Going over the same things agian...?

Question

Can you give me a bit of information about the comanches?

Food?

Clothing?

Tools?

Weapons?

Other facts?

Answer 1

Comanche is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people. It is closely related to the language of the Shoshone, from which the Comanche diverged around 1700. Although efforts are now being made to ensure its survival, most speakers of the language are elderly, and less than one percent of the Comanches can speak the language. In the late 1800s, Comanche children were placed in boarding schools where they were discouraged from speaking their native language, and even severely punished for doing so. The second generation then grew up speaking English, because of the belief that it was better for them not to know Comanche.

The Comanches emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. This coincided with their acquisition of the horse, which allowed them greater mobility in their search for better hunting grounds. Their original migration took them to central plains, from where they moved southward into a sweep of territory extending from the Arkansas River to central Texas. During that time, their population increased dramatically due to the abundance of buffalo,

the Comanches never formed a single cohesive tribal unit but were divided into almost a dozen autonomous groups. These groups shared the same language and culture but may have fought among themselves just as often as they cooperated.

The horse was a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture, and there have been suggestions that it was the search for additional sources of horses among the Mexican settlers to the south (rather than the search for new herds of buffalo) that first led the Comanches to break off from the Shoshone.

While the Comanches managed to maintain their independence and even increase their territory, by the mid-nineteenth century they faced annihilation because of a wave of epidemics introduced by white settlers. Outbreaks of smallpox (1817, 1848) and cholera (1849) took a major toll on the Comanches, whose population dropped from an estimated 20,000 in mid-century to just a few thousand by the 1870s.

times of war, the band selected a war chief. To be chosen for this position, a man had to prove he was a brave fighter. He also had to have the respect of all the other warriors in the band. While the band was at war, the war chief was in charge, and all the warriors had to obey him. After the conflict was over, however, the war chief's authority ended.

The Comanche men did most of the hunting and always fought the wars. They learned how to ride horses when they were young and they were eager to prove themselves in battle. On the plains, Comanche women carried out the demanding tasks of cooking, skinning animals, setting up camp, and transporting household goods

Food
The Comanche were, initially at least, hunter-gatherers. When they lived in the Rocky Mountains during their migration to the Great Plains, both men and women shared the responsibility of gathering and providing food. When the Comanche reached the plains, hunting came to predominate. Hunting was considered a male activity, and was a principle source of prestige.

For meat, the Comanche ate buffalo, bison, elk, black bears, pronghorn antelope, and deer. When game was scarce the men hunted wild mustangs, sometimes eating their own ponies. In later years the Comanche raided Texas ranches and stole longhorn cattle. They did not eat fish or fowl, unless starving, when they would eat virtually any creature they could catch, including armadillos, skunks, rats, lizards, frogs, and grasshoppers.

Buffalo meat and other game was prepared and cooked by the women. The women also gathered wild fruits, seeds, nuts, berries, roots, and tubers – including plums, grapes, juniper berries, persimmons, mulberries, acorns, pecans, wild onions, radishes, and the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. The Comanche also acquired maize, dried pumpkin, and tobacco through trade and raids.

Most meats were roasted over a fire or boiled. To boil fresh or dried meat and vegetables, women dug a pit in the ground, which they lined with animal skins or buffalo stomach and filled with water to make a kind of cooking pot. They placed heated stones in the water until it boiled and had cooked their stew. After they came into contact with the Spanish, the Comanche traded for copper pots and iron kettles, which made cooking easier.

Women used berries and nuts, as well as honey and tallow, to flavor buffalo meat. They stored the tallow, or fat, in intestine casings or rawhide pouches called parfleches. They especially liked to make a sweet mush of buffalo marrow mixed with crushed mesquite beans. The Comanches sometimes ate raw meat, especially raw liver flavored with gall. They also drank the milk from the slashed udders of buffalo, deer, and elk. Among their delicacies was the curdled milk from the stomachs of suckling buffalo calves, and they also enjoyed buffalo tripe, or stomachs.

Comanche people generally had a light meal in the morning and a large evening meal. During the day they ate whenever they were hungry, or when it was convenient. Like other Plains Indians, the Comanche were very hospitable people. They prepared meals whenever a visitor arrived in camp, which led to the belief that the Comanches ate at all hours of the day or night. Before calling a public event, the chief took a morsel of food, held it to the sky, and then buried it as a peace offering to the Great Spirit. Many, but not all, families offered thanks as they sat down to eat their meals in their tipis.

Comanche children ate pemmican, but this was primarily a tasty, high-energy food reserved for war parties. Carried in a parfleche pouch, pemmican was eaten only when the men did not have time to hunt. Similarly, in camp, people ate pemmican only when other food was scarce. Traders ate pemmican sliced and dipped in honey, which they called Indian bread.


Clothing
Comanche clothing was simple and easy to wear. Men wore a leather belt with a breechclout – a long piece of buckskin that was brought up between the legs and looped over and under the belt at the front and back. Loose-fitting deerskin leggings were worn down to the moccasins, and tied to the belt. The moccasins had soles made from thick, tough buffalo hide with soft deerskin uppers.

The Comanche men wore nothing on the upper body except in the winter, when they wore warm, heavy robes made from buffalo hides (or occasionally, bear, wolf, or coyote skins) with knee-length buffalo-hide boots. Young boys usually went without clothes except in cold weather. When they reached the age of eight or nine they began to wear the clothing of a Comanche adult.

In the 19th Century, woven cloth replaced the buckskin breechclouts, and the men began wearing loose-fitting buckskin shirts. They decorated their shirts, leggings and moccasins with fringes made of deer-skin, animal fur, and human hair. They also decorated their shirts and leggings with patterns and shapes formed with beads and scraps of material.

Comanche women wore long deerskin dresses. The dresses had a flared skirt and wide, long sleeves, and were trimmed with buckskin fringes along the sleeves and hem. Beads and pieces of metal were attached in geometric patterns. Comanche women wore buckskin moccasins with buffalo soles. In the winter they, too, wore warm buffalo robes and tall, fur-lined buffalo-hide boots.

Unlike the boys, young girls did not go naked. As soon as they were able to walk, they were dressed in breechclouts. By the age of twelve or thirteen they adopted the clothes of Comanche women.

[Hair and headgear
Comanche men took pride in their hair, which was worn long and rarely cut. They arranged their hair with porcupine quill brushes, greased it and parted it in the center from the forehead to the back of the neck. They painted the scalp along the parting with yellow, red, or white clay (or other colors). They wore their hair in two long braids tied with leather thongs or colored cloth, and sometimes wrapped with beaver fur. They also braided a strand of hair from the top of their head. This slender braid, called a scalp lock, was decorated with colored scraps of cloth and beads, and a single feather. The feather had no special meaning for the Comanche, but was worn solely for decoration.

Comanche men rarely wore anything on their heads, and had no tradition of wearing the large feathered bonnets seen among the northern Plains peoples. Only after they moved onto a reservation late in the 19th Century would Comanche men begin to wear the typical Plains headdress. If the winter was severely cold they might wear a brimless, woolly buffalo hide hat.

When they went to war, some warriors wore a headdress made from a buffalo's scalp. Warriors cut away most of the hide and flesh from a buffalo head, leaving only a portion of the woolly hair and the horns. This type of woolly, horned buffalo hat was worn only by the Comanche.

Comanche women did not let their hair grow as long as the men did. Young girls might wear their hair long and braided, but women parted their hair in the middle and kept it short. Like the men, they painted their scalp along the parting with bright paint.

Body Decoration
Comanche men usually had pierced ears with hanging earrings made from pieces of shell or loops of brass or silver wire. A female relative would pierce the outer edge of the ear with six or eight holes. The men also tattooed their face, arms, and chest with geometric designs, and painted their face and body. Traditionally they used paints made from berry juice and the colored clays of the Comancheria. Later, traders supplied them with vermilion (red pigment) and bright grease paints. Comanche men also wore bands of leather and strips of metal on their arms.

Except for black, which was the color for war, there was no standard color or pattern for face and body painting: it was a matter of individual preference. For example, one Comanche might paint one side of his face white and the other side red; another might paint one side of his body green and the other side with green and black stripes. One Comanche might always paint himself in a particular way, while another might change the colors and designs when so inclined. Some designs had special meaning to the individual, and special colors and designs might have been revealed in a dream.

Comanche women might also tattoo their face or arms. They were fond of painting their bodies, and were free to paint themselves however they pleased. A popular pattern among the women was to paint the insides of their ears a bright red, and paint great orange and red circles on their cheeks. They usually painted red and yellow around their eyes

Answer 2

type Comanche and push search the net, there are several web sites devoted to different ethnic groups, I just did a paper on an obscure Indian group and I found several sites. Good luck.

Answer 3

First of all, I love the skirt!!! People tell me I've nice legs but I still don't wear shorts

Answer 4

I love long dresses. My bf enjoys the short ones. So my wardrobe is stuffed w/ 1/2 and 1/2.

Answer 5

your boring me

Answer 6

Dont really know because dont know what to say .....................