Comanche Society: Before the Reservation

by Gerald Betty

Book Overview

Once called the Lords of the Plains, the Comanches were long portrayed as loose bands of marauding raiders who capitalized on the Spanish introduction of horses to raise their people out of primitive poverty through bison hunting and fierce warfare. More recent studies of the Comanches have focused on adaptation and persistence in Comanche lifestyles and on Comanche political organization and language-based alliances. In Comanche Society: Before the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158544491X
• ISBN13: 9781585444915
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Indian friend of mine

Gerald Betty's work "Before the Reservation," is a testament to his skills as a comanche warrior, even today. Although he rides a Land Rover instead of a Palomino, I'm sure he could still survive on the open range. I laughed, I cried. Betty is a genius.

Focusing especially on how the bonds of kinship

A highly recommended contribution to Native American Studies, Comanche Society: Before the Reservation by Gerald Betty (History Department, Texas A & M, Corpus Christi) is a meticulous and scholarly study of Comanche society from the beginning of New World Colonization by European powers through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing especially on how the bonds of kinship affected the interplay within Comanche clans, and how the Comanches came to adopt horses, pastoralism, and other Iberian traits into their own culture, Comanche Society is a fascinating and analytical history of the evolution of this Native American nation.