Los Comanches: Pieces of an historic, folkloric detective story, part 1

New Mexico Historical Review

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-37

  Kavanagh, Thomas W ^a  

^a SETON HALL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 67650070488     PISSN: 00286206     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (108)

1. Aurelio M. Espinosa, Los Comanches: A Spanish Heroic Play of the Year Seventeen Hundred and Eighty, Bulletin of the University of New Mexico, no. 45, Language Series vol. 1 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1907);
2. and John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, 1540-1840 (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1979), 548 n. 49.
3. A[rthur] L. Campa, Los Comanches: A New Mexico Folk Drama, Bulletin of the University of New Mexico, no. 376, Modern Language Series, vol. 7, no. 1 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), 18.
4. Enrique R. Lamadrid suggests that these are young women of Pecos Pueblo. See his Hermanitos Comanchitos: Indo-Hispano Rituals of Captivity and Redemption (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 64.
5. Campa, Los Comanches, 10 n. 12.
6. Pedro Bautista Pino, Exposición sucinta y sencilla de la provincia del Nuevo México (Cadiz, Spain: Impr. del Estado-mayor-general, 1812);
7. and Angélico Chávez, Origins of New Mexico Families: A Genealogy of the Spanish Colonial Period, rev. ed. (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1992), 259-60.
8. See, for example, Antonio Barreiro, Ojeada sobre Nuero México (Puebla, Mex.: Impr. del ciudadano José María Campos, 1832);
9. and José Agustín de Escudero, Noticias históricas y estadísticas de la antigua provincia del Nuevo-México (Mexico: Impr. de Lara, 1849).
10. The first modern (albeit partial) transcription of Pino (Escudero) was in A. M. Espinosa's Los Comanches. H. Bailey Carroll and Juan Villasana Haggard translated Barreiro and reproduced a facsimile of Pino and Barreiro in Three New Mexico Chronicles: The Expositión of Pedro Bautista Pino, 1812;
11. the Ojeada of Antonio Barreiro, 1832;
12. and the Additions by José Agustin de Escudero, 1849 (Albuquerque: Quivira Society, 1942).
13. A translation and facsimile of Escudero was published in 1972 by Our Lady of Sorrows Church, West Las Vegas, New Mexico. Most recently, Adrian Bustamante and Marc Simmons translated Pino and reproduced a better facsimile of the original in Exposición sucinta y sencilla de la provincia del Nuevo México / The Exposition on the Province of New Mexico (Santa Fe: Rancho de las Golondrinas; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995).
14. In the various editions of Pino, discrepancies exist in the translation of these Comanche words. For example, Bustamante and Simmons, 47, transcribed "Tabivo" as "Tabico," and Escudero, 85, transcribed "narityante" as "naritgante." Comanche personal names often referred to brave deeds of the namer, not to personal qualities of the name bearer.
15. Pino, Exposición, 37. Barreiro's Ojeada omitted both of these paragraphs.
16. In addition to the words "Tabivo narityante," the Exposición included six other Comanche words. See Demitri B. Shimkin, "Comanche-Shoshone Words of Acculturation, 1786-1848," Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 11 (spring 1980): 217.
17. Pino, Three New Mexico Chronicles, ed. Carroll and Haggard, 128;
18. In 1864 Manuel Orozco y Berra, Geografía de las lenguas y carta etnográfica de México: Precedidas de un ensayo de clasificación de las mismas lenguas y de apuntes para las inmigraciones de las tribus (Mexico: J. M. Andrade and F. Escalante, 1864), 59, reproduced this list under the rubric "VIII Familia Apache," thus leading to a different but equally confused thread of the story.
19. Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706-1875 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), table 1.1, 4.
20. Herbert E. Bolton, "Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776," Utah Historical Quarterly 18 (1950);
21. and Kavanagh, Comanche Political History, 87-91, and map 2 on p. 88.
22. Douglas R. Parks, "Synonomy," in W. W. Newcomb, "Wichita," in Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, vol. 13, pt. 2 of Handbook of North American Indians, 13 vols., ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 564.
23. Douglas R. Parks, "Enigmatic Groups," in Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, vol. 13, pt. 2 of Handbook of North American Indians, 13 vols., ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 971.
24. Bustamante and Simmons, Exposicíon, 44, translate orejones as "big ears."
25. Joseph Villaseñor y Sanchéz, Theatro americano: descriptión general de los reynos y provincias de la Nueva-España, 2 vols. (Mexico: Imp. Real, 1746-1748), 2:412-13.
26. In turn, Villaseñor's comments were clearly based on brigadier Pedro de Rivera's diary of his 1726 visit to New Mexico, published as Diario y Derrotero de lo caminando, visto, y obcerrado en el discurso de la visita general de precidios, situados en las provincias yntemas de Nueva España (Ympresso de Guathemala, for Sebastian de Arebalo, 1736).
27. Chávez, Origins of New Mexico Families, 259.
28. Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans (Waterloo, Iowa: War Eagle, 1846; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 105-6.
29. William W. H. Davis, El Gringo; Or, New Mexico and Her People (New York: Harper Brothers, 1857), 82-83.
30. Prince, who was also originally from New York, was later chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, territorial governor, and president of the New Mexico Historical Society.
31. L. Bradford Prince, Historical Sketches of New Mexico: From the Earliest Records to the American Occupation (New York: Leggett Bros.; Kansas City, Mo.: Ramsay, Millet, and Hudson, 1883), 221. Prince's later history, A Concise History of New Mexico (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1912), has no mention of these fights.
32. Documentos para la Historia de México, series II, vol. 1 (Mexico: Imp. de F. Escalante and Co., 1856).
33. Alfred B. Thomas, trans., ed., annot., Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexico, 1777-1787, Civilization of the American Indian vol. 1 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), 375 n. 30.
34. At least three copies of Anza's diary exist. The copy, 278, Audiencia de Guadalajara, Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AG-AGI], was notarized by Antonio Bonilla in January 1780, in Arispe, Sonora. This copy was used by Thomas for his Forgotten Frontiers. The copy of Anza's work cataloged as Historia, tomo 25, no. 36, in the Archivo General de la Nación, was made by Fray Juan Agustín Morfi, also in Arispe in late spring 1780 and was based on Bonilla's copy. This copy was used for the Documentes. Another copy, the genealogy of which is unclear, is "Memorias de Nueva Espan̄a," section 9/4481, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain. My thanks to Joaquín Rivaya Martínez for this information and for a copy of the AG AGI document.
35. Anza's force of 573 men included 103 members of the Tropa Veterana (veteran troops); 211 militia from the Villas of Santa Fe and La Cañada, and the Alcaldías of Queres and San Carlos; and 259 Indians, mostly from the Keres Pueblos. The whole force was apparently from the Rio Arriba. Two of Anza's row and column additions are incorrect in the AG-AGI copy, transcribed by Thomas in Forgotten Frontiers, 122, resulting in an incorrect total of six hundred participants.
36. Juan Bautista de Anza, 31 August 1779, "Diary of the Expedition . . . against the Comanche nation," in Forgotten Frontiers, ed. Thomas, 131-32.
37. Juan Bautista de Anza, 3 September 1779, "Diary of the Expedition . . . against the Comanche nation," in Forgotten Frontiers, ed. Thomas, 134-36.
38. A. M. Espinosa, "Los Comanches," 18, 43 n. 35.
39. Campa, Los Comanches, 15;
40. and John E. Englekirk, "The Source and Dating of New Mexico Spanish Folk Theater," Western Folklore 16 (October 1957): 237-38.
41. Herbert Howe Bancroft, The History of Arizona and New Mexico, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. 17, facsimile ed. (Albuquerque: Horn and Wallace, 1962), 267. The "other authors" are not cited but apparently were Davis and Prince.
42. Adolph F. Bandelier, "Copies made under A. F. Bandelier, a member of the Hemenway expedition, of ancient documents existing in Mexico, Santa Fé, New Mexico, and other places in the Southwestern U.S." MS B22, Tozzer Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts [hereafter "Copies," vol. number, document number, TL];
43. and Report of the United States Commission to the Columbian Exposition at Madrid, 1892-93 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1895).
44. Adolph F. Bandelier to Mary Hemenway, 28 November 1889, in The Southwestern journals of Adolph F. Bandelier, 1889-1892, ed. Charles H. Lange, Carroll L. Riley, and Elizabeth M. Lange, 4 vols. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966-1984), 4:439;
45. and Bandelier, "Copies," vol. 8, docs. 37, 40, 43, 44, 46, TL.
46. Bandelier, "Copies," vol. 8, doc. 36, TL.
47. See also E[leanor B.] Adams and A[ngelico] Chavez, The Missions of New Mexico in 1776: A Description by Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1956), 154. It is not clear why Bandelier did not include the latter.
48. David M. Brugge, Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico, 1674-1875 (Window Rock, Ariz.: The Navajo Tribe, 1968), 31, in a table titled "Subjects of White-Controlled Governments Killed by Indians," totaled 111 deaths attributed to Comanches in the 1770s, and 168 for all of the eighteenth century, the third highest number of killings after "Apaches-General" and "Navajos."
49. A similar discrepancy between claims of massacres and church burial records occurred in 1750 when Gov. Tomás Vélez Cachupín reported that "During the five-year term of my predecessor,... as many as 150 of the Pecos perished at their hands." See Charles W. Hackett, ed., Picardo's Treatise on the Limits of Texas and Louisiana, 4 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1931-46), 3:328.
50. However, as John L. Kessell pointed out in Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 546 n. 24, the Pecos burial book for that period records only 15 deaths attributed to Comanches, in addition to another 12 from an attack in 1746.
51. Charles F. Lummis, A New Mexico David and Other Stories and Sketches of the Southwest (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), 94-100.
52. Ralph E. Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History, 5 vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1911-1917), 5:124;
53. and Amado Chaves, The Defeat of the Comanches in 1717, Historical Society of New Mexico, Publications in History, no. 8 (Santa Fe: New Mexico Printing Company, 1906).
54. Chaves, The Defeat of the Comanches, 6-9.
55. Thomas E. Chávez, Manuel Alvárez, 1794-1856: A Southwestern Biography (Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 1990);
56. and Thomas E. Chávez, Conflict and Acculturation: Manuel Alvárez' 1842 Memorial (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1992).
57. The Alvárez manuscript was cited by A. M. Espinosa as "ms of New Mexico History of first half of the XIXth century in possession of Eusabio Chacón of Trinidad, Colo." Apparently nothing more is known of it.
58. A. M. Espinosa, "Los Comanches," 11.
59. As quoted by A. M. Espinosa, the Alvárez manuscript only said that the battle was at the Arroyo Don Carlos, but docs not geographically locate it. If Chaves gave that information to Espinosa, it must have been in conversation as it is not in The Defeat of the Comanches. The term Colorado River is one of the older names for the Canadian River in New Mexico. See Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 56.
60. Alférez is equivalent to ensign, the lowest commissioned officer.
61. A. M. Espinosa, "Los Comanches," 17.
62. Frederick W. Hodge, "Cuerno Verde," in vol. 1 of Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, 2 vols., ed. Frederick W. Hodge (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1907-1910), 370.
63. See Herbert E. Bolton, review of The Leading Facts of New Mexican History by Ralph E. Twitchell, Southwestern Historical Quarterly 16 (July 1912): 99-102.
64. Twitchell, Leading Facts of New Mexican History, 1:450 n. 474.
65. Ralph E. Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 2 vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1914).
66. Juan de Dios Peña, Razon de las Campañas, Correduzias, Consiciones, y Demas servicios que yo Dn Juan de Dios Peña, Ier Alferez de esta Compa Presidial de Sta Fee del Nuebo Mexico... desde 22 de Septiembre de 1770... hasta la presente fecha de 14 de Agosto de 1805, doc. T-1874, f. 773, r. 15, Spanish Archives of New Mexico II, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe [hereafter SANM II]. The document is incomplete, and although Peña numbered his "campaigns," he did not date them. Interestingly, Juan de Dios Pen̄a is not indexed separately in Twitchell's Spanish Archives of New Mexico.
67. Chavez, Origins, 258;
68. The incomplete record in T-1874 follows Peña only through the rank of sergeant. In March 1801, he was promoted to segundo alférez; Noticia de las Altas y Vaxas, T-1524, f. 685, r. 14, SANM II. There is apparently no record that his father, José Miguel de la Peña, served in the military.
69. Juan Bautista de Anza, Extracto de Revista executado por mi..., October, November, December, 1779, T-780a, f. 1179, r. 10, SANM II.
70. By 1793-1794, when his estate was probated, Peña was "Late Teniente, Santa Fe Presidial Company." Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 2:359;
71. and T-1287a/1289, f. 432, r. 13, SANM II.
72. Thus Fernández may also have been one of the "experienced individuals" who advised Anza, although almost all other archival references to him are in civilian capacities. One of the few references to him in a military capacity, at a junta de guerra (council of war) in 1749, referred to him as "War Captain." "Investigation of Comanche Depredations," 31 December 1749, T-509, f. 947, r. 8, SANM II;
73. and "Letter . . . concerning Carlos Fernández's request for a position," Croix to Anza, 12 June 1778, P-E 53, Documentos Sobre Nuevo Mexico (Pinart Collection), Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley [hereafter PC-BL]. There is only one document, however, that places Fernandez in a military post, the report of the 1774 battle.
74. Manuel Antonio de Esarza, Chihuahua, re-retirement of Tomas Madrid, 15 September 1780, T-806, f. 95, r. 11, SANM II.
75. Juan de Dios Peña, Diary of a campaign against the Pawnees, June 12-August 8, 1790, T-1089, f. 262, r. 12, SANM II. Interestingly, this campaign is not included in Pena's service record, cither because Peña forgot it, or the twenty campaigns he did list were all before 1790 and this one was on the missing portion of his record.
76. Gilberto Espinosa, "Los Comanches," New Mexico Quarterly 1 (May 1931): 133-46.
77. G. Espinosa, "Los Comanches," 133.
78. Thomas, ed., Forgotten Frontiers, 66.
79. Alfred B. Thomas, "Governor Mendinueta's Proposals for the Defense of New Mexico, 1772-1778," New Mexico Historical Review 6 (January 1931): 30.
80. In the process, Thomas cited Amado Chaves's The Defeat of the Comanches in his discussion of raids near Taos in 1716. See Alfred B.Thomas, trans., ed., annot., The Plains Indians and New Mexico, 1751-1778: A Collection of Documents Illustrative of the History of the Eastern Frontier of New Mexico, Coronado Cuarto Centennial Publications, vol. 11, ed. George P. Hammond (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940), 8.
81. Thomas, ed., After Coronado: Spanish Exploration Northeast of New Mexico, Civilization of the American Indian (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935), 27 n. 65 also cited Chaves in connection with Cristobal de la Serna's 1716 campaign against the Comanches and Utes.
82. "Extract of Reports from the Kingdom of New Mexico between September 17 and November 9 of the Past Year," in Comdr. Gen. Teodoro de Croix to Julián de Arriaga, 30 January 1769, in The Plains Indians and New Mexico, ed. Thomas, 166-67.
83. This was not the first "little king" described by the Spaniards as arising among the Comanches. Some eighteen years earlier in 1750, a Comanche leader known as El Oso (The Bear) had been described as the "little king of them all." Juan Joseph Lobato to Gov. Thomas Vélez Cachupín, 28 August 1752, Villanueba de Santa Cruz, in The Plains Indians and New Mexico, ed. Thomas, 115.
84. For illustrations of Comanche horned headdresses, see John C. Ewers, The Indians of Texas in 1830 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1969), plate 16;
85. and Thomas W. Kavanagh, "Comanche," in Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, vol. 13, pt. 2 of Handbook of North American Indians, 13 vols., ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 899, fig. 11.
86. Thomas, Plains Indians and New Mexico, 167 n. 68.
87. Rawhide sunshades were common among Shoshoneans. For a Bannock (Northern Shoshone relatives of the Comanches) version of a huki, see Robert F. Murphy and Yolanda Murphy, "Northern Shoshone and Bannock," in Great Basin, ed. Warren L. D'Azevedo, vol. 11 of Handbook of North American Indians, 13 vols., ed. William C. Sturtevant (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 293, fig. 4;
88. and Thomas W. Kavanagh, North American Indian Portraits: Photographs from the Wanamaker Expeditions (New York: Konecky and Konecky, 1996), 177.
89. One of the older names for the Kwaharenuu division of the Comanches (formed about 1860) was Kwahihuukhnuu (Carrying Sunshade on Their Backs) and was described as "they held a stiff square of hide over their heads." Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Ethnography, 1933: The Field Notes of Gustav G. Carlson, E. Adamson Hoebel, and Waldo R. Wedel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, in press).
90. George Champlin Sibley, 17 October 1825, in The Road to Santa Fe: The Journal and Diaries of George Champlin Sibley and Others Pertaining to the Surveying and Marking of a Road from the Missouri Frontier to the Settlements of New Mexico, 1825-1827, ed. Kate Leila Gregg (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952), 103. Italics in original.
91. Gregg, ed., The Road to Santa Fe, 21, 103;
92. and Bill Gilbert, Western Man: The Life of Joseph Walker (New York: Atheneum, 1983), 71, 75, 78.
93. Juan Agustin Morfi, Diario y derretero, 1777-1781, ed. Eugenio del Hoyo and Malcolm D. McLean, Historia 5 (Monterrey, Mex.: Publicaciones del Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, 1967).
94. Manuel Merino y Moreno was the secretary of the Comandancia General-Provincias Internas. In an endnote, the editor of the Diario y derrotero suggested that this sentence referred to Anza's California expeditions, but it is more likely that it referred to the receipt of Anza's Comanche-expedition diary. Morfi, 8 April 1780, Diario y derrotero, 281.
95. It is unclear whether this mangling was Morfi's or the editor's of Diario y derretero.
96. Elizabeth Ann Harper John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795 (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 1975), 468.
97. Joseph J. Hill, "The Old Spanish Trail: A Study of Spanish and Mexican Trade and Exploration Northwest from New Mexico to the Great Basin and California," Hispanic American Historical Review 4 (August 1921): 458, also picked up on that derivation of Cuerno Verde's motivation from Anza in the Documentos.
98. Stanley Noyes, Los Comanches: The Horse People, 1751-1845 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993).
99. These include Englekirk, "Source and Dating";
100. Beatrice A. Roeder, "Los Comanchcs: A Bicentennial Folk Play" Bilingual Review 3 (September-December 1976): 213-20;
101. Reed Anderson, "Early Secular Theater in New Mexico," in Paso por Aqui: Critical Essays on the New Mexican Literary Tradition, ed. Erlinda Gonzalez-Berry (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989);
102. and Lamadrid, Hermanitos Comanchitos.
103. Sandra Dahlberg, "Having the Last Word: Recording the Cost of Conquest in Los Comanches," in vol. 2 of Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, 2 vols., ed. Erlinda Gonzalez-Berry and Chuck Tatum (Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1996).
104. Vélez Cachupín's first term was 1749-1754. Thomas C. Barnes, Thomas H. Naylor, and Charles W. Polzer, Northern New Spain: A Research Guide (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981), 105.
105. Dahlberg, "Having the Last Word," 136-37;
106. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico, 259;
107. Thomas W. Kavanagh, "Political Power and Political Organization: Comanche Politics, 1786-1875" (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1980), 63-64.
108. The campaigns of 1774 (Fernández's and the other) are in Thomas, ed., The Plains Indians and New Mexico. The indirect reference to Joseph Maldonado's victory of 15 October 1778 is in Croix to Mendinueta, 1 February 1778, P-E 53:13, Documentos Sobre Nuevo Mexico, PC-BL.