Towards a Context for Late Precontact Culture Change: Comanche Movement Prior to Eighteenth Century Spanish Documentation

Abstract

Understanding the trajectories of culture change of Plains Indian groups of the western Great Plains immediately prior to contact is crucial to developing a true understanding of the impacts of European technologies and peoples. This article analyzes late precontact culture change and movement using the Comanche as a case study in order to better understand this crucial portion of indigenous history so critical to the proceeding postcontact processes. The postcontact ramifications of Comanche expansionism are the subject of considerable scholarship, but prior to the first historical documentation of this group in 1706, little is known about these people. The Shoshone-Comanche schism and the route that Comanche groups took to arrive on the Spanish frontier are discussed using information derived from historic and ethnographic accounts, oral traditions, and paleoenvironmental and archaeological data. This discussion highlights the current lack of archaeologically derived data about the late precontact lifeways of many of the historically known Plains Indian groups of the western Great Plains.