The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868Howbert, Irving
History
The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868
Howbert, Irving
El Paso County, Colo. -- History; Indians of North America -- Colorado; Sand Creek Massacre, Colo., 1864
In point of time, the Comanches were the next tribe of which we have any
record, as inhabiting this region. These Indians also were a branch of the
Shoshone nation. They led the procession of tribes that moved southward
along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains during the seventeenth
and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. When first heard of,
they were occupying the territory where the Missouri River emerges from
the Rocky Mountains. Later, they were driven south by the pressure of
the Sioux Indians and other tribes coming in from the north and east.
For a while they occupied the Black Hills, and then were pushed still
farther south by the Kiowas. They joined their kinsmen the Utes in raids
upon the settlements of New Mexico in 1716, and it was to punish the
Comanches as well as the Utes, that the Governor of New Mexico, in 1719,
led the military expedition into the country now within the boundaries
of Colorado. In 1724, Bourgemont, a French explorer mentions them under
the name of the Padouca, as located between the headwaters of the Platte
and Kansas rivers, but later accounts show that before the end of that
century they had been pushed south of the Arkansas River by the pressure
of the tribes to the north.
During the stay of the Comanches in this region, they were for a time
friendly with the Utes, and the two tribes joined each other in warfare
and roamed over much of the same territory, but later, for some unknown
reason, they for a time engaged in a deadly warfare. The old legend
of the Manitou Springs mentions the possible beginning of the trouble.
The incident around which the legend is woven, may be an imaginary one,
but it is a well-known fact that long and bitter wars between tribes
resulted from slighter causes. It is said that a long war between the
Delawares and Shawnees originated in a quarrel between two children over
a grasshopper.
The Comanches were a nation of daring warriors, and after their removal
to the south of the Arkansas River, they became a great scourge to the
settlements of Texas and New Mexico, finally extending their raids as
far as Chihuahua, in Mexico. As a result of these operations, they became
rich in horses and plunder obtained in their raids, besides securing as
captives many American and Spanish women and children. One of their most
noted chiefs in after days was the son of a white woman who had been
captured in Texas in her childhood, and who, when grown, had married
a Comanche chief. The Government arranged for the release of both the
American and Spanish captives, but in more than one instance women who
had been captured in their younger days refused to leave their Comanche
husbands, notwithstanding the strongest urging on the part of their own
parents.
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