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PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
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SEPTEMBER 2016
were occasionally hunted for their
furs, they were never eaten or wantonly killed. Post Oak Jim shot one
for the fun of it once when out on a
cattle raid. Came a cyclone, and Jim
thought his horse was spinning on its
head; it rained all night, and in the
morning it was so cold that he nearly
froze. ‘That coyote’s mother probably
made medicine,’ said Jim. ‘Coyote
has medicine. If we harm one, it will
get back on us some way.’” It was the
same with dogs. “Post Oak Jim killed
a dog once, and ever after he thinks
he had bad luck with his children.
They all got sick and died.”
The Comanches’ shift from dog
to horse power had far-reaching
consequences for other peoples of
the Oklahoma/Texas area. The new
symbiosis fed the already decidedly
warlike nature of the Comanche
whose Ute-derived name meant
“anyone who wants to fight me all the
time.” Raiding became a way of life,
stealing horses an art. On horseback,
the Comanche became a terror along
the frontier and down into Northern
Mexico where horses were plentiful.
Because the Spanish and Mexican
governments lived in constant fear of
revolution, firearms were kept from
the general population; they were
defenseless against the fierce raiders who whisked away thousands of
horses and mules, cattle, and many
Mexican children.
“Capturing wild horses had its
points, but to the Comanche stealing
them was better. And the Comanche was the top horse thief of them
all,” Wallace and Hoebel wrote.
“…Acquisition of horses by plunder appealed to a Comanche, for it
enhanced his prestige. Taking horses
under difficult conditions provided
opportunity for valor and cleverness,
and it was in its own right a form of
coup: stealing horses from enemies
was a distinguishing mark of honor,
and those most successful in this enterprise were highly respected.”
The Comanches’ prowess in horse
thievery reached almost mythical
proportions. There are many extant
accounts of these daring exploits. In
The Plains of the Great West, Col. R.I.
Dodge wrote that a Comanche could
crawl into “a bivouac where a dozen
men were sleeping, each with a horse
tied to his wrist by the lariat, cut a
rope within six feet of the sleeper,
and get away with the horse without
waking a soul.”
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