Sometimes these bands could be hundreds strong, and the elder patriarch was usually referred to as a chief. As historian Thomas Kavanagh explains, the Comanche Nation was divided into "bands," which were centered on a patriarch and usually comprised of extended relatives. Famous Indian Chiefs like Sitting Bull have made this the most common depiction of Native American government structure.ĭespite having a few famous Chiefs of their own, the Comanches were not this organized or unified. In popular culture, the generic image of an Indian tribe is one where a Chief presides like a monarch. The Comanches waged Total War long before the United States. Young children would be taken captive, and the women would be sexually assaulted and killed.
All male enemies would be killed, without exception-even if they surrendered. One reason for this success was their brutality. They waged war on everyone who came into contact with them-and usually won. Gwynne compares the Comanches to the Spartans in how they were almost totally focused on fighting.Īs a result, the Comanches evolved into a force of violence that no one could withstand.
Most warlike nation in history how to#
Children learned how to ride, how to hunt, and how to fight from a very early age, and their entire lives would be focused on those three aspects. They didn’t have a religious structure, they didn’t have social organizations. Once they acquired horses and a mastery over them that no other people could match, their culture became almost solely focused on waging war.Īs NPR reports, Comanche society was very limited. The Comanche were almost completely focused on warįor a tribe that had its beginnings as relatively peaceful hunter-gatherers, the Comanche’s transformation into a military juggernaut was almost total. The horse was a super-weapon in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, and the Comanche used it to conquer most of the neighboring tribes. Over the course of the next century, the weak hunter-gatherers of the Comanche Nation transformed into a dominant, aggressive empire of warriors, and it was all due to their expertise in breaking, training, riding, and fighting with the horse. The Spanish introduced the animals to the Comanche, but the Indians demonstrated an understanding of both how to master these incredible animals and how to translate that mastery into military force.
They were also not particularly aggressive, which might have had to do with the fact that they also weren’t notably good warriors.īut all this changed in the late 17 th century, when the Comanche first encountered the horse. In many ways they lagged behind their peers-while the Aztec Empire was building incredible cities and the Iroquois were developing a sophisticated civilization, the Comanche built nothing and had no permanent settlements. Gwynne writes, the Comanche were originally nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved following seasonal prey. And while the Comanche were unparalleled warriors on horseback, this wasn’t always the case. The popular image of the Native American in the 19 th century invariably shows them as badass warriors who live their lives on horseback. Here’s the secret story of the Comanche: The most powerful Native American tribe in history. They were only defeated in the late 19 th century, and that defeat required more than American soldiers to bring about. They once controlled a vast empire in the heartland of what would become parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas, and they held off invaders for decades. This Native American nation was once the most powerful in America-and one of the most effective fighting forces in history, hands down. The Native Americans who found themselves fighting for their lives against the United States were diverse, representing many thriving and complex civilizations-and they were more effective at fighting an endless war against impossible odds than you might think.Ĭase in point: The Comanches. Even when the violence and brutality of America’s tactics are acknowledged, there is usually still the assumption that the Native American civilizations we conquered never stood a chance.īut pull on any thread in that narrative and it falls apart.
It’s a story of brutally inevitable conquest, of an advanced nation hungry for territory overpowering a weak coalition of indigenous people who are often portrayed as ignorant and even savage. For many Americans, the story of how we conquered the continent is a straightforward one.
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