Davos 2024, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), began this week in Davos, Switzerland. This year’s event, WEF explains, “marks the launch of The Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Leadership Network,” as indigenous leaders from across the globe attend the forum “to share their unique perspectives,” given they “steward one-third of the Earth’s territories, continuing cultural and spiritual practices that nurture their environments and communities.” It’s true, as far as it goes, that indigenous peoples around the world often have valuable insights into the ecology of their homes.
Yet the Davos event also plays into a confused narrative that dominates contemporary understanding of modernity’s interactions with indigenous groups, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. In this narrative, native peoples, prior to European settlement, lived in a harmonious, symbiotic relationship with nature. All, we are told in countless textbooks, television programs, and movies, was perfectly peaceful and happy until the white man arrived. Yet one need only consider the story of the Comanches and the Red River War, whose 150th anniversary we mark this year, to see the absurdity of that “noble savage” narrative.
Little known today, the Red River War defeated the most powerful Indian tribe in American history: the Comanche, whose history is as remarkable as it is chilling. Though the Comanche are usually associated with parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico, they had migrated there from farther north, and what is now Wyoming. Originally hunter-gatherers, the introduction of the horse by the Spanish in the 17th century revolutionized the Comanche way of life. They were soon some of the best horsemen in the world and began an impressive military campaign into what became their new homeland. In the process, they raped, slaughtered, and displaced earlier inhabitants, such as the Apache and Pueblo.
The Spanish, who attempted some settlements into Comanche territory, were so frustrated and humiliated by the tribe — one catastrophe in 1758 resulted in the execution and mutilation of several priests — that they largely gave up and eventually signed a treaty of sorts with the Comanche in 1779. The new nation of Mexico invited Anglo-Americans to settle in Texas — in part to create a buffer between Mexico and the restive Comanche tribes, who regularly raided deep into Mexican territory. It was when Texans got involved that things got bloody.
Obviously, the Comanche viewed Anglo-American settlement in their traditional hunting grounds as a threat — though it was also an opportunity, given that European settlers brought horses and other prizes. Thus began decades of brutally violent raids into Texan and later American territory. The classic Comanche way of fighting, detailed in S.C. Gwynne’s best-selling book Empire of the Summer Moon, was the surprise attack on civilian targets. Men would be killed and their bodies mutilated almost beyond recognition; women were gang-raped, then either killed or abducted to be held for ransom. Young children were also abducted, either for ransom or to be incorporated into the tribe, as happened with the famous case of Cynthia Ann Parker. Babies, viewed as too much of a hassle for migratory horsemen, were typically murdered.
The Comanche Would Never Peacefully Coexist
Texan (and later federal) attempts to stop Comanche raids for years were typically ill-conceived and ineffective, as the Indians were far better horsemen, knew the territory better, and had tactical superiority with their fast-firing bows and arrows against single-shot rifles and pistols. Sometimes Rangers or federal troops would stumble upon a Comanche village, usually resulting in punitive violence against mostly defenseless indigenous men, women, and children. The Civil War in turn emptied Texas of many of its fighting men, and once the Comanche realized this, they were able for a time to considerably push back the Texas frontier. Yet the settlers, buffalo hunters, and cowboys kept coming, eventually leading some Comanche to make terms.
Then, in the summer of 1874, about 250 Comanche, Kiowah, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe warriors under the command of Quanah Parker (who, ironically enough, was the half-Comanche son of Cynthia Ann Parker), determined to launch a brutal revenge campaign against Anglo-American settlements. Though their first target, a group of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls, was a failure, they then swept the southern plains, massacring almost 200 white men, women, and children. In response, President Ulysses S. Grant in July gave Commanding General of the United States Army William T. Sherman permission to put all agencies and reservations under military control in an attempt to finally bring the Comanche and their allies to heel.
Relying on the experience of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, a career U.S. Army officer who had been fighting the Comanche for years, five mounted columns of federal soldiers set out from various forts across the West to defeat the last remnants of the Comanche nation. By that time, likely little more than a thousand Comanche were roaming the plains. There were few major engagements in the Red River War, most of the campaign featuring small actions as federal troops and Indians played a huge game of hide-and-seek across the wilderness.
In one such battle — in which fewer than 10 people died — Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry discovered the main Comanche camp in a remote canyon, drove them off, and captured more than a thousand horses. He ordered most of the horses to be shot. It was the loss of the Comanche’s horses — the backbone of their nomadic way of life — more than anything else that persuaded the last holdouts of the great tribe to surrender and accept life on the reservations.
What the Comanche Wars Teach Us About Today
The half-century of conflict between Anglo-American settlers and the Comanche nation was of course brutal, with atrocities committed by both sides. We should mourn the Comanche’s forced removal to several reservations, where a proud people lost their way of life and were horribly mistreated and exploited by conniving businessmen and federal employees. Witnessing the avaricious destructiveness of the buffalo hunters — who cleared the plains of literally millions of buffalo in a single decade — was undoubtedly traumatic for the Comanche.
Yet the Comanche, many years before they ever crossed paths with the Spanish or Anglo-Americans, were far from innocent victims. Like so many powerful mounted peoples that roamed the Eurasian steppes, they built their empire through violence and terror. For several decades in the 19th century, Americans got a taste of that Comanche way of life, and what they witnessed was deeply disturbing, a kingdom built upon the constant, cruel violation of human dignity. There could be no modus vivendi between a culture of migratory horsemen and another of sedentary settlers — the former required communities sufficiently vulnerable to raid; the latter would always seek more land for farming and grazing.
The story of the Comanche and America is a sad one, but it is difficult to imagine it playing out differently, largely because of qualities too deeply ingrained in the two adversarial cultures. But it is also a story that defies contemporary stereotypes of innocent, victimized indigenous peoples and rapacious, colonizing whites. The Comanche were just as much imperialists as the Europeans ever were. Though Europeans could certainly be violently cruel, their culture at least censured violence against civilians — indeed, when stories of federal troops massacring defenseless Indians traveled east, the American people were horrified. The same cannot be said of the Comanche, whose brutality was an indelible component of their cultural identity.
It’s true as much today as it was 150 years ago that the West can learn from indigenous peoples such as the Comanche, who were not only tremendous horsemen and students of the natural world, but incredibly resourceful in finding a use for practically every part of the buffalo, which, with the horse, served as the cornerstone of their society. But that doesn’t mean we should embrace a simplistic, starry-eyed conception of native peoples, or a benighted, self-hating understanding of our own civilization. Indeed, I’d imagine Davos man, comfortably enjoying the benefits of modern Switzerland, would much prefer the safety and stability of today’s West to the callous, capricious viciousness of the pre-modern Comanche. Unless, perhaps, he’s aiming to play the role of the Comanche.
