What did the Comanche believe in?
The Comanche believed in a creator spirit and its counterpart, an evil spirit, and accepted the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon as deities. The religion was animistic with natural objects and animal spirits (except for dogs and horses) having various powers. What does the name Comanche mean?
What was the Comanche Indians religious beliefs?
“The religion and beliefs of the Comanche tribe was based on Animism that encompassed the spiritual or religious idea that the universe and all natural objects animals, plants, trees, rivers, mountains rocks etc have souls or spirits. The Great Plains tribes such as the Comanche believed in Manitou, the Great Spirit.”
What are some Comanche traditions?
Customs of the Comanche
- War. The Comanche were a warrior tribe, and had several customs associated with war. ...
- Spirits. The Comanche tribe believed that everything in the world around them, from the wolf to the trees, had a spirit.
- Names. Names were important and meaningful to the Comanche people. ...
- Pipes. For people of the Comanche tribe, it was a custom to smoke a pipe. ...
What are Comanche customs?
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Did the Comanche believe in God?
The Comanche did not believe in a creator god. Instead they thought they had originated from animals, perhaps wolves. Religion for them involved learning to please the supernatural powers who lived in rocks and animals. They believed that by placating these spirits they would receive what they needed to survive.
What traditions did the Comanche tribe have?
The rituals and ceremonies of the Comanche tribe and many other Great Plains Native Indians, included the Sweat Lodge ceremony, the Vision Quest and the Sun Dance Ceremony.
What is the Comanche tribe known for?
The Comanche were known for being strong warriors and having the finest horses. Today, they celebrate their heritage with an annual powwow, or dancing festival, in July.
Does Comanche mean enemy of everyone?
Only after their arrival on the Southern Plains did the tribe come to be known as Comanches, a name derived from the Ute word Komántcia, meaning "enemy," or, literally, "anyone who wants to fight me all the time." The Spaniards in New Mexico, who came into contact with the Comanches in the early eighteenth century, ...
What does Comanche stand for?
Comanche, self-name Nermernuh, North American Indian tribe of equestrian nomads whose 18th- and 19th-century territory comprised the southern Great Plains. The name Comanche is derived from a Ute word meaning “anyone who wants to fight me all the time.”
What is the symbol of the Comanche?
The waterbird is regarded as a religious symbol to the Comanche people. Its feathers, when used in a fan, may carry strong medicine of healing power.
Do the Comanches still exist?
The Comanche tribe currently has approximately 17,000 enrolled tribal members with around 7,000 residing in the tribal jurisdictional area around the Lawton, Ft Sill, and surrounding counties.
What did Comanches look like?
As for the appearance of a Comanche you could usually describe them as being shorter. Warriors would wear their hair long, parted in the middle, and braided on the sides. As for the women, they wore their hair short. To the right is a dress worn by a woman in the Comanche tribe.
What do the Comanche men do?
Comanche men were hunters and sometimes went to war to defend their families. Nearly all Comanche chiefs and warriors were men. Both genders took part in storytelling, artwork and music, and traditional medicine.
Are Comanches cannibals?
The Comanches were ok with the brutal torture to death of prisoners, but not cannibalism. The Karankawa inhabited the coastal region of Texas. Although they were well known for cannibalism, the U.S. government used the Karankawas as allies in its wars against the Comanches and Apaches.
Did the Comanche have female warriors?
Comanche warriors had for centuries taken female captives — Indian, French, English, Spanish, Mexican, and American — and fathered children by them who were raised as Comanches. But there is no record of any prominent half-white Comanche war chief.
Did the Comanche and Apache fight?
The Battle of Little Robe Creek (Also known as the Battle of Antelope Hills) was a battle fought between the Comanches' allies of the Kiowa and the Apache against the Texas Rangers with their allies the Tonkawa, Caddo, Anadarko, Waco, Shawnee, Delaware and Tahaucano.
What religion did the Comanche people practice?
What Is the Religion of the Comanche People? Traditional Comanche religion consists of an unorganized collection of beliefs in spirits that are capable of giving humans special abilities, but the Comanche people have also adopted many Christian beliefs. In ancient Comanche society, organized religion was almost nonexistent.
What is the Comanche god?
The tribal beliefs of the Comanche posit the existence of a creator god known as "Big Father," most commonly identified with the sun. Additional supernatural entities include spirits that can take the form of animals, ghosts and little people.
Did the Comanche have a communal system?
They had no communal system of worship. Comanche life was largely based around warfare. Since the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1881, many Comanche have adopted Christianity, particularly the Dutch Reformed and Methodist denominations. ADVERTISEMENT.
What were the Comanche's powers?
Comanche power depended on bison, horses, trading, and raiding.
What did the Comanche take from the Spanish?
They also took thousands of captives from the Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers and incorporated them into Comanche society.
How many Comanche people are there in Oklahoma?
A number of them returned in the 1890s and early 1900s. In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 members, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma.
What is the Comanche language?
The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It was originally a Shoshoni dialect, but has diverged over time to become a separate language. The Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Why did the Comanche Indians use buffalo?
Because of their frequent traveling, Comanche Indians had to make sure that their household goods and other possessions were unbreakable. They did not use pottery that could easily be broken on long journeys. Basketry, weaving, wood carving, and metal working were also unknown among the Comanches. Instead, they depended upon the buffalo for most of their tools, household goods, and weapons. They made nearly 200 different articles from the horns, hide, and bones of the buffalo.
When did the Comanche Nation College close?
In 2002, the tribe founded the Comanche Nation College, a two-year tribal college in Lawton. It has since closed. Each July, Comanches from across the United States gather to celebrate their heritage and culture in Walters at the annual Comanche Homecoming powwow. The Comanche Nation Fair is held every September.
What is the meaning of the word "comanche"?
The Comanche's autonym is nʉmʉnʉʉ, meaning "the human beings" or "the people". The earliest known use of the term "Comanche" dates to 1706, when Comanches were reported to be preparing to attack far-outlying Pueblo settlements in southern Colorado. The Spanish adopted the Ute name for the people: kɨmantsi (enemy).
What did the Comanches do to the Native Americans?
By 1750, the Comanches had total control of the plains, and other Native American Nations respected their borders.
What was the Comanche's transformation into?
For a tribe that had its beginnings as relatively peaceful hunter-gatherers, the Comanche's transformation into a military juggernaut was almost total. Once they acquired horses and a mastery over them that no other people could match, their culture became almost solely focused on waging war.
What was the territory of the Comanche?
The territory controlled by the Comanche was called the Comancheria by the Spanish, and it grew with astonishing speed. After the horse transformed their entire society into a mobile war machine, the Comanches began their transformation into the Lords of the Plains—and came to control a huge swath of territory in the process.
Why was the Quahadi band so strong in the 1870s?
One reason the Quahadi band, led by the last great Comanche Chief, Quanah Parker, was still a formidable fighting force in the 1870s, in fact, is because they had always disdained any sort of peaceful contact with whites. Having shunned the settlers pushing west, they had avoided these plagues.
How did the US fight the Comanche?
The U.S. fought the Comanche by killing buffalo. Shutterstock. As noted by author Pekka Hämäläinen, one thing about the Comanches was almost unique in world history: They relied almost completely on exactly one food source, the buffalo.
What were the Comanche warriors?
As author S.C. Gwynne writes, the Comanche were originally nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved following seasonal prey. 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. They were also not particularly aggressive, which might have had to do with the fact that they also weren't notably good warriors.
What was the Comanche Nation divided into?
As historian Thomas Kavanagh explains, the Comanche Nation was divided into "bands, " which were centered on a patriarch and usually comprised of extended relatives. Sometimes these bands could be hundreds strong, and the elder patriarch was usually referred to as a chief.
What did the Comanche believe?
Native American literature: Plains. The Comanche, another of the Plains tribes, believe that the Great Spirit created some people but that there were white people existing before them . A flood washed these white people away, and they turned into white birds and flew away. A secondary spirit was then sent….
What is the tribe of the Comanche?
Alternative Title: Nermernuh. Comanche, self-name Nermernuh, North American Indian tribe of equestrian nomads whose 18th- and 19th-century territory comprised the southern Great Plains. The name Comanche is derived from a Ute word meaning “anyone who wants to fight me all the time.”. Comanche.
How many Comanche people were there in 2000?
According to the 2000 U.S. census, there were some 10,500 individuals of Comanche descent in the United States. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Jeff Wallenfeldt, Manager, Geography and History.
What language did the Comanche speak?
Their language, of the Northern branch of the Uto-Aztecan languages, became a lingua franca for much of the area. Like most other tribes of Plains Indians, the Comanche were organized into autonomous bands, local groups formed on the basis of kinship and other social relationships.
How many people did the Comanche have in the 1800s?
By the early 1800s the Comanche were very powerful, with a population estimated at from 7,000 to as many as 30,000 individuals.
Which tribes fought on horseback?
The Comanche were one of the first tribes to acquire horses from the Spanish and one of the few to breed them to any extent. They also fought battles on horseback, a skill unknown among other Indian peoples.
Who were the Comanche leaders?
One of the best-known Comanche leaders, Quanah Parker, belonged to the Quahadi band. In the mid-19th century the Penateka, a southern band, were settled on a reservation in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The northern segment of the tribe, however, continued the struggle to protect their realm from settlers.
What is the Comanche myth?
There is an annual Comanche powwow where the members celebrate their heritage. Comanche Myth: Skunk Outwits Coyote. Coyote was going along one day, feeling very hungry, when he met up with Skunk.
Why did the Comanche increase?
The Comanche population increased because of the large amount of buffalo, an influx of Shoshone people, and the captives taken from rival groups. Horses were prevalent in the Comanche tribe, and by the early 1800s, Comanches had horses in numbers beyond the dreams of other tribes, which helped them to become profitable traders.
What was the purpose of the Comanche Code Talkers?
Army to send messages conveying sensitive information that could not be deciphered by the Germans. Camanche Today. Comanches Gathering of Nations.
What did the coyote do in the movie "I'll give you a start and then catch
I’ll give you a start and then catch you.”. Skunk began to run and was soon out of sight around the hill. Coyote tied a rock to his foot and followed, slowly at first, but he soon kicked the rock loose and doubled his speed. Along the way, however, Skunk had found a brush pile, and he dashed in there and hid.
What is the power of a Comanche Parabio?
The power of a Comanche parabio (chief) could vary from minimal control of his own band to authority over an entire division. Division chiefs apparently were elected by a general council of band parabios, when required, at large gatherings for that purpose.
What were the Comanches' tepees?
Their tepees were distinctive on the southern plains for their use of four (not three) main poles, two of which outlined the entrance. The tepee was always used during winter, but in summer, Comanches frequently used temporary brush shelters.
How did horses change the lives of the Comanches?
The horse radically changed the lives of the Comanches for the better. Besides its mobility, buffalo were easy to hunt, and mounted warriors enjoyed a tremendous advantage in warfare. Comanche skills on horseback quickly reached levels which, in many ways, exceeded those of Europeans.
What is the Comanche social structure?
The English terminology utilized to describe Comanche social structure is vague and often confused, with the term "band" used to refer to several different levels of organization. The principal unit of Comanche domestic economic production and consumption was the extended family, living in several adjacent tipis.
What was the Comanche economy focused on?
Prereservation Comanche economy was focused on the products, animal and vegetal, of the Great Plains.
Where did the Comanche fight?
In the late 1830s, armed with firearms supplied by the Chouteau family, the Comanche and their Kiowa allies fought several battles along the North Canadian River in the Oklahoma Panhandle against encroaching Southern Arapahos and Cheyennes. Comanches sometimes visited the Salt Fork of the Arkansas in northern Oklahoma.
How many Comanche dictionaries are there?
There are two Comanche language dictionaries in print, and Numu Tekwapuha Nomnekatu, the Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, has worked to reestablish knowledge of the language through a number of primers. Several Comanche-language story texts and a hymnal have been published.
What did the Comanche call themselves?
The name Comanche is probably from a Southern Ute word meaning "enemy," or more generally "stranger" or "other.". The Comanche called themselves numunuu and spoke a language related to that of the Shoshone of Wyoming and Idaho. An oral tradition ascribed the split to a dispute between two camps that was settled by one group moving south ...
Why did the Comanche move south?
Of possible equal importance in the Comanches' move south was the desire to gain access to the Spaniards of New Mexico and Texas.
What treaty established a reservation in Oklahoma?
The Treaty of the Little Arkansas in 1865 established a reservation including much of western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. The 1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek reduced this to a reservation totally within the boundaries of Oklahoma.
What were the roles of men and women in the Comanche tribe?
What Were the Roles of Men & Women in the Comanche Tribe? Men and women among the Comanche Indians held distinct roles. The bands of Comanche that roamed the Great Plains area of the United States in the 19th century adhered to a traditional division of labor, which left women in charge of work related to home and family, ...
What did the Comanche do after they acquired horses?
After the Comanche acquired horses, they expected their young men to learn horse-riding skills, which could be used both for tracking animals and herding. The Comanche were considered the best ...
What were the transportable goods the Comanche acquired on these raids?
Among the transportable goods the Comanche acquired on these raids were members of other tribes or citizens from Mexico or the United States. High-ranking Comanche men accompanied the armed groups that led these captives to meeting places with relatives and/or diplomats and exchanged them for money or other goods. These high-ranking men were from among the elite leadership of each tribe. A man could rise to such rank by exhibiting prowess in combat.
Where did the Comanche raid?
Horse-mounted Comanche men went on raids that extended as far south as the jungles of Mexico. On these raids, which might last for months, men occupied themselves with acquiring the transportable goods of whichever people they fought.
Overview
Culture
If a woman went into labor while the band was in camp, she was moved to a tipi, or a brush lodge if it was summer. One or more of the older women assisted as midwives. Men were not allowed inside the tipi during or immediately after the delivery.
First, the midwives softened the earthen floor of the tipi and dug two holes. On…
Name
The Comanche's autonym is nʉmʉnʉʉ, meaning "the human beings" or "the people". The earliest known use of the term "Comanche" dates to 1706, when the Comanche were reported by Spanish officials to be preparing to attack far-outlying Pueblo settlements in southern Colorado. The Spanish adopted the Ute name for the people: kɨmantsi (enemy), and transliterated it into their own language phonetics. Before 1740, French explorers from the east sometimes used the name Pa…
Government
The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is located in Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Grady, Jefferson, Kiowa, Stephens, and Tillman counties. The tribe requires enrolled members to have at least 1/8 blood quantum level (equivalent to one great-grandparent).
Economic development
The tribe operates its own housing authority and issues tribal vehicle tags. They have their own Department of Higher Education, primarily awarding scholarships and financial aid for members' college educations. They own 10 tribal smoke shops and four casinos:
1. Comanche Nation Casino in Lawton
2. Red River Casino in Devol, Oklahoma
Cultural institutions
The Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton, Oklahoma, has permanent and changing exhibitions on Comanche history and culture. It opened to the public in 2007.
In 2002, the tribe founded the Comanche Nation College, a two-year tribal college in Lawton. It closed in 2017 because of problems with accreditation and fundi…
History
The Proto-Comanche movement to the Plains was part of the larger phenomenon known as the “Shoshonean Expansion” in which that language family spread across the Great Basin and across the mountains into Wyoming. The Kotsoteka (‘Bison Eaters’) were probably among the first. Other groups followed. Contact with the Shoshones of Wyoming was maintained until the 1…
Notable Comanches
These are notable Comanche people from the 18th and 19th centuries, prior to allotment.
• Amorous Man (Pahayoko) (late 1780s–c. 1860), Penateka chief
• Black Horse (died ca. 1900), second chief of the Quahadi band