in the 1840s, reached hundreds of miles deep into Mexico, devastating northern parts of the country.Kavanagh (1996)
Divisions
Kavanagh has defined four levels of social-political integration in traditional Comanche society before reservations:Kavanagh 41–53 Patrilineal and patrilocal nuclear family Extended family group (nʉmʉnahkahni – "the people who live together in a household", no size limits, but kinship recognition was limited to relatives two generations above or three below) Residential local group or "band", comprised one or more nʉmʉnahkahni, one of which formed its core. The band was the primary social unit of the Comanche. A typical band might number several hundred people. It was a family group, centered around a group of men, all of whom were relatives, sons, brothers, or cousins. Since marriage with a known relative was forbidden, wives came from another group, and sisters left to join their husbands. The central man in that group was their grandfather, father, or uncle. He was called paraivo, "chief". After his death, one of the other men took his place; if none was available, the band members might drift apart to other groups, where they might have relatives and/or establish new relations by marrying an existing member. No separate term was used for the status of peace chief or war chief; any man leading a war party was a war chief. Division (sometimes called tribe, Spanish nación, rama – "branch", comprising several local groups linked by kinship, sodalities (political, medicine, and military), and shared interest in hunting, gathering, war, peace, and trade).
In contrast to the neighboring Cheyenne and Arapaho to the north, a single Comanche political unit or "Nation" was not historically recognized by all Comanche in previous centuries. Rather, the divisions, the most "tribe-like" units, acted independently, pursuing their own economic and political goals.
Before the 1750s, the Spanish identified three Comanche Naciones (divisions): Hʉpenʉʉ (Jupe, Hoipi), Yaparʉhka (Yamparika), and Kʉhtsʉtʉhka (Kotsoteka).
After the Mescalero Apache, Jicarilla Apache, and Lipan Apache had been largely displaced from the Southern Plains by the Comanche and allied tribes in the 1780s, the Spanish began to divide the now-dominant Comanche into two geographical groups, which only partially corresponded to the former three naciones. The Kʉhtsʉtʉhka (Kotsoteka) (Buffalo Eaters), which had moved southeast in the 1750s and 1760s to the Southern Plains in Texas, were called Cuchanec Orientales (Eastern Cuchanec/Kotsoteka") or Eastern Comanche, while those Kʉhtsʉtʉhka (Kotsoteka) who remained in the northwest and west, together with Hʉpenʉʉ (Jupe, Hoipi – Timber/Forest People) (and sometimes Yaparʉhka (Yamparika)), which had moved southward to the North Canadian River, were called Cuchanec Occidentales (Western Cuchanec/Kotsoteka) or Western Comanche. The Western Comanche lived in the region of the upper Arkansas, Canadian, and Red Rivers, and the Llano Estacado. The Eastern Comanche lived on the Edwards Plateau and the Texas plains of the upper Brazos and Colorado Rivers, and east to the Cross Timbers. They were probably the ancestors of the Penatʉka Nʉʉ (Penateka – Honey Eaters).
Over time, these divisions were altered in various ways, primarily due to changes in political resources.Kavanagh 478 As noted above, the Kʉhtsʉtʉhka (Kotsoteka) were probably the first proto-Comanche group to separate from the Eastern Shoshone.