The tribe requires enrolled members to have at least 1/8 blood quantum level (equivalent to one great-grandparent). Their current Tribal Chairman is Mark Woommavovah. Their tribal jurisdictional area is located in Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Greer, Jackson, Kiowa, Tillman and Harmon counties. The Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. Before 1740, French explorers from the east sometimes used the name Padouca for the Comanche it was already used for the Plains Apache. The Spanish adopted the Ute name for the people: kɨmantsi (enemy), and transliterated it into their own language phonetics. The earliest known use of the term 'Comanche' dates to 1706, when the Comanche were reported by Spanish officials to be preparing to attack far-outlying Pueblo settlements in southern Colorado.

The Comanche's autonym is nʉmʉnʉʉ, meaning 'the human beings' or 'the people'. The Comanche Homecoming Annual Dance takes place in mid-July in Walters, Oklahoma. In the 21st century, the Comanche Nation has 17,000 members, around 7,000 of whom reside in tribal jurisdictional areas around Lawton, Fort Sill, and the surrounding areas of southwestern Oklahoma. ĭecimated by European diseases, warfare, and encroachment by Europeans on Comanchería, most Comanche were forced to live on reservations in Indian Territory by the late 1870s. At their peak, the Comanche language was the lingua franca of the Great Plains region. Thousands of captives from raids on Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers assimilated into Comanche society. They took captives from other tribes during warfare, using them as slaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe. They traded with neighboring Native American peoples, and Spanish, French, and American colonists and settlers.Īs European Americans encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes. Spanish colonists and later Mexicans called their historical territory Comanchería.ĭuring the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche practiced a nomadic horse culture and hunted, particularly bison. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Comanche lived in most of present-day northwestern Texas and adjacent areas in eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, and western Oklahoma. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin. Originally, it was a Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language. The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. The Comanche / k ə ˈ m æ n tʃ i/ or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ, 'the people' ) are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religion United States ( Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico)

White comanche