Comanche Timeline 1500 to Present

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Here is a timeline of significant events in Comanche history from 1500 A.D. to the present.

 

1500 Comanches separate from Eastern Shoshone near Wind River.

1540 Coronado Expedition into the Southern Plains.

1540 Comanches known to be using dogs for transport.

1598 Spain builds colony in New Mexico and starts enslaving Indians.

1601 Don Juan de Onate encounters Plains Apache at Canadian River while looking for the Seven Cities of Gold (Cibola).

1680 Pueblo Rebellion, Comanches obtain horses.

1687 Sieur do La Sill encounters Comanches near Trinity River.

1692 Picuris relocates with Plains Apache in West Kansas.

1700 Comanches and Utes trade at Taos, New Mexico.

1706 Picuris returns to the Rio Grande Valley Area.

1716 Jicarilla Apache forced into mountains of New Mexico by repeated Comanche and Ute raids.

1716 During summer, Comanches and Utes trade at villages in New Mexico.

1716 Spanish attack Comanche/Ute Village north of Santa Fe; prisoners were taken and sold as slaves.

1719 First recorded Comanche raids in New Mexico for horses.

1719 Spanish send soldiers as far north as Pueblo, Colorado, only to find abandoned campsites.

1720 Apache bands retreat into Mexico from repeated Comanche attacks.

1720 Spanish send military expedition to investigate rumors of French trade and are destroyed by the Pawnee.

1723 War between Comanches and Utes and Plains Apache explode, two military expeditions sent to help the Apaches fail to locate Comanche and Ute Tribes.

1724 Comanche fight a nine-day war at Great Mountain of Iron, it results in major defeat for the Apache.

1724 French Trader Bourgmont trades with Padoucah in Kansas.

1725 Last Apaches settle on upper Arkansas River and disappeared.

1728 Plains Apache settle on Rio Grande with Pueblo Tribes.

1730 Comanches control Texas Panhandle, Central Texas and Northeastern New Mexico.

1730 Comanche/Ute alliance collapse, 50-year war begins between Comanches and Utes.

1740 Comanches obtain firearms from French traders.

1742 Spanish send another failed expedition as far as Wichita Villages without encountering Comanches.

1743 Comanches visit San Antonio de Bexar.

1745 Comanches force Utes from the Plains and Utes run and hide in the mountains.

1745 Kotsoteka Comanches cross Arkansas River and move into New Mexico.

1746 Comanches raids Pecos, New Mexico. Under siege for the next 40 years, Comanches attack virtually all places in Spanish New Mexico.

1746 Major war between Comanches and the Osage and Pawnee.

1747 French barter peace between Comanche and Wichita.

1749 The French barter peace between the Comanche and Wichita; Comanches break alliance with the Utes.

1749 Utes beg Spanish for protection from Comanches.

1750 Comanches settle in the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, of Texas Panhandle.

1750 French trade for horses increase with the Comanches for Firearms.

1750 Utes make alliance with the Jicarilla against the Comanches.

1750 Comanches raid Pecos again.

1750 Wichita barters peace between the Comanche and the Osage and Pawnee.

1750 Comanches drive Apaches out of Southern plains: Jicarilla, Carlanas, Mescaleros, Faraones, and Lipans.

1751 Comanche and Pawnee defeat the Osage.

1751 Pawnee leave the Plains and settle in the Platte Valley.

1754 Blackfeet Tribe acquires horses from Comanches.

1757 Lipan Apaches ask Spanish to build a mission on Comanche Territory that results in war between the Spanish and Comanche.

1758 Comanche and Wichita attack San Saba Presido and missions and kill all.

1759 Spanish army defeated by Comanche and Wichita at Red River.

1760 Crow tribe acquires horse from Comanche.

1760 Taos attacked by Comanches.

1761 Comanches attack Lipan mission on Nueces River.

1763 France transfers Louisiana to Spanish control.

1765 Prior to this date the Kiowa lived in the Black Hills, driven out by Lakota Sioux moving westward from Minnesota.

1768 Ute/Jicarilla alliance defeated by Comanches.

1773 Comanches raid Pecos for the 4th Time.

1774 Spanish soldiers, with help of Pueblo Indians, attack a Comanche village near Raton and capture over 100 Comanches Prisoners.

1775 Yamparika Comanches fight Lakota and Cheyenne in the Black Hills.

1777 New Spain holds council of war and seeks alliance with Nations of the North, Comanche and Wichita.

1779 Spanish send 500-man army with 200 Utes and Apache to attack a large Comanche village and kill Chief Green Horn.

1780 Due to the Kiowa being forced to move south by the Lakota, war breaks out between the Comanche and Kiowa.

1781 Smallpox decimates both Wichita and Comanche Tribes, many people die.

1785 Spanish propose treaty with Texas Comanche, signed in the Fall.

1786 Kotsoteka kill Chief White Bull in New Mexico because of his stance against peace, his followers scatter.

1786 Spanish barter a peace between the Comanche and Ute tribes, and sign treaty with Comanches.

1789 Spanish and Comanche defeat Lipan Apache.

1790 Comanche and Pawnee war for 3 years, Pawnee defeated.

1791 Comanche and Osage War, Osage again defeated by Comanches.

1797 Comanches destroy entire Osage village near the Kansas / Missouri border.

1803 Comanches and Pawnee war, Pawnee again defeated by Comanches.

1805 Comanches and Kiowa make peace after a Kiowa warrior lives among the Comanche for a summer.

1807 Dr. John Sibley has a meeting with a Comanche Chief.

1810 Approximate time of peace with the Kiowa Apache.

1810 Hidalgo Revolt occurs.

1811 Comanche Chief El Sordo visits Bexar and is imprisoned in Coahuila.

1811 Relations between Texas and Comanches break down due to the imprisonment of El Sordo.

1813 American traders trade with Comanches for horses.

1816 John Jamison meets with Comanche Chiefs for trade.

1821 Spanish rule replaced by Mexico.

1821 Santa Fe trail opened.

1822 Mexico makes treaty with Texas band of Comanches.

1825 Mexico does not honor treaty with Comanches and the Rio Grande War breaks out.

1825 Comanches raid Chihuahua.

1825 United States begins construction of Ft. Gibson in Oklahoma.

1826 Mexico makes treaty with the Texas band of Comanches again.

1829 Comanches and Kiowa battle U. S. Infantry on the Santa Fe Trail.

1830 Comanches war with Cheyenne and Arapaho alliance.

1831 Mexico bans trading with Comanches.

1832 Comanches catch Pawnee raiders stealing horses and kill them all.

1832 Construction of Bent’s Fort on Arkansas River.

1833 Sam Houston barters peace with Comanches, becoming friends to many.

1834 Mexico makes treaty with Texas Comanches.

1834 Mexico again dishonors peace treaty and Comanches resume raids on Mexico.

1835 Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango re-establishe bounties for Comanche scalps.

1835 American Treaty made at Camp Holmes, with Comanche, Wichita, Osage Quapaw, Seneca, Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek.

1836 Cynthia Ann Parker captured at Fort Parker, Texas.

1836 Texas wins independence from Mexico; Sam Houston becomes president of the Republic.

1837 Texas Cherokee Chief Diwali makes peace and trades with 16 different bands of Comanches.

1838 Texas and Comanches make peace treaty.

1839 Texas force out Cherokee, Shawnee and Delaware from Texas.

1839 Smallpox epidemic.

1840 Comanches meet Texans for council in San Antonio, 12 Comanche Chiefs are killed and 27 women and children taken prisoner.

1840 Peace is made between Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Comanches. Comanches give massive gifts of horses to their new allies.

1840 Chief Potsana Kwahip (Buffalo Hump) takes warriors against Texas on a thousand mile raid. Homes are burned. Hundreds of Texans killed.

1840 Texas with Tonkawa warriors attack Comanches at Plumb Creek.

1840 Texas Rangers formed to fight Comanches.

1841 Texas has second war with Mexico.

1843 Colonel J.C. Eldridge meets with Chief Pahayuco of the Tenawa at Pecan River, near the Red River.

1844 Sam Houston meets with Chief Tseep Tasewah along with other Indian Leaders.

1845 Quannah Parker is born to Cynthia Ann Parker near Laguna Sabinas (Cedar Lake).

1845 Treaty between Republic of Texas and Texas band of Comanches is signed.

1846 United States annexes Texas.

1846 Butler-Lewis Treaty made with Comanche, Anadarko, Caddo, Lipan, Wichita and Waco.

1846 Comanche delegation meets with President Polk.

1847 German Treaty singed at Fredericksburg with Comanche, this treaty is still honored.

1848 Smallpox epidemic strikes Comanche people.

1848 Between 1848 and 1853, Mexico filed 366 separate claims for Comanches and Apache raids originating from North of the border.

1849 Gold seekers traveling along Canadian River bring smallpox to the Comanches.

1851 Comanche population drops from 20,000 to 12,000 due to smallpox.

1851 Ft. Laramie Treaty with Plains Indian Tribes.

1851 Epidemic breaks out among the Comanches and Kiowa.

1852 Comanches raid Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Durango and Tepic in Jalisco, 700 miles south of the Border.

1853 Kiowa and Yamparika sign Ft. Atkinson Treaty.

1854 Texas Congress provides 23,000 acres and establishes three Indian reservations on the upper Brazos River for the Texas tribes, Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, Shawnee, Wichita and Tonkawa.

1854 Penateka Tribe moves to Texas reservation.

1856 Robert E. Lee becomes in charge of Texas Indian Reservations.

1858 Due to Indian raids, the Army abandons Camp Cooper.

1858 Texas Rangers attack Comanche village at Little Robe Creek in Indian Territory.

1858 Captain Earl Van Dorn attacked a Comanche village at Rush Springs, killing 83.

1858 Van Dorn strikes the Comanches at Crooked Creek in Kansas.

1859 Settlers attack reservation in Texas and are repelled by Indians.

1859 Indians on Texas reservation forced to leave Texas.

1860 Calvary sends 3 columns on expedition battle fought with Comanches, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

1860 Cynthia Ann Parker re-captured by Texas Ranger Sul Ross.

1861 Confederate signs two treaties with Comanche bands.

1861 Confederates fail to make good on treaty and Comanches push the Texas frontier back over 100 miles, forts are abandoned and raids increase.

1861 Santa Fe trail closed down by Comanches, Kiowa, Cheyenne and Arapaho.

1862 Smallpox epidemic from New Mexico strikes.

1862 Comanches and Pro-Union Delaware and Shawnee from Kansas attack the Tonkawa agency on revenge raid and kill 300 Tonkawa for helping the white men track and fight other Indian tribes.

1863 Full scale war in the Great Plains by an alliance for Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and Kiowa-Apache.

1864 Colonel Kit Carson sent to deal with Comanches at first battle of Adobe Walls with Ute and Jicarilla scouts; Carson left after 4 days battle and never again returned to Texas to fight Comanches.

1864 Five days after Carson’s battle, Chivington’s Colorado volunteers attack a sleeping Cheyenne village on Sand Creek in southern Colorado, mutilating 300 Cheyenne, mostly women and children.

1865 Council held with Confederate and Plains Tribes at Wichita River two weeks after Lee had surrendered.

1865 Little Arkansas Treaty signed with the Comanche and other Plains Tribes.

1867 Cholera epidemic strikes Comanche bands.

1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty signed by Comanche Tribes; Kwahada band refuses to sign.

1868 Comanche bands that signed treaty moved to Ft. Cobb only to leave again in the summer to return home to the plains.

1868 Comanche raids target Texas and Kansas, all tribes are then ordered to Oklahoma.

1868 George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Calvary attack a southern village on the Wichita in November.

1868 Major Andrew Evans attacks a Comanche village at Soldiers Spring on Christmas Day.

1869 Comanche-Kiowa Agency was relocated to Ft. Sill, and the Cheyenne-Arapaho agency to Darlington.

1870 Comanche population estimated at around 8,000.

1871 Kiowa raids General William Sherman’s wagon train and almost kills the Supreme Commander of the American Army.

1871 A raid by the Kwahada band of Comanches stole 70 horses from the Army at Rock Station.

1871 General Randall Mackenzie and his black buffalo soldiers fight the Kwahada band of Comanches for two years on the Plains.

1872 Combined Comanche and Kiowa raids in Texas kills 20 in Texas, at the same time Texans steal 1,900 horses from tribes at Ft. Sill, OK.

1872 Mackenzie attacks a Comanche village at McClellan Creek; he takes 130 women and children hostage and imprisons them at Ft. Concho. 200 more lodges are destroyed.

1873 Comanche hostages are released and forced to go to Ft. Sill, OK.

1874 Cheyenne hunters report that there are dead buffalo all over the Plains. Violence erupted at Wichita and Darlington Agencies and put down by federal troops.

1874 Large groups of Cheyenne leave the reservation to the Plains.

1874 A large Comanche-Cheyenne war party attacked 23 buffalo hunters camped in the Texas Panhandle at the site of Carson’s 1864 battle of Adobe Walls.

1874 Red River War or Buffalo War begins; this is the last Great Indian War in the Plains.

1875 General Miles attacks a group of Cheyenne near McClellan Creek.

1875 General Mackenzie attacks and burns five Comanche villages in Palo Duro Canyon and massacres women and children and destroys over 1400 Comanche horses.

1875 Winter time brings starvation to the Indians and they start to return to the reservation after relentless pursuit by Federal Troops.

1875 In April, 200 Kwahada, who had never surrendered arrived at Ft. Sill. In June the last 400 Kwahada with Quanah Parker surrendered.

1879 The Buffalo of the Great Plains were gone, over 65 million were destroyed by white hunters. Estimation taken in 1879 reported less than 1500 buffalo left on the Plains.

1901 The Comanche reservation is broken up due to Government pressure to open the land for settlement.

1905 Quannah Parker rides in President Roosevelt’s Inaugural parade in Washington, D.C.

1905 President Theodore Roosevelt visits Quannah’s Star House. Quannah and the President go on a wolf hunt in April.

1910 Quannah buries his mother Cynthia Ann Parker on December 4 at Post Oak.

1911 Quannah Parker dies. Over 2000 people attend his funeral.

1916 Comanche warriors volunteer for service in Europe; Code Talkers are utilized by United States forces.

1941 Comanche warriors again volunteer for service in Europe.

1941 Code Talkers use the Comanche language in D-Day Invasion and Patton’s tank battalion to secure victory for allied forces during WW II.

1989 France recognizes Comanche Code Talkers for bravery and awards them the highest honor it can bestow for esteemed service in having saved France from German occupation.

1992 The first Annual Comanche Nation Fair was held on the grounds of the old Craterville Park location in the foothills of the Wichita Mountain, now known as Camp Eagle Training Center on the west range of Fort Sill Military Reservation.  The Annual Fair continues on the last week-end in September on the grounds of the Comanche Nation Complex, north of Lawton.

1993 The first and only Comanche Nation Rodeo was held at Eagle Park in Cache Oklahoma.

1993 Comanches adopt an official alphabet, and Numu Tekwapuha Nomeneekatu, the Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee (CLCPC)  is formed to preserve Comanche language and culture.

1998 Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee launches its first language newsletter and their official web site.

1999 Last Comanche Code Talker, Charles Chibitty, received the Knowlton Award by the United States Government for the Code Talker’s help in WWII.

2000 Comanche Tribe attains a herd of buffalo from Wichita Wildlife Refuge for cultural revitalization

2000 The first Annual Shoshone Nations Reunion is held in Fort Hall, Idaho.  Reunions have been held each year since then, with the Comanche Nation hosting in 2002 and again in 2006.

2001 Comanches attain a herd of wild mustangs from Pyramid Lake Piutes.

2002 Dr. William C. Meadows published a book titled “The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II” that tells the story of our code talkers.

2002 The Comanche Nation College is opened.

2002 The CLCPC certifies the first two Comanche language teachers at the Comanche Nation College in Lawton.

2003 The first official Comanche Dictionary is published by the CLCPC, compiled entirely by Comanche people.