Tribal enrollment in the 21st century numbered 15,191, with 7,763 members residing in the Lawton- Fort Sill and surrounding areas of southwest Oklahoma. In 1920 the United States Census listed fewer than 1,500 Comanche. army and were forced to live on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. By 1875, decimated by European diseases, warfare, a tide of Anglo settlement, and the near-extinction of the bison, the Comanche had been defeated by the U.S. Many of these captives were kept as slaves or traded to the Spanish in New Mexico, but captives taken by the Comanche at a young age were usually assimilated into Comanche society as members of the tribe. Although infamous for their unrelenting warfare and raiding into Mexico, they also took thousands of captives from raids on other Native tribes as well as Anglo settlers on the American frontier. The Comanche bands regularly waged war on neighboring tribes and European settlers encroaching on Comancheria. Estimates of the Comanche's total population in 1780, when they were most numerous, are usually around 20,000, although one estimate numbers them at 40,000. They consisted of several bands with a common language which operated independently of each other. Their extensive area of suzerainty has been called an empire, but the Comanche were never united under a single government or leader. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache (Plains Apache), Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. ComancheriaĬomanche history / k ə ˈ m æ n tʃ i/ In the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. History of Native American tribe A Comanche warrior in 1835.
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