Comanche: Difference between revisions

Efforts to move the Comanches into reservations began in the late 1860s with the [[Treaty of Medicine Lodge]] (1867), which offered them churches, schools, and annuities in return for a vast tract of land totaling over 60,000 square miles (160,000 km²). The government promised to stop the buffalo hunters, who were decimating the great herds of the Plains, provided that the Comanches, along with the [[Apache Tribe|Apache]]s, [[Kiowa]]s, [[Cheyenne]]s, and [[Arapaho]]s, moved to a reservation totaling less than 5,000 square miles (13,000 km²) of land. However, the government elected not to prevent the slaughtering of the herds, which provoked the Comanches under [[Isa-tai]] (White Eagle) to attack a group of hunters in the Texas Panhandle in the [[Second Battle of Adobe Walls]] (1874). The attack was a disaster for the Comanches, and the army was called in to drive all the remaining Comanche in the area into the reservation. Within just ten years, the buffalo were on the verge of extinction, effectively ending the Comanche way of life as hunters. In 1875, the last free band of Comanches, led by Quahadi warrior [[Quanah Parker]], surrendered and moved to the [[Fort Sill]] reservation in Oklahoma.

 

 

In 1892 the government negotiated the [[Jerome Agreement]], with the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches, further reducing their reservation to 480,000 acres (1,940 km²) at a cost of $1.25 per acre ($308.88/km²), with an allotment of 160 acres (0.6 km²) per person per tribe to be held in trust. New allotments were made in 1906 to all children born after the Jerome Agreement, and the remaining land was opened to white settlement. With this new arrangement, the era of the Comanche reservation came to an abrupt end.

The Comanche men did most of the hunting and all of the fighting in the wars. They learned how to ride horses when they were young and were eager to prove themselves in battle. On the plains, Comanche women carried out the demanding tasks of cooking, skinning animals, setting up camp, rearing children, and transporting household goods.

 

If a woman [[Childbirth#The natural birth|started labor]] while the band was in camp, she was moved to a [[tipi]], or a brush lodge if it was summer, and one or more of the older women assisted as [[Midwifery|midwives]]. If a woman went into labor while the band was on the move, she simply paused along the trail, gave birth to her child, and after a few hours caught up with the group again. Men were not allowed inside the tipi during or immediately after the delivery.