Comanche Country
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Comanche Country
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture/digital Painting
Description
Central Texas played a major role in the wars between the Comanche people and the encroaching frontiersmen during the last half of the 1800's. This struggle is described in the book Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne. It's a difficult book to put down, once you get started and is non-fiction as well.
The Comanche emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. In 1680, the Comanche acquired horses from the Pueblo Indians after the Pueblo Revolt. They separated from the Shoshone after this, as the horses allowed them greater mobility in their search for better hunting grounds.
The horse was a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture. It was of such strategic importance that some scholars suggested that the Comanche broke away from the Shoshone and moved southward to search for additional sources of horses among the settlers of New Spain to the south. The Comanche may have been the first group of Plains natives to fully incorporate the horse into their culture and to have introduced the animal to the other Plains peoples.
The Comanche maintained an ambiguous relationship with Europeans and later settlers attempting to colonize their territory. The Comanche were valued as trading partners since 1786 via the Comancheros out of New Mexico, but were feared for their raids against settlers in Texas. and similarly, they were, at one time or another, at war with virtually every other Native American group living on the South Plains leaving opportunities for political maneuvering by European colonial powers and the United States. At one point, Sam Houston, president of the newly created Republic of Texas, almost succeeded in reaching a peace treaty with the Comanche in the 1844 Treaty of Tehuacana Creek. His efforts were thwarted in 1845 when the Texas legislature refused to create an official boundary between Texas and the Comancheria.
Quanah Parker emerged as a dominant figure of the Comanche, particularly after the tribe's final defeat. He was one of the last Comanche chiefs. The U.S. appointed Quanah principal chief of the entire nation once the people had gathered on the reservation and later introduced general elections.
Quanah was a Comanche chief, a leader in the Native American Church, and the last leader of the powerful Quahadi band before they surrendered their battle of the Great Plains and went to a reservation in Indian Territory. He was the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an English-American, who had been kidnapped at the age of about nine and assimilated into the tribe. Quanah Parker also led his people on the reservation, where he became a wealthy rancher and influential in Comanche and European American society.
Some digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered photographs will not contain the FAA watermark.
Image copyright 2016 Jon Burch Photography all rights reserved.
Uploaded
February 2nd, 2016
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