The demise of the Buffalo is what ended the Comanche nation
A tad more complex than that, and a testimony to Comanche ingenuity.
From Hamaleinen...
..in 1865 there were several million head of unprotected cattle wandering in Texas, free of fences and free for the taking ...an extended Comanche raiding spree lasted into the 1870's.... Comanches were becoming full-fledged pastoralists who relied on domestic animals for their material well being...
The decline in the bison herds slowed after 1865, but the herds had settled at such a low plateau that Comanches were forced to search for alternate means of subsistence...
..an Indian agent from New Mexico inspected the Eastern Llano Estacado in 1867, he found there a mixed Comanche group of seven hundred lodges with some fifteen thousand horses and three to four hundred mules. "They also have Texas cattle without number" Labadi reported "and almost every day bring in more." Eighteen war parties were in Texas plundering for horses, mules and cattle....
In 1872... a Yamparika [Comanche] speaker retorted that "..if the buffalo herds might fail... the Comanches determined to hunt buffalo only the next winter, then they would allow them a year or two to breed without molestation, and they would rely on Texas cattle for sustenance in the meantime....
...Texas lost 6,255 horses and 11,395 head of cattle to Indian pillaging between 1866 and 1873, but the real losses may have been several times higher... in 1873, in the space of three months, Comanches brought more than thirty thousand head of Texas cattle to New Mexico. Comanches also raided in southwestern Indian Territory - Chickasaws filed 123 separate depredation claims between 1869 and 1873...
Near collapse in 1865, the Comanches had experienced a dramatic revival after the Civil War. Shedding what had become a burden and keeping and modifying what was still usable, they pieced together a dynamic new economy from the fragments of the old one. They repaired a crippled subsistence system by shifting to intensive pastoralism, by diversifying their bison-centered hunting economy, and by accepting US annuities....
"The murders that have been Committed on our frontier" one 1867 Texas official despared "are so frequent that they are only noticed by their friends and acquaintances as they would notice ones dying a natural death." The cattle ranching industry whose prospects in 1860 had seemed so promising was nearly paralyzed "nearly every drove of Cattle that attempt to cross the plains are captured by Indians which will cut off the Stock raisers of the frontiers from a market for their beef cattle."
So, buffalo remained important, perhaps especially for bands that may have been separated from their livestock herds by contant pursuit, but buffalo weren't the only things with four legs out on the plains. Heck, Hamanlienen even cites a report of Comanche tipis made from horsehides.
Of course, all of this from one author, but a good one, who looked at things not recognised by popular lore.
News to me too.
Birdwatcher
