S04 E06 Comancheria Part 1 transcript

Listen to the full episode on Comancheria Part 1.

Welcome back to Countries That Don't Exist Anymore.

This time, we’re returning to North America to talk about perhaps the most badass Native Americans to ever have stalked the prairies.

They went from whipping boys of North America to the scourge of the plains. They scared the Spanish, terrified the Texans and put the willies up the Witchita. 

We’re talking about a people who called themselves "the people" (as most people do) but whose name to everybody else meant “men who want to kill me all the time”… we’re talking about the last great Native American holdouts against the encroaching Europeans… 

It's the Comanche 

…and their empire of Comancheria.

Theme

Where was Comancheria?

At its peak in 1836, Comancheria was about the same size as France, covering 240,000 square miles of mainly plains and prairies, over 5 modern states of the USA: Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The plains and prairie landscape was dry and featureless, with few landmarks. The treeless plains were thought of as a green, vast ocean and was called The Great American Desert by soft European settlers - who were used to things like trees and mountains and maps with helpful arrows saying things like “you are here.”

Their lands were famously inhospitable. In the summer, super-heated winds could strip the moisture from your face. In the autumn and winter, freezing northern wind brought driving rain and lethal blizzards.

And this was probably a good thing, since it left the Comanche relatively contact free with the Europeans.

Phil:

For most peoples, contact with Europeans has been a bad thing.

Ed:

Yes, on the one hand – slavery, disease and genocide. But on the other hand, they do excellent things with pastry.

Phil:

This is true.

or:

Ed: They do excellent things with food.

Phil: Except the British

Ed: Yes, except the british.

Even by the mid-nineteenth century, most Comanche hadn’t been too bothered by Europeans since they hadn’t been decimated by smallpox, cholera and the other exotic diseases that had ravaged other groups of native peoples.

And while we think of Native Americans holding their lands for thousands of years, this is highly inaccurate. These tribes and peoples migrated and fought like all other human beings. And this was especially true of the Comanche.

As with the Inca [episode plug] the Comanche's vast lands weren't some ancient ancestral homeland that had been theirs for all time. While the European settlers had been pushing west, the Comanche had been doing their own empire building, conquering and subduing 20 other tribes.

So Comancheria was like a real empire and everything?

Obviously when we say empire, it's not like:

Song:

"Rule Comanche. Comanche rules the plains."

There was no emperor or government apparatus or legal framework or anything like that. And even the Comanche weren’t one united nation. In fact, the Comanche were made up of 5 major groups called bands. These consisted of the Penatekas (Pen-ah-took-uh), Yamparika, Kotso-teka, Quahadi and Nokomi.

Phil (sings):

Penatekas (Pen-ah-took-uh), Yamparika, Kotsoteka, quahadi.

Nokomi, now you know that these are the bands of Commanche…

Ed:

No, we’re not doing a song about that…

Phil:

Oh.

Ed:

And anyway, we already recorded that song for Fourth Roman Republic. And I like to keep things fresh.

Phil:

You mean with the same 3 Bottom references and catchphrases like Everybody wants to be the Roman Empire? Not exactly full of fresh ideas.

Ed:

Point taken. How about bringing back Mapotron?

Phil:

No good. We’ve already done the location bit.

Ed:

[bottom insert] Nadgers.

Phil:

Oh great. Another bottom quote. That should be relevant to at least 10 of our listeners.

Ed:

Still a majority.

Phil: 

True!

[richie insert ah he he he heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

So definitely not a centralised nation, but the Comanche had a collective sense that they were the same people. Bands were friendly to each other and never fought each other. Each band had two chiefs – a war chief and a peace chief. [Kaiser Chief / Band pun?] Like the Roman Consuls.

Phil: (mutters)

Everybody wants to be the Roman Empire.

But the chief wasn’t hereditary and was there on the basis of popular support and merit. Really anybody could be war chief as long as they had an idea of where to go next.

Phil:

Like anybody can make a bunch of drunk Brits walk anywhere as long as they know where the open kebab shop is.

Ed:

Exactly.

Each band lived in a different part of Comancheria – and so had had different levels of contact with the European outsiders.

The Yamparika, Kotso-teka and Nokoni had stayed out hunting buffalo in areas that white men had never been. The Quahadi had traded with the Spanish, but only via Comancheros – who were like the middlemen between the Comanche and the Spanish. But we’ll come back to them shortly.

The Pan-ah-took-uhs lived closest to European settlements. They had lived in the area where the buffalo had departed and so had resorted to trade with other tribes and white settlers to get by. 

They Pan-ah-took-uhs were often Europeanised –wearing cotton rather than skins, using relatively modern implements like metal kettles and other knick knacks. They often spoke English or Spanish and were generally more comfortable with Europeans – even turning up to white settlements at mealtimes expected to be treated like guests and fed.

Of course, the downside of this was that they were ravaged by smallpox and cholera and often held at arm’s length by other Comanche bands.

Who were the Comanche and where were they from?

Well, for a start. The Comanche didn’t call themselves the Comanche. They called themselves the Nermernuh, which is a word in the Shoshone language and just means “The people.” The word Comanche is actually a Hispanicised version of a word from the Ute people, who obviously had had a rough time, since Comanche just means:

“The man who wants to kill me all the time.”

It's a bit like.

1:

What's your next door neighbour's name again?

2.

Man who parks in my space.

1.

Huh. I thought he said his name was Keith.

2. 

Well, it’s not.   

And the Comanche proved themselves to be lethal fighters, especially on horseback. If you’re thinking of the Comanche as mighty Native American braves wearing huge feathered headdresses, think again. 

The Comanche generally wore black paint to signify death and only adopted feathers later. They were also described as short, dark skinned and barrel chested. Which seems weird and a bit problematic to point out. I mean, it’s not like we’d say the French were all …

Phil:

Weird looking pointy dudes, dressed in stripey t-shirts and wearing strings of onion, chomping on garlic and going or-he-haw-he-haw. [that alan partridge quote]

Ed:

Exactly. That’s exactly what we wouldn’t say.

I guess the point is that their dominance of all other peoples around them would make you think you were dealing with huge native American Viking guys. But not at all. 

The Comanche often seemed far less physically imposing than other peoples they dominated.

I guess they seemed unlikely conquerors.

So why were the Comanche able to dominate other Native Americans?

Well, for most of history they really didn’t.

Up until the 17th century, the Comanche had mainly stuck to the lifestyles of their ancestors who had crossed the land bridge from Asia to North America:

They hunted with stone weapons – usually either rodents and small game or buffalo – which they could only catch by causing a stampede by burning the land or herding them over cliffs.

The Comanche also travelled on foot or would ride around in a simple sledge pulled by a dog.

Sound effect of scraping and panting dog.

Dude:

Hey, nice dog sled! So how many miles to a bone do you get from that puppy?

Right up to the 17th century (in fact) the Comanche hadn’t quote unquote advanced much at all. 

Unlike other peoples of North America, they didn’t really do pottery, didn’t build houses or even cut down trees, they lived in skin tepees and didn’t seem to have anything like a priest class or a warrior elite. 

They hadn't even been any good in a fight, and had been driven out of territory after territory by stronger peoples.

All around them, the indigenous peoples of North Americas were doing their thing. The Aztec were urbanised and sophisticated, the Iroqouis had a stratified class system, the tribes of the SE had a maize culture with large urban centres, the Missouri, Omaha, Pawnee and Witchita were variously brilliant with pottery, baskets, spinning, weaving, masters of farming and housebuilding.

Outwardly the Comanche seemed to take the attitude of…

Phil: (Gloucestershire)

Why bother mate?

Yep. The Comanche got an F in all these skills. 

BUT, the Comanche got an A+ in something else that massively tipped the balance in their favour.

Phil:

Media studies?

Nope, the Comanches fortunes totally changed when they got their hands on a piece of technology that transformed everything, and that they mastered it like no other society since the Mongols. We’re talking about…3

Drumroll

The horse.

DA DA.

Countries That Don't Exist Anymore's History of the Prairie Horse

Before Europeans came to the Americas, there were no horses. It was the Spanish Conquistadors that brought them over, giving them unparalleled mobility.

And by accident the Spanish horse was perfect for the plains and prairies of Southern North America. Bred for desert conditions and an ancestor of the Arabian horses that the invading Moors brought to Spain, the Spanish horse was small and fast and able to go without water for days at a time.

Some tribes, like the Apache, saw the Spanish using horses and thought “I want some of what he’s on” so stole some of their horses. 

They also stole Spanish horse culture, including bits, bridles and saddles and mounting from the right. 

This whole injuns riding bareback thing in Wild West movies? Nope. When it came to riding culture, the Apache imitated the Spanish closely.

Spanish:

Excuse me, I’ll think you find that riding the horse is cultural appropriation?

Apache:

You’re literally committing genocide.

Spanish:

Very well. Let’s call it a draw.

So, the Apache may have been one of the first native peoples to swipe the horse, but they didn’t use it to its full extent. A bit like Saxon warriors, they’d hop on the horse for travel but once they arrived where they were fighting – they’d dismount. 

But the mobility the horse gave them was a total gamechanger and they used this new tech to make long distance raids, generally on the villages of the Pueblo Indians that were allied with the Spanish.

And the outcome of these raids? Horses spread across the North American continent. 

Apparently unable to rely on their Spanish overlords for protection, the Pueblo Indians revolted against the Spanish in 1680, destroyed their buildings and released thousands of Spanish mustangs into the wild where they bred and multiplied. 

End results: horses for all - if you can catch one.

And this totally changed life for the Native Americans of the North American continent. In 1650, no American Indians rode horses. By the 1750s, pretty much every tribe in the south had horses.

And that led to some serious jockeying for position…

Judge:

Edward O’Meara, the court of podcasts finds you guilty of dreadful jokes. How do you plead?

Ed:

How about…neigh contest?

Judge:

Take him down.

Punching, jeering mob, firing squad etc.

Why was riding horses such a big deal? Isn’t that just what posh people do on the weekend? Did they win rosettes or what?

Well, we’ve already talked about the raiding advantages, but there are other reasons why tribes that adopted the horse started to dominate tribes that didn’t.

Phil:

Ed, you’re alive. I thought you were killed.

Ed:

Yes. Turns out that it was all just sound effects.

Anyway.. horses…

For one thing, horse-owning tribes like the Comanche could start migrating with the buffalo herds, so they could benefit from more of the things that buffalos gave them, i.e. everything.

In a treeless, featureless prairie, they created shelter from their hides and bones, and used buffalo dung for light, heat and to cook. Every part of the buffalo was used, with buffalo bits turned into water canteens, weapons, tools and tack (i.e. horsey equipment like saddles and bridles).

Their livers and gallbladders were a treat for Comanche kids. 

Ice cream van jingle

Kids:

Yay… buffalo offal!

And their warm blood was mixed with milk as a nutritious beverage.

Ironically, the Comanche turned their nose up at fish and thought it was totally gross.

Phil:

Well. Horses for courses.

Although the horse became commodity number 1 in Comanche society, it could often be eaten in desperate times with its blood being drawn as a meal on the go as it was being ridden. Ow.

Much more importantly, the horse itself was a very tradable commodity - giving the Comanche a new source of wealth and status.

Phil:

That’s what I think when I think of Native American Indians. Braves riding around on horses all day and dancing like no one was watching. It’s not like you see them clock watching at the office. Grumble grumble something about capitalism.

Ah, but that’s the irony. Native Americans were actually doing more mundane farming activities before the introduction of the horse.

Horses actually had the effect of deterring native peoples from bothering with agriculture. Horses were like their Gold Rush. Why farm when you could hunt buffalo? Why grow crops when you could trade horses?

Not only could horses be bred or caught then traded and/or eaten, but it also left you mobile and a lot safer. Set up a farm and you could be sitting ducks for raids. Keep moving and no one could catch you.

So, the tribes you’ve probably heard of are the tribes that went horse crazy - the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapho, Blackfoot and Crow.

But no one, and we mean no one, took to the horse like the Comanche.

Comanche children, both girls and boys, were given their first horse aged 4. One of their early classes was learning to pick things up from the ground mid gallop. And yes, this was about picking up fallen comrades but it was also about getting comfortable with a circus level of dexterity in the saddle. 

They were crazy for horses:

Crazy [for] horses

Comanche! Comanche!

When fighting Europeans armed with guns, the Comanche could slide down the side of their horse (to protect their own bodies) while still riding and firing off arrows. 

In fact, a Comanche warrior could fire 20 arrows from horseback in the time it took a US regular soldier to load and fire their musket once.

The Comanche warrior carried a bow, arrow, shield and a 14-foot lance - they were deadly both in close combat and at a range of 30 feet. 19th century US Army Officer Colonel Richard Dodge called them “the finest light cavalry in the world.”

But why didn’t other Native American peoples do this?

Well, there’s probably no clear answer here. Certainly in raising the fortunes of the Comanche, the horse became absolutely central to their existence and they in turn lived and breathed horses - having their own words for every conceivable shade of horse and even different names for the varying ear shapes.

When Victorian anthropologists met the Comanche, they estimated that they must have had horses for thousands of years, little realising that they’d had horses for a couple of hundred years at most. Such was the Comanches total adoption of the horse.

Phil:

But surely Victorian anthropologists knew that all horses came over with the Spanish?

Ed:

Apparently not. That said, Victorian anthropologists believed that Caucasians were the most highly evolved humans of all.

Phil:

But we burn in the sun on cloudy days!

Ed:

Yes, we’re not adapted for this planet at all.

But the Comanche did one thing with the horse that no other tribe managed - they bred them. Again, this was a highly skilled intensive practise and the Comanche copied the Spanish here. 

But this meant that they could own huge stocks of horses and trade them with other tribes, making themselves extremely rich in the process.

Being able to use horses allowed them to migrate south with the buffalo and challenge other tribes for domination. And not only were they breeding horses, they were catching them too. 

Here’s how Comanches caught horses:

1. Lasso horse.

2. Choke it until near death.

3. Stroke horse’s nose, ears and forehead.

4. Put own mouth over horse’s nostrils and blow in air.

5. Throw thong over horse’s jaw, mount up and ride off.

Presumably while the horse was still thinking “what the foal just happened?”

Horses meant wealth. A Comanche warrior could have as many as 200 mounts, which was quite the status symbol.

How many Comanches were there?

Actually probably only about 20,000. That seems like an absurdly small number to control such a huge stretch of land. Partly, this is because the Comanche lived sparsely as hunter gatherers tend to do and that most of the territory they lorded it over was populated by other peoples. And infant mortality was presumably high too. But one of the major problems the Comanche had was low fertility. Specifically…miscarriages.

Why did Comanche women miscarry so much? 

This is going to sound nuts, but as far as my reading goes, this seems reliable. Apparently, spending a totally mobile, nomadic life bouncing around on horseback? Not great for pregnancies. 

The Comanches solution to this was…

Phil:

Not having pregnant women bounce around on horses?

Ed:

Nope. The kidnapping of other women.

For the most part, this was women from other tribes. But as the Comanche made contact with Europeans, they tended to kidnap European women too. 

Typically in these raids, the men, elderly, older children would be killed – often after torture. 

The women and young children would typically be spared as useful new recruits or breeders of new recruits for the Comanche nation. Not babies though. Babies were seen as a burden, and would typically be killed too.

Phil:

That’s a difficult sell for a Comanche PR agency. Never kill babies.

There are accounts of European women being captured by the Comanche and undergoing a gruelling ordeal. Gang rape and beatings were the norm. If the unlucky woman survived, they were then put to work as little more than slaves, usually being forced to work on a quota of hides to generate more wealth for the tribe. 

While Comanche women could have some degree of freedom – whether that was being allowed horse ownership or expected to fight with the men – there’s no female suffrage here.  In fact women were specifically forbidden from attending councils. And like in many societies, having lots of wives was a status symbol.

Ironically, many American settlers admired the Comanche as being truly free. No government. No taxes. Total freedom. But they obviously weren’t factoring the women in here whose lot in life was work: herding, skinning, butchering, tanning, making clothes, repairing tipis, bringing up kids and this was all before morning coffee.

Now although the darker side of Comanche culture might make us wince, the Comanche thought there was nothing much wrong with what they did. 

We’ve said before, that the Comanche didn’t have a religious structure. But that’s not to say that they weren’t deeply religious. They believed that the spirits were everywhere – in rocks and animals. 

But, as far as we know, they didn’t seem to have our ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition of good and evil.

Phil:

Exactly. WE know good from evil. E.g. Crusades… good, right?

If the Comanche caught someone from a hostile tribe, they would torture them to death and were said to take great pleasure in it. But likewise, the Comanche expected exactly the same fortune if the same happened to them. So, masochists yes. Hypocrites? No. The Daily Mail would have loved them. 

So… psychopaths much?

Weeell, maybe. I’m not going to handwave away gang rape and baby murdering because it’s obviously totally messed up and wrong, no matter the time or place. And I’m not going to say “hey that’s just their culture either.”

Phil:

We at CTDEA believe that sexual assault and baby murder are bad things.

But just because they seemed to accept these things, we’d be wrong to characterise the Comanche as cold-blooded, joyless nutcases – this would also fly in the face of a lot of good evidence to the contrary.

Western observers who spent time with them often painted a very different picture of the intimate life of the Comanche. Colonel Richard Dodge described the Comanche as jolly, cheerful and lovers of practical jokes.

They sang all day, danced, took any excuse to gamble on literally anything and raced horses. They also loved gossip, personal grooming and doted on their families.

And while becoming a hostage of the Comanche was definitely something to be avoided, there were such things as “loved captives.”

For example, Cynthia Ann Parker was captured aged 9 and was with the Comanche for 24 years – during which time she was, by get own account, in a loving marriage, had 3 children and forgot how to speak English. And several times when people came looking for her to bring her back to civilisation, she flat out refused.

And when they offered the band she was with untold wealth untold riches for her return, they refused too. And that was remarkable, since much of their wealth came from taking hostages in exchange for ransoms.

And the story of Cynthia Anne is by no means singular. There are various accounts of young girls being taken, adopted and treated like beloved daughters, often before being ransomed back unscathed.

Some of these former captives became the Comanche’s fiercest advocates and defenders.

And actually when these women arrived back in Victorian society, they were often shunned and ignored – mainly because they were suspected of having had sex out of wedlock with filthy pagans. Victorian morality. Best in the world!

So, hopefully I’ve made the case that Comanche morality was… complicated.

Yes, the Comanche were brutal. But the American plains were brutal. European wars were fight until one side gives up. Plains Indian wars were fight to the death. They took the same attitude whether they were fighting the Apache or raiding a settlement of Scottish Presbyterians. The brutality seemed shocking to the average white settler, but was business as usual for the Comanche.

And maybe that brutality kept them free. That brutality had kept them feared. It certainly kept the Spanish at bay.

Since the conquistadors had pulled up on ships, the Spanish had had a relatively easy time of wiping out the native people of south and central America through disease and warfare and then enslaving and christianising them. 

The first people who had really offered serious resistance were the Apache – whose lightning attacks were bleeding the Spanish dry. But then one day in 1720, the Spanish peeked out of their heavily fortified missions to discover the Apache turning up and asking for protection.

And while their first reaction was “Jesus has brought the Pagans unto us. It’s a miracle”, the Apache pointed out that the protection they sought was from a terrifying new threat from the north. The Apache, who fought on foot and had permanent settlements, were no match for these demonic, black faced mounted raiders.

The problem for the Apache and the Spanish was that the Comanche had a raiding range of 400 miles. The Comanche drew out maps that their warriors would commit to memory – navigating their way from the memory of something sketched out in the sand. That’s incredible. Phil, how do you get from your bedroom to the kitchen?

Phil:

Google Maps.

When raids happened on the Spanish, they’d generally put together a revenge party who’d generally venture out and kill the first group of Indians they could find, who were almost never Comanche, say “close enough” and then go home, looking over their shoulder the whole time. But generally speaking the Spanish were being bled white by Comanche raids.

In fact, the Comanche were such a big problem for the Spanish, that they eventually recognised Comancheria and even started to realise that it might be a useful buffer against French and English expansion. 

Things finally stabilised when Governor of New Mexico, Don Juan Bautista had enough success in an ambush against the Comanche for them to grudgingly respect him. 

Rather than trying to follow up his success with more victories, he instead offered them peace, recognised their lands and didn’t try to convert them to Catholicism – which the Comanche had no time for. He also offered them a lucrative trade – using middle-men traders called Comancheros.

These Comancheros operated at the fringes of both societies. Half Spanish. Half Native. They traded like the Spanish but could navigate like Natives. They were the perfect go-betweens.

And amazingly this peace held!

Now had Spanish authority lasted in this part of the world, maaaybe some kind of long-term peace have held. After all, the Spanish didn’t think Comanche lands were worth the trouble. They certainly had no intention of trying to settle it. And even their Mexican successors (who got their independence from Spain in 1821) were far more occupied with internal issues in the new state. But in 1836, when Texas became independent from Mexico, things changed drastically.

The Texans has no intention of leaving the Comanche be. They had every intention of clearing out these troublesome Injuns and expanding the Republic of Texas all the way to the Pacific.

Now although extremely keen to expand at everybody else’s expense, not absolutely all Texans were hostile to the Comanche. In fact, Sam Houston, two times president of Texas and many times alcoholic, was actually quite pro-Comanche and often took their part in settlement disputes against his own citizens. 

In years to come, the Comanche would even appeal to Houston - asking why the Texans wouldn’t just paint a line and stay behind it. Houston replied: 

“If I could build a wall from the Red River to the Rio Canada so high that no Indian could scale it, the white people would go crazy trying to devise a means to get beyond it.”

Unfortunately, Houston was probably right,  since the Texas congress then voted that all Indian lands should be open to white settlement.

And as Texan and American settlers encroached further into Comanche land, so Comanche attacks increased on these settlers. Over the course of 2 years, 100 captives were taken.

Doubling down on this, Houston’s successor Mireaubeau Lamar moved Texas’ capital from Houston to Waterloo in 1839 – right on the border of Comanche lands.

Mapotron

WATERLOO, TEXAS NOT FOUND!

Phil:

Sorry, I must have plugged Mapotron back in.

Ed:

I can’t believe it’s been listening in the whole time. It’s like Google Assistant!

Mapotron

WATERLOO, TEXAS NOT FOUND!

Ed:

Yeah, they renamed it to Austin.

Mapotron

Waterloo! I was defeated you won the war. Waterloo promise to love me forever more.

Ed:

Turn it off!

Phil:

Why? Haven’t you heard of Abba Voyage? We could charge for this!

As another map-based fact, Houston, Texas was named after Sam Houston, who Mireaubeau Lamar apparently hated. So, he seemed to be sticking it to Houston’s legacy – by taking away the capital and by going against Houston’s Comanche policy.

Lamar wasn’t dead keen on Native Americans either, calling on their extermination so that the Republic of Texas could be extended west to the Pacific Ocean. The Texas Congress loved the sound of this so voted him a large war chest to make this happen.

It’s only fair to point out that Texas’ hostility officially differed from the policy of the US government who, in 1825, had voted through the creation of “Indian country” – a protected land that Secretary of War James Barbour said would ensure that “the future residences of these peoples will remain undisturbed.”

Phil:  

And was it?

Ed:

Well, that permanently undisturbed land is now called Oklahoma.

Phil:  

You mean the US government didn’t honour their agreements with Native Americans?

Ed:

Put it like this. Did the US government honour the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux?

Phil:

Yes. No. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No. No. Yes. No.

Ed:

You’re right! It was no.

Phil:

Yessssss!

Ignoring US government rhetoric, Lamar drummed up 2,000 Indian hunters to go to war. And then they had to employ some Indian scouts to actually track the Indians they were hunting. Because the Texans couldn’t actually find any Indians, let alone kill them, without native trackers.

Their first target was the Cherokee, who had actually been Europeanising, trading with Texas and now lived in settled villages. This wasn’t going to satisfy the bloodlust of the Indian hunters, and it was claimed that the Cherokee were working with Mexico to betray Texas. Absolute hogwash of course, but it did the trick and Cherokee villages were attacked and its people slaughtered. The same fate befell largely peaceful tribes such as the Delawares, Shawnees and Creeks.

Tribes like the Alabamas were spared but only on the understanding that they departed their fertile lands and moved to decidedly less fertile land.

Well we attacked those natives

Cos we wanted their farmin ground

But we moved em to some shithole

Cos a southern man don't need them around

Shit home for Alabamas. 

Where nothing else grew.

Shit home for Alabamas.

Lord, we’ll take what’s meant for you.

So by deportation or murder, Texas was freeing up thousands of acres of excellent farmland ripe and ready for wholesome Christian homesteads in East Texas.

Flush with victory, the Texans lengthened their gaze west to Comanche lands. Now, it’s one thing to attack and burn a helpless village. It’s quite enough to go toe to toe with the best light cavalry in the world - and it seemed that for a moment the Indian hunters lost their enthusiasm.

“Let’s git them redskins.”

“Why certainly. After you.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Come come.”

“I must insist.”

Phil: That must be where the famous texan good manners come from.

But this hesitation would last. Not only were the Comanche lands too big a prize, but the Comanche acts of raiding, killing and taking hostages were too good a recruiting sergeant for morally outraged Texans.

But let’s be honest, even if the Comanche’s worst crimes were village fetes and tea parties, the Texan Congress would have cooked up some reason why the Comanche definitely shouldn’t have their land.

The Comanche has never faced such a foe as they found in the Texans. The Spanish would rather make a deal than commit forces to quell the rampaging Comanche. The Mexican simply had their own problems to deal with. But the Texans considered everything around them their new home and ultimate destiny. They weren’t going anywhere. And they were tough, gristled and probably didn’t travel with washbags.

Phil:

I don’t feel right unless my toothy pegs get a good clean.

This was a clash of cultures. And to find out what happened and how it turned out, you’ll have to join us in part 2.

Phil:

Yes, or you could look it up online.

Ed:

Don’t do that.

Phil:

That’s why I said could. Could but shouldn’t.

[hey]

Hey humans, this Stone Age bad.

Cross the land bridge and make it better.

Remember to develop basket weaving

Then you'll begin to make it better.

And anytime you feel the pain, hey look, it's Spain,

Their horses will give your raids an upgrade

For well you know that it's no brave who walks all day

You've got to breed and trade them horses.

Neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh.

Nermernuh Nermernuh Nermernuh Comanche.

Nermernuh Nermernuh Nermernuh Comanche.

Etc