Contined from page 86
on horseback, the Comanche often used his mount as a shield, presenting only a leg or
perhaps just the sole of a foot to his befuddled foe as he loosed arrows from beneath his
horse’s neck. Placing a loop of rope over the cantle, the warrior passed it over his head
and under his outside arm for support, freeing both hands to draw and fire his bow or
rifle. If riding bareback, the rider plaited the rope into his horse’s mane. Either way, the
Comanche’s almost magical mastery of mounted warfare stoked the fires of fear burning
up and down the frontier.
From horseback, the Comanches dominated the South Plains and Comancheria, a
huge swath of land stretching south from southern Colorado and Kansas through western
Oklahoma, eastern New Mexico and into north and central Texas, its eastern border lying
just west of Fort Worth. Throughout this region they raided and hunted the buffalo, another plains animal that became central to the Plains Indians once they gained equestrian
mobility.
(See next month’s PCT for part two.)
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
Sources:
• The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains, Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1952.
• The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants, Being a Description of the Plains,
Game, Indians, &c., of the Great North American Desert, Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge,
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1877.
• The Impact of Horse Culture, Elliot West, www.gilderlehrman.org, 2011.
SEPTEMBER 2016
Traveling the South Plains
in 1853, German scientist
Baldwin Mollhausen noted
that from earliest childhood
to the waning days of life a
Comanche was “continually
on horseback.” “Indeed, he
makes but an awkward figure enough on foot, though
he is no sooner mounted
than he is transformed; and
… with no other aid than
that of the rein and heavy
whip he makes his horse
perform the most incredible feats.” Texas historian
Homer Thrall described the
Comanche as “the Arab of
the Prairie — the model of
the fabled Thessalian ‘Centaur,’ half horse, half man,
so closely joined and so
dexterously managed that it
appears but one animal, fleet
and furious.” One almost
begins to wonder how they
were ever subdued.
One of the first things a
Comanche child learned was
to ride, initially strapped to
his mother’s saddle straddling a tame mare. Both
boys and girls learned to ride
both bareback and with a
saddle, with the girls becoming almost as adept as the
boys. But according to Wallace and Hoebel, “It was not
enough for the Comanche
boy to merely learn to ride.
He had to be a trick rider.
Day after day, month after
month, he practiced in drill.
He learned to pick up objects from the ground while
his mount was traveling at
full speed. At first, small and
light objects were selected,
but as the boy grew older
and more proficient, heavier
and more bulky objects were
exchanged for the lighter
ones, until at last, unassisted
and at full speed he might
be able to pick up from the
ground and swing across
his horse the body of the
heaviest man... .” Rescuing a
fallen comrade was obligatory for the Comanche brave,
leaving a downed man to
the devices of his enemy a
disgrace.
A formidable enemy
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