TRAIL OF
FEARS:
The Comanche Trail in West Texas
by Phyllis Dunham
Map courtesy Phyllis Dunham and Joe Esparza
The Comanche Trail from the Great Plains to Northern Mexico.
O
bscured by time and nature, the
Comanche Trail that once cut
through West Texas is now more
a legend than a fact, but its traces can be
found on old maps, in history books and
novels and, in a few places, still engraved
into the desert soil. According to Big
Bend National Park archeologist Tom
Alex, the remains of the trail’s networks
in the park are readily apparent only
from an aerial perspective these days,
but it is still quite visible on the ground
near Fort Stockton.
What was the Comanche Trail?
What was it used for? How was it
forged?
These questions can only be
answered by first understanding the rev-
olutionary encounter of the nomadic,
buffalo-hunting Comanches with the
horse. Before that fateful meeting,
Comanches, a branch of Shoshones
from what is now Wyoming, had been
considered a backward people by other
Plains Indians. They neither wove nor
made pots. Their society was flat and
simple with neither religious nor military
chiefs beyond the leaders of small hunt-
18
ing bands. They had been kicked
around and pushed hither and yon by
other nations. Until, that is, they mount-
ed horses. Then everything changed –
irrevocably.
The Comanches’ astonishing horse-
back rise to dominance of much of the
Great Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, New
Mexico, Colorado and Kansas was
based on their unparalleled proficiency
in all things equine. Unlike most other
Indians, they selectively bred their own
horses and even gelded them for battle,
and they disdained the Apache practice
of eating horseflesh.
While the Apache, Kiowa, Sioux,
Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Crow and others
certainly prospered utilizing horses,
none approached the expertise of the
Comanches, who, within a few genera-
tions, so mastered horsemanship that
Col. Richard Dodge, one of the first
American military commanders to
observe their skill, called them the “finest
light cavalry in the world.”
What is astounding is that this revolu-
tion occurred largely beyond the knowl-
edge and reach of the Europeans and
Cenizo
Third Quarter 2011
Americans who had unwittingly provid-
ed the stray horses upon which the
Comanches built their realm.
By the time the American settlers and
military were aware that they even exist-
ed, the People, as they called themselves,
had fought for and won vast stretches of
the Great Plains’ buffalo-hunting
grounds from other nations. Their
empire encompassed 240,000 square
miles of what historian T. S. Fehrenbach
refers to as the “richest portions of the
North American bison plains, the south-
ern stretches below the Arkansas.”
The profound bond between warrior
and horse began early in life. Comanche
children the age of modern day-school-
ers played games on horseback to learn
skills that would serve them in future
battles and raids. Games included pick-
ing up objects from the ground while
riding at full gallop, practice for rescuing
fallen battlefield comrades.
Contrary to the depictions in John
Ford Westerns, it was Comanches,
rather than Apaches, who originated the
tactic of surrounding their prey in con-
centric, opposite-turning wheel forma-
tions. And it was Comanches who
devised the art of sliding to the side of
the horse in order to shoot from under
its neck. In this fashion, according to
Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C.
Gwynne, a warrior could “loose twenty
arrows in the time it took a soldier to
load and fire one round from his mus-
ket.” Also according to Gwynne, “It was
not uncommon for a Comanche war-
rior to have one hundred to two hun-
dred mounts, or for a chief to have fif-
teen hundred.”
The Comanche story is rife with
superlatives. They were arguably the
most powerful group of Indians in
North America. They couldn’t be out-
ridden. They couldn’t be outshot. They
controlled more territory and owned
more horses than anyone else – which
brings us back to the creation of the
Comanche Trail. If Willie Sutton
robbed banks because that’s where the
money was, by the early 19th century
Comanches raided Mexico because
that’s where the horses were. Lots of
horses. Relatively unguarded horses.
The Spanish presidios along the