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In popular pre-PC Texas history at least, Comanches unthinkingly committed pillage, rape and murder.

Hamalainen in "Comanche Empire" gives a more nuanced version. I mean, pillage rape and murder were still a main export, but I least they thought about it (tho' I doubt the author would support that interpretation )...

But a pretty good exploration of what made the guy in the breechclout and paint raiding the settlements tick:

Chief A Big Fat Fall by Tripping, it is told, owned fifteen hundred horses, but he was so fat he could not ride any of them and had to be moved about on a travois. That a man so obese rose to a leadership position in a society known for its martial skills may be unexpected, but it was far from exceptional.... [the author goes on to list three similarly obese major Comanche cheifs at that time]

Rich, powerful, flamboyant and physically striking... A Big Fat Fall by Tripping represented the new elite men who led Comanche society in the early Nineteenth Century... They embody the complex changes that transformed Comanche society during the zenith of Comanche power....

Just as the rise of Comanche hegemony was made possible by horses, so did the new elite base its position on horse wealth. An averageComanche family owned twenty to thirty horses and mules [the author states elsewhere that about one-third of their horse herds were actually mules, some Comanches actively breeding these], but wealthy families - the largest households capable of mobilizing the most labor - could possess two, three, or even ten times this amount...

Comanches always considered their horses private property and massive herds of horses represented a source of immense economic, political, and social capital to their owners. Horses were tools that allowed men to raid for more livestock and slaves...

Men with large horse herds could support large extended families and several slaves, who provided supplemental labor for hunting, herding, and other household chores. Horses also provided the social currency that gave men access to women... Although most men could eventually afford the favored bride-price, only the wealthiest men could pay the price several times over and amass a substantial labor pool of extra wives. Rich horse owners could then invest their assets to acquire several slaves and wives to prepare robes, meat, and other tradable goods, which in turn enabled them to dominate the wealth-generating import and export trade....

Few men became superrich, the elite of the elite. Typically senior men in their fifties, sixties and seventies, they accumulated enough wealth to turn their households into veritable manufacturies. They had the means to purchase and adopt numerous personal slaves and captives, and they had several wives who not only labored themselves but who could feed and care for a multitude of children. While most Comanche extended families had one or two slaves, the wealthiest ones had several dozen.

Preeminent elders also had several marriagable daughters, who attracted courting bachelors and their lavish gifts, and several sons, who hunted and raided for them. Belonging to the new aristocracy also meant being able to claim other Comanche men as social dependents. Prosperous elite men lent running mounts to horseless young men in return for a share in the bounty, in effect employing the junior men as hired hands.

They might also marry thier daughters to less accomplished men who paid the bride-price through labor, serving their fathers inlaw as debt bondsmen, sometimes for years. if a man had several married daughters, he might be able to stop hunting himself, because custom obliged his sons-in-law to provide him with meat evan after the marriage was concluded.

The most successful elite men could retire almost completely from physical labor, becoming something of an anomaly in what was still, in essence, a labor-intensive foraging economy... They could leave the life of a warrior-hunter, grow fat, and carry their bulk as a marker of masculine honor and priviledge...

When men reached the status of prosperous leisure, they were in a position to amass considerable political power. Since the no longer had to prove their worth in aggressive competition with other men, they could appear indifferent about their personal status and more concerned about group welfare, a quality the Comanches thought essential in leaders...

If these leaders formed the upper echelon of Comanche society, the bottom end consisted of young men with few or no horses. The building of a substantial herd was a slow and gruelling process, and most men spent several years in this lowly position. Like most foraging societies, Comanches put high value on self-reliance and expected young men to make their own fortunes, even the sons of the wealthy elite had to devote years to livestock raiding because it wsa considered inappropriate for young men to ask their fathers to provide them with horses.

And raiding did not offer junior men such a fast track to wealth as one might assume, senior men who led war parties had the first pick, younger men were fortunate to score a few low-quality horses. Moreover, young men frequently gave away all or most of their captured horses to the parents of a potential bride in the hope of earning the right to begin courtship...

The lack of horses exclude young men from key activities that brought men wealth, respect and status. They had to borrow animals from senior men and pay them with a portion of the kill or plunder, which in turn prevented them from accruing surplus animlas and robes for trade purposes. High quality guns, metal tools, blankets and other imported goods were all but inaccessible to them.

Marriage too was but a distant prospect. Not only had the escalation of polygamy diminished the pool of potential wives, but junior men lacked the horses needed to pay the bride-price. Poor and prospectless, they were undesirable to adolescent unmarried girls... many unattached Comanche women viewed marriage as a vehicle for social mobility and shunned less established suitors.

Poor young men lived in all-male gangs on the outskirts of camp, sleeping in makeshift shelters, subsisting on small animals, and servng wealthy senior men as hunters and raiders. Many Comanche men spent more than a decade in this kind of low-status social place.....

Between these two extremes was a large segment of middling sorts, tbhe families of early middle-aged men who had accumulated enough horses to considered secure if not quite rich. These men owning enough horses for hunting and raiding and enough pack animals to put a large family on horseback. A small reserve of surplus animals enabled them to participate in trade... Although they could not retire entirely from active labor, , their wives' labor allowed them to specialize in hunting and raiding.


Such a society would account for the early difficulties suffered by the young Quanah Parker after he was orphaned at age twelve (as describe in Gwynne's "Empire of the Summer Moon).

Hamalainen in his book makes scant mention of our familiar Texas pantheon of frontier heroes, but really, on the scale of twenty thousand Comanches (if there really were that many) in 1840, one could argue that our guys didn't make much of a dent on that tally with courage, determination and guns alone.

Where he does cite Texas is in reference to the unstoppable power of population demographics, the Texan population increasing from about 40,000 in 1840 to 600,000 by 1860. Meawhile Comanche numbers in that same interval declining from 20,000 people to less than 3,000.

Birdwatcher