A Different Look at Native American Depopulation: Comanche Raiding, Captive Taking, and Population Decline

Abstract

It has often been argued that the widespread Native American practice of capturing and adopting outsiders served, for some indigenous groups, as a way to recover from Euro-American–induced population decline. In this study I contend that Comanche looting expeditions, including raids in which captives were taken, resulted in Comanche deaths outnumbering the captives who were eventually assimilated. Hence, rather than compensating Comanche population decline, as is often assumed, those expeditions brought about a net population loss. I further argue that Comanches primarily seized captives to use them as laborers. A premeditated intention to capture enemies for adoption was seldom (if ever) the primary motivation for Comanche raids, which were fundamentally aimed at obtaining horses. These findings raise critical questions concerning widely accepted interpretations of Native American population decline that attribute the decline to external forces without exploring in depth the consequences of the manifold courses of action followed by Indians themselves.

A Rejoinder to Body Bags: Indigenous Resilience and Epidemic Disease, from COVID-19 to First “Contact”

“…These colonial policies, along with a series of devastating smallpox and cholera epidemics, caused the Comanche population to dramatically decline from an estimated 12,000 in 1846 to a mere 2,000 in 1875. 83 While colonial policing often undermined disease mitigation strategies based in movement, Indigenous peoples continued to engage in smaller-scale interpersonal health care practices using herbal medicines. For example, cedar was one of many plant-based treatments, along with horehound and spice wood (sassafras) tea, used by Southeastern communities to treat smallpox, measles, and hives.…”