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. ĭiseases, destruction of the Buffalo herds, and territory loss forced most Comanches on reservations in Indian Territory by the late 1870s. At their peak, the Comanche language was the lingua franca of the Great Plains region. Thousands of captives from raids on Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers were assimilated into Comanche society. They took captives from other tribes during warfare, using them as slaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe.

They traded with neighboring Native American peoples, and Spanish, French, and American colonists and settlers.Īs European Americans encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes. Spanish colonists and later Mexicans called their historical territory Comanchería.ĭuring the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche practiced a nomadic horse culture and hunted, particularly bison. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche lived in most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and western Oklahoma. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.

Originally, it was a Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language. The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. The Comanche / k ə ˈ m æ n tʃ i/ or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ, 'the people' ) is a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States.

Shoshone, Timbisha, and other Numic peoples Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religion United States ( Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico)

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