This is the first in-depth historical study of Comanche social and political groups. Using the ethnohistorical method, Thomas W. Kavanagh traces the changes and continuities in Comanche politics from their earliest interactions with Europeans to their settlement on a reservation in present-day Oklahoma. Thomas W. Kavanagh is curator of collections at the William Hammond Mathers Museum at Indiana University.

In the summer of 1933 in Lawton, Oklahoma, a team of six anthropologists met with eighteen Comanche elders to record the latter s reminiscences of traditional Comanche culture. The depth and breadth of what the elderly Comanches recalled provides an inestimable source of knowledge for generations to come, both within and beyond the Comanche community. This monumental volume makes available for the first time the largest archive of traditional cultural information on Comanches ever gathered by American anthropologists.
Much of the Comanches earlier world is presented here religious stories,...

The Life of Ten Bears is a remarkable collection of nineteenth-century Comanche oral histories given by Francis Joseph Joe A Attocknie. Although various elements of Ten Bears s life (ca. 1790 1872) are widely known, including several versions of how the toddler Ten Bears survived the massacre of his family, other parts have not been as widely publicized, remaining instead in the collective memory of his descendants. Other narratives in this collection reference lesser-known family members. These narratives are about the historical episodes that Attocknie s family thought were worth...