Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Comanches Vs. Apaches

This is interesting regarding the war between the Comanches and Apaches when the Spanish still controlled the area of Texas, New Mexico, and part of Arizona. Rough times back in those days. No quarter asked; none given.



Enjoy.

L.W.

But injuns were only victims, in-tune with nature, and living peacefully on the land. There was no brutality among them. The Spanish were just disease-carrying invaders.

Actually, that was a good video, and that channel is very good as well.

Enjoyed that.


We had a super history teacher in my high school, Mr John Topper,
He had been a rodeo rider and loved Western history. They allowed him to
start an Early American History class, it was so popular the classes were filled
and kids couldn't get in. Even after they made it a one semester class instead of two,
despite his being a tough teacher and assigning big reports.

That guy reminds me of him.

Some how he tells history as a story, working in all the details while making
the story come alive and keeping you interested.

Nice video. Thanks

Fascinating story. The Comanche loved to find a little camp of Apaches. They would take one warrior back to their camp, and torture him to death, took several days. They would capture an Apache squaw, and she would be a work slave. Plus she would get gang banged by five or six bucks every night.

They would kidnap some 5 year old Apache kids, and bring them in to the Comanche tribe with full rights as Comanche people. They also loved to kidnap Spanish and English kids and move them in to the tribe.

Here is a painting by George Catlin of a Mexican who was kidnapped as a child, and who became a full fledged Comanche warrior. His Indian name was "Little Spaniard."



Comanche loved that 14 foot long lance.

Cool video. Thanks for posting...

It's well known that both tribes kept slaves and treated them cruelly. The black slaves owned by whites had it pretty soft in comparison.

Just read “nine years among the Indians” it’s a book about a German immigrant boy who was kidnapped and raised as an Indian. Very interesting book to say the least. He was raised as an Apache and later joined the Comanche tribe.

Herman Lehmann was his name.

They didn't call that huge area of Texas the Comancheria for nothing..

What type of wood was the lance shaft made from? Assuming straight grained and riven. Not sure what would grow that long and straight on the plains?

"... What type of wood was the lance shaft made from? Assuming straight grained and riven. Not sure what would grow that long and straight on the plains? ..."

Probably "bois d'arc" - pro. bow-dark
French for "wood of the bow".
Cut it, bark it and hang it to dry with a weight on the end.
Stuff is just like iron, well, almost.

Back in the day, if you needed to mark a fence corner or property line, you did it with bois d'arc posts.
Impervious to rot. If allowed to cure, you can't drive a staple into it.

Quite the fellow around these parts. Still talked about. His other compatriot, Adolph Korn (most bloodthirsty Comanche he ever knew! 🤣), is buried in the Gooch cemetery in Mason Tx.

AKA osage orange, or hedge apple

Good video, interesting history of details and time periods. Thanks for posting.

I will go on and recommend this book highly. It doesn’t seem to have as much of the "artistic license" that many of the other books like "The Boy Captives" contain. At least several of the accounts in the Lehmann book were contemporarily cross referenced with opposing combatants. Like Ranger James Gillett.

It’s a shame we don’t have more knowledge of their horsemanship skills to learn from.

Essentially correct tho I have learned to cringe when I read the name T R Fehrenbach in reference to anything, but especially Comanches. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon shines when it talks about what happened after hostilities closed re: the subsequent tribal political rivalries of Quanah Parker vs Isha-tai the failed Medicine Man (turns out popular sorcery and politics have much in common) but gives the usual slant prior to that.

Also on the guy’s map of Comancheria it seems a bit small with respect to the southeast edge in Texas. Maybe it’s from later on in Texas history when the Comanches were disappearing.

For a more than two-dimensional look at the Comanches and their day to day realities as perceived by themselves I recommend Pekka Hamalainen’s The Comanche Empire. Other sources neglect the amount of stock trading Comanches did to Americans and the non- sustainable impacts they themselves had on their home range.

Trivial but interesting bit-picks; the Delawares and other Eastern Tribes hammered the Comanches a number of times when they arrived in the West and throughout the Comanche era, Pawnees and Tonkawas to name just two raided into Comancheria on foot so as to return with Comanche scalps and horses (and eat Comanches on the part of the Tonkawas). So even in the middle of Comancheria, Comanches had to watch their backs.

Not all Apaches fled to the mountains, the Kiowa Apaches allied early on with the Kiowas and so became potential Comanche allies and Lipan Apaches were present in the Bastrop/San Antonio area and points south until pushed out by settlement. They allied themselves with the Texian Ranging Companies (the origin of Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick) and guided Jack Hays and most especially John Moore’s slaughter of as many as 180 Comanches on the Colorado in 1840.

The Comanches got hammered by a major cholera epidemic ‘49-‘50 followed by a catastrophic drought. By the 1860’s the relative remnants still alive up on the Texas Panhandle switched over to herding cattle in a big way.

My favorite part is when he walks in on a Comanche camp one night about a year after fleeing the Apaches. By this time the Comanches were being hunted all over Comancheria and had abundant reason to hate White folks ( and vice versa). They didn’t kill him, they took him in.

George Catlin painted Little Spaniard at the Comanche village in 1834. Impressed with the Comanche warrior, he later wrote of Little Spaniard as “A gallant little fellow . . . represented to us as one of the leading warriors of the tribe; and no doubt . . . one of the most extraordinary men at present living in these regions. He is half Spanish, and being a half-breed, for whom they generally have the most contemptuous feelings, he has been all his life thrown into the front of battle and danger; at which posts he has signalized himself, and commanded the highest admiration and respect of the tribe for his daring and adventurous career.

This is the man . . . who dashed out so boldly from the war-party, and came to us with the white flag raised on the point of his lance . . . I have here represented him as he stood for me, with his shield on his arm, with his quiver slung, and his lance of fourteen feet in length in his right hand.

This extraordinary little man, whose figure was light, seemed to be all bone and muscle, and exhibited immense power, by the curve of the bones in his legs and his arms. We had many exhibitions of his extraordinary strength, as well as agility; and of his gentlemanly politeness and friendship we had as frequent evidences.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 42, 1841; reprint 1973)