The Comanche Empire

by Pekka Hämäläinen

Individual status competition and large-scale raiding were closely interwoven in the Comanche society, but that does not mean that the Comanche raiding industry was a mere reflection of raw individual ambition, a blind social impulse. Status competition among men served as a potent engine for violent external action, but its thrust was checked and controlled by overarching political institutions that gave direction to Comanche foreign policy. Comanches never developed a unitary, statelike decision-making system, but their evolving political structures were powerful enough to harness young men’s competitive urges for the greater national good and cohesive enough to incorporate the raiding economy into a coordinated diplomatic and military policy. This was as much a psychological process as it was a political one, involving a creative and sometimes uneasy dialogue between individual self-interest and group solidarity, and it takes us to the very core of the polity that built the most enduring empire in the colonial Southwest.