COMANCHE, ko-min'che, CAMANCHE, CHOUMAN, COMANDE. Their own name is Niim, ((people)); the Sioux gave them one which the French turned into Padouca, a powerful and ferocious tribe of the widely dis tributed Shoshonean stock, speaking the same language as the Shoshones of Wyoming, and traditionally their neighbors. When first made known to the whites by the French under Dutisne, they were located in eastern Colorado. They had already obtained horses from the Spaniards and become nomads and expert horse men, and horse-breeders, for the French bought horses from them. In 1724 another French ex pedition made a treaty with them. They seem shortly after to have been pushed southward by the Sioux, and we find them later roving the plains of northwestern Texas, making plundering raids from Colorado through Texas, deep into Mexico, and westward to Santa Fe. They lived in skin wigwams, with few or no fixed villages except near the Spaniards, and were in eight bands, with a very loose organiza tion. They probably numbered 5,000 warriors, and 25,000 in all, at their best estate. One vil lage near the Spaniards had 800 warriors, and over 4,000 in all. They were at constant war, both with the Spaniards and the other Indian tribes, and in 1783 engaged in a wholesale war with the former; but Anza inflicted a crushing defeat on them, killing 30 of their chiefs, and there was peace for a time. In 1816 they are
said to have lost 4,000 of their number by an epidemic of smallpox; but they were still esti mated at 9,000; and in 1847 at 10,000 or 12,000, one-fifth warriors. They recruited their num bers by kidnapping and adopting Mexican chil dren, boys or girls. For all the years of im migration into those regions, down to 1875, they were the bloody and relentless scourge of the white settlers, and furnished a good part of the Indian horrors of the Southwest. They were once placed on a reservation in Texas, but were driven off. In 1868 the bulk of them agreed to go on a reservation in western Oklahoma; but the Quahada or Staked Plain band refused, and kept up their murderous forays. They were sharply punished by Colonel McKenzie at Mc Clellan's Creek in 1872, in which year they_were estimated at 3,218 on the reservation, with 1,000 more in roving bands. The last of these sur rendered in 1875. In 1901 their reservation in Oklahoma was thrown open to settlement. At present they number about 2,000. Consult Hodge, W. H.,