Risky business in Comancheria

At a time when few people dared to travel across the Llano Estacado, the Comancheros made a good living in a region known at the time as “Comancheria” and marked on maps as “The Great American Desert.” It was no desert but hardly anyone except Comanches and Comancheros could attest to this because most who ventured into Comancheria never returned, except maybe as ghosts. 

The Comancheros were entrepreneurs, soldiers of fortune and trail blazers of a sort. The Comancheros’ sales territory extended from their native New Mexico as far east as the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma and as far south as the Davis Mountains in West Texas. 

A 1786 treaty between the Comanches and Juan Baptista de Anza, the Spanish governor of New Mexico, opened up a unique business opportunity. The governor had the distinction of being one of the few in American history to score a decisive military victory against the Comanches, which he accomplished in Colorado. Thus, he had the upper hand when he presented the Comanches with a deal they couldn’t refuse. The treaty allowed trade between New Mexico and the Comanches in exchange for protection of the Spanish territories. Amazingly, the treaty lasted exactly as long as the Comanches.

The Comancheros conducted their risky business thusly: They would meet the Comanches, or sometimes Kiowa, at a predetermined meeting point on the llanos (Ransom Canyon outside of Lubbock was one) or in New Mexico. The Comanches arrived with cows, horses, hides and captives.

This last commodity brought the scorn of governments and settlers but was too lucrative for the Comancheros to pass up. An announcement by U.S. Army General Zachary Taylor that the government would pay for any captives brought into Fort Gibson (in what is now eastern Oklahoma) had an unintended result: the number of captives skyrocketed.

Josiah Greg, an explorer and merchant in his own right, summed up Anglo feelings toward the Comancheros when he wrote: “These parties of Comancheros are usually composed of the indigent and rude classes of the frontier villages, who collect together several times a year, and launch upon the plains with a few trinkets and trumperies of all kind, and perhaps a bag of bread or pinole.” 

On at least one occasion the Comancheros’ merchandise included the latest fashions from Europe. In Caprock CanyonlandsDan Flores writes of Comanche chief Ysamabani (Handsome Wolf) and his band of dandies: “Francisco Amangual found him (Handsome Wolf) in the Yellow House in 1808, leading a band of marvelously fashion-conscious Comanches decked out in the latest in three-cornered hats, long red coats with blue collars, cuffs and white buttons, the effect set off with red neckties.”  

The trade came to include guns, ammunition, whiskey and more than a few head of stolen cattle and horses. The Comancheros sold these to wily merchants who often sold the livestock back to the original owners.  

The beginning of the end for the Comancheros came when the U.S. Army’s Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, with orders to exterminate the last bands of wild Indians on the llanos, found an old wagon road that ran from present-day Tucumcari, New Mexico to what is now Canyon, Texas on the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon. Until then, Mackenzie had been unable to fight the Comanches because he couldn’t find them. 

A captured Comanchero, Polonio Ortiz, told Mackenzie about the trail. Mackenzie promptly conscripted Ortiz into service as a scout. Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry eventually found the trail, plus another one into the heart of Comancheria. That was the beginning of the end for the Comanches and it put the Comancheros out of business.