First off, you spell Comanche wrong. Second, you are quoting an article from a UK tabloid that was cobbled together quickly to promote a silly Hollywood remake of the Lone Ranger, and it leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to coherence or overall understanding of the conflict at hand.
Yes, Comanche warriors on a raid were savage and brutal, but no they did not always kill babies. More often, if possible they captured children to assimilate into their tribe, which was beset by European disease, false treaties, endless war and starvation which all caused a very high infant mortality rate. The article fails to mention the true nature of episodes like the Council House "fight" which was actually a massacre of a peace delegation. Twelve Comanche leaders came to San Antonio to let the whites sue for peace, since the Comanche were winning the fight for territory at the time. Instead, the Texicans tricked the twelve leaders into a house, locked and boarded all the windows and burned the house down with them inside while their horrified relatives, mostly women and children they had brought to signal their peaceable intentions watched and then fled from the scene, under fire themselves. It was a massacre completely without honor on the side of the Texians, and made peace with honor impossible.
European settlers started the practice of scalping the dead, as a means to collect a bounty on mostly Apache women and children. Yes, the war was brutal and many innocents died. This is the nature of EVERY WAR that has ever been fought. It's only here that the numbers were relatively small and the remoteness of the battlefields led to ruthlessness and xenophobia on both sides. But this "war" lacked coherent leadership on both sides as the Comanche society was not one that employed a central leader at all, and the Europeans were of varied nationality and allegiances themselves, germans, Hispanics of several stripes, slave-owning Anglo interlopers from Tennesse and Virginia, etc. Even if the Comanche had tried again to make a treaty, who were they supposed to deal with? The US Army was all but nonexistent on the plains until the 1870s in Comancheria. The Mexican government was thousands of miles away. The Anglos were fitting a civil war.
The article mentions three excellent books, one fictional but the other two are EMPIRE OF THE SOUTHERN MOON and T.H. Fehrenbach's THE COMANCHES. The fictional one is the LONESOME DOVE series, starting with the titular title. I've read them all and it's only increased my respect for the Comanche way of life and belief system.
Examine the film THE SEARCHERS closely and you will see that it's about an isolated, racist and warlike group of whites who formerly owned slaves, fought against the Union to preserve slavery, practice an antiquated religion and are seen bringing nothing but hatred, liquor, useless trinkets, and genocide to the Indians, even peaceable ones. It's an entire film about how wrong one man can be. He's only stopped by a mixed-blood child of a massacre and the wishes of the girl who was captive, who begs them to just "go" and leave the battle. Ethan Edwards is a man driven insane by endless war and racial insensitivity and he only survives enough to be left "to wander between the winds," as he cursed the dead warrior he mutilated. Hatred is all consuming, and this man in the novel is indeed all consumed, dying in the final fight of sickness that reflects his soul's condition.
Comanche society was broken from the moment they acquired the horse and moved onto the plains, as you will read about in Fehrenbach's book if you care to really know what the story is. The young men were supposed to be fierce warriors to protect the territory and livelihood of the old and the young. But youth and power is a fleeting moment in th elives of most prehistoric bands, and their actions are usually balanced by the wise council of elders, who make peace with neighbors when it is most beneficial to all sides. Here, peace was not possible because the Europeans never once respected the tribes enough to treat them fairly. Meanwhile Comanche culture became perverted by the easy access to the wealth, in the form of horses that the European settlers brought into their midst. Brash young hotheads gained control of the tribal bands and killing and raiding became the preferred method of survival. In some sense, they resorted to terrorism as the only tactic available to them, and it worked for a very long time, so they kept at it. Over time the war of vengeance and counter-vengeance got completely out of hand on both sides, leading to an impossible situation where no one had the respect of the other side enough to make peace, and instead it became a war of extermination.
Who is to blame for this? "Who was here first?," is the usual question but the answer is the Apache, Caddo, Kiowa, Wichita, Tonkawa and many others can claim that. The Comanche, as Europeans knew them were never free from the perverting influence of the culture of the New World invaders, which directed it's greed and hatred upon them and received the same in return. So simple "noble savage" tales don't really apply, and the real lesson is just the usual one about the waste that intolerance brings to all sides.
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nickm2
8 years ago
So we talkin' the influence of the eeevul white beaners who ran Mejico (who were manipulative enough to sell land to Americans so THEY would form a buffer zone-and THEY-and not Mexican landowners-got the Commanche war lance in the gut) or some other eeevul Europeans.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
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