Going Back to Their Roots: Comanche Trade and Diet Revisited

Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots: Comanche Trade and Diet Revisited Peter Mitchell, University of Oxford and University of the Witwatersrand Abstract. Recent studies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Comanches have argued that their dependence on bison posed a serious nutritional challenge in the form of a dangerously imbalanced high-protein diet. They contend that this specialization required Comanches to obtain carbohydrates in the form of maize from Spanish-ruled New Mexico and Texas or Native American horticulturalists. This in turn is claimed to have been crucial in structuring Comanche economic and political ties with their neighbors. This article argues instead that the documentary evidence used to support a trade in foodstuffs is weak and that Comanches employed alternative nutritional strategies, including consuming and storing a wide range of wild plants. Prestige and utilitarian goods such as metal tools and weapons, firearms, and items of personal adornment—not food—were the primary motivation for Comanche trade with Europeans. Keywords. Comanches, plant use, trade, high-protein diet, prestige goods Recent scholarship has demonstrated the value and necessity of understanding Native American histories within a framework informed by past ecological dynamics (Flores 1991; Sherow 1992; Isenberg 2000; Hämäläinen 1998, 2008, 2010). Such work has frequently involved arguing that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Comanches had to obtain cultivated foodstuffs, especially maize, to balance an otherwise dangerously imbalanced, protein-rich diet. This dietary specialization— and the economic ties that compensated for it — have in turn been portrayed as crucial in structuring the broader political economy linking Comanches with New Mexico and Texas, on the one hand, and native peoples along the Mississippi and Ethnohistory 63:2 (April 2016) doi 10.1215/00141801-3455283 Copyright 2016 by American Society for Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 238 Red Rivers, on the other (Calloway 2003; Hämäläinen 2008). In this article I argue that the importance attached to the trade in foodstuffs has been exaggerated and that the evidence for it is far from compelling. I show that the dietary premises on which it is based have not been fully explored and that alternatives to acquiring maize and other crops from Spanish and Native American farmers existed and were pursued. Like Susan Vehik (2002), who has raised similar concerns regarding claims for subsistencedriven mutualism between Southern Plains hunter-gatherers and Pueblo farmers in the late pre-Columbian era, I suggest that overemphasizing food diverts attention from the other goods that Comanches sought from European traders and the indigenous networks that those traders fed. How Important Was the Trade in Maize? In several articles and in his seminal book The Comanche Empire, Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that from their arrival on the Southern Plains in the early 1700s Comanches needed to trade with settled farming communities to secure the carbohydrates essential to a diet principally founded on the meat of bison.1 Writing of Comanche trade with Spanish-ruled New Mexico, Hämäläinen (1998: 488) argues, “Pueblo garden products . . . were an indispensable addition to their high protein and high fat, bison-based diet.” Elsewhere he emphasizes that although horses and guns later became the main items traded, “the early exchange revolved heavily around subsistence goods [since] suffering from a chronic carbohydrate deficiency the hunting-oriented Comanche purchased large quantities of corn, vegetables, and bread with bison products” (Hämäläinen 2001: 10; see also Hämäläinen 2010: 184, 187). This “chronic carbohydrate deficiency” is said to have been compounded because Comanches “drastically downsized their age-old gathering economy . . . stopped actively using some one hundred plants[,] lost two-thirds of their ethnobotanical lore” (Hämäläinen 2010: 180), and changed their subsistence strategies so that “gathering no longer formed a major economic activity” (Hämäläinen 2008: 31). “Multiple counterflows of . . . maize, squash and fruit” obtained by exporting captives, horses, hides, and meat were thus required to “balance their dangerously streamlined economy” (Hämäläinen 2010: 180). Other historians have made much the same case. Dan Flores (1991: 471) argues that Comanches lost some two-thirds of their ancestors’ botanical knowledge, while Colin Calloway (2003: 284, 286) states that after becoming equestrian bison hunters they “lost much of their old plant lore” and thus traded for agricultural produce “to compensate for the carbohydrate deficiency in their diet of meat.” Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 239 All three authors echo arguments made for pre-equestrian Southern Plains hunter-gatherers by others (e.g., Spielmann 1991; Anderson 1999: 107). But how strong is the evidence presented in support of such trade? Close reading of the accounts cited by Hämäläinen (1998, 2008, 2010), complemented by those discussed previously by Kavanagh (1996), indicates that maize was in fact often wholly absent from Comanche exchanges with Spanish or Native American communities or at best just one among many items (see table 1). Much Comanche exchange with New Mexico focused on regular trade fairs at the pueblo of Taos. While Spanish authorities regulated prices and conduct, and Comanche access depended on the broader political and military situation, the bartering conducted on these occasions was clearly distinct from the official distribution of gifts or subsidies in which Spain and its Mexican and Texan successors also engaged. In 1750, for example, Governor Vélez Capuchin noted that Comanches coming to Taos acquired “horses, mares, mules, knives, belduques, and other trifles” (Kavanagh 1996: 73), but made no mention of maize. Precisely the same holds for the descriptions given by Father Andres Varo in 1749 and 1751 (Kessell 1979: 367; Hämäläinen 2008: 45). A decade later (pace Hämäläinen 2008: 51, 379n71) maize was again absent from the items acquired in return for captives, bison hides, and meat; instead, Bishop Tamarón noted only that Comanches obtained “horses, muskets, shotguns, munitions, knives, meat, and various other things” (Adams 1953: 216). Fourteen years later maize does appear, but only last in the list of goods bought and with no sign that it was more important than the bridles, awls, knives, and colored cloth also obtained (Hämäläinen 2008: 81). Father Domínguez’s description of the bartering process in which Comanches and Spaniards engaged in 1776 reinforces this picture and suggests that maize was exchanged in a quite limited sphere (and thus on a limited scale?) for meat alone, with more valuable items being demanded for captives, bison hides, mules, horses, or firearms (Kavanagh 1996: 130). A 1785 list of items authorized for exchange by Bernardo de Gálvez, the viceroy of New Spain, again attests to the variety of goods traded, but still gives no sense that foodstuffs were important (ibid.: 128). Indeed, when some Comanches visited Béxar, Texas, to trade that same year they obtained horses, knives, and sugar (i.e., not maize) for their skins, meat, and captives (ibid.: 106). Only during the fair that took place in the midst of peace negotiations with the Comanche chief Ecueracapa at Pecos in 1786 did food (hard bread), along with iron tools, feature as the dominant item exchanged for more than seven hundred bison robes, several horses, a few guns, and “many loads of meat and tallow” (Hämäläinen 2008: 123). Published by Duke University Press Table 1. Goods (in trade situations) exchanged with the Comanches, ca. 1740–1840 1750 1750 1754 1760 1773 1774 1776 1785 1785 Spanish Wichita Spanish French Spanish Wichita Spanish Spanish Wichita Spanish Kessell (1979: 367) Firearms Ammunition Gunpowder Horses X + mules Bridles Metal knives X Metal hatchets/ axes Metal lances Metal tools Metal awls X Clothing/ X blankets Colored cloth Glass beads X Glass mirrors Vermillion paint “Other things/ trifles,” etc. Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Adams Kavanagh Kavanagh (1996: 128); (1996: (1996: (1996: Hämäläinen (1996: (1996: Hämäläinen Hämäläinen (1953: 106) 102) 130) 83) (2008: 81) (2008: 45) (1998: 491) 216) 72) X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X (sabers) X X X X X + mules X X X X X X X X X X X X X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Item 1749 Table 1. Continued 1750 1750 1754 1760 1773 1774 1776 1785 1785 Spanish Wichita Spanish French Spanish Wichita Spanish Spanish Wichita Spanish Kessell (1979: 367) Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Adams Kavanagh Kavanagh (1996: 128); (1996: (1996: (1996: Hämäläinen (1996: (1996: Hämäläinen Hämäläinen (1953: 106) 102) 130) 83) (2008: 81) (2008: 45) (1998: 491) 216) 72) Salt Brandy Sugar Tobacco Meat Maize Flour Bread Item Firearms Ammunition Gunpowder X X X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Item 1749 X X X 1785 1786 1786 1803 1805 1806 1814 – 1819 1822 Spanish Kansa, etc. Spanish Spanish Wichita Spanish Spanish Spanish Mexican Levine (1991: 158–59) Hämäläinen (2008: 205) Kavanagh (1996: 197) Kavanagh Kavanagh Smith (1996: (1996: Hämäläinen Hämäläinen (2000: Hämäläinen 128) 107) (2008: 123) (2008: 204) 165n35) (2008: 129) X X X X X X Table 1. Continued 1786 1786 1803 1805 1806 1814 – 1819 1822 Spanish Kansa, etc. Spanish Spanish Wichita Spanish Spanish Spanish Mexican Levine (1991: 158–59) Hämäläinen (2008: 205) Kavanagh (1996: 197) Smith Kavanagh Kavanagh (1996: Hämäläinen Hämäläinen (2000: Hämäläinen (1996: 107) (2008: 123) (2008: 204) 165n35) (2008: 129) 128) Horses X (+ other horse gear) X X X X X + mules Bridles Metal knives Metal hatchets/ axes Metal lances Metal tools Metal awls Clothing/ blankets Colored cloth Glass beads Glass mirrors Vermillion paint “Other things/ trifles,” etc. X X X X X X X X X X X (jars) X X X X X X X X (+ indigo) X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Item 1785 X X? X X X Table 1. Continued Item 1786 1786 1803 1805 1806 1814 – 1819 1822 Spanish Kansa, etc. Spanish Spanish Wichita Spanish Spanish Spanish Mexican Levine (1991: 158–59) Hämäläinen (2008: 205) Kavanagh (1996: 197) X X X? Smith Kavanagh Kavanagh (1996: Hämäläinen Hämäläinen (2000: Hämäläinen (1996: 107) (2008: 123) (2008: 204) 165n35) (2008: 129) 128) X X X Meat Maize Flour Bread Item Firearms Ammunition Gunpowder Horses X X X X X X X? (“provisions”) Livestock X? (“provisions”) X X (+ fruit) Early 1830s 1832 1836 Mexican American Texan Kavanagh (1996: 225) Levine (1991: 160) Kavanagh (1996: 251) X X X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Salt Brandy Sugar Tobacco 1785 Table 1. Continued Item Clothing/blankets Colored cloth Glass beads Glass mirrors Vermillion paint “Other things/trifles,” etc. Salt Brandy Sugar Tobacco Meat Maize Flour Bread 1832 1836 Mexican American Texan Kavanagh (1996: 225) Levine (1991: 160) Kavanagh (1996: 251) X X X X X X X X X X X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Bridles Metal knives Metal hatchets/axes Metal lances Metal tools Metal awls Early 1830s Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 245 By the early 1800s Spanish-ruled villages along the eastern side of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains apparently formed “sites of bustling exchange” (ibid.: 204) but still without any indication in the documents cited that cultivated carbohydrates held pride of place in what was traded. Thus, among the goods “traded by the Spaniards to said nomad Indians” compiled by Governor Fernando Chacón in 1803, “corn in flour and on the ear, bread, and green or dried fruit” come at the very end of a list of twentyone items (ibid.). Maize and other foodstuffs remain inconspicuous after Mexican independence in 1821, and Articles 9 and 10 of the 1822 treaty between Mexico and some Comanche groups envisaged a trade mostly in manufactures (rather than food) for furs, hides, and other animal products (Kavanagh 1996: 197). A decade later Jean Louis Berlandier reported that Comanches exchanged bison meat, bison hides, deerskins, furs, and “bear grease” for ammunition and powder, sugar, cloth, silver ornaments, and metal weapons (ibid.: 225), while in 1836 Sam Houston, as president of Texas, excluded foodstuffs from his proposed exchange of horses, mules, and bison robes for paint, tobacco, blankets, “and other things which will make you happy” when writing to several Comanche leaders (ibid.: 251). There seems little evidence that, even when trading posts were established on the Texan frontier in the early 1840s, maize and other foodstuffs formed a significant part of their stock (ibid.: 285, 286). If maize and other carbohydrates register only a minimal presence in historical records of Comanche trade with Spaniards, Mexicans, or Texans, did they perhaps form an important part of official gift giving as a way to purchase peace or seal alliances? Once again, the evidence is minimal at best (see table 2). Although Father Domínguez’s account of 1776 (Kavanagh 1996: 130) may indeed hint that food was sometimes thought to be inappropriate in formal prestations, this was clearly not always so. In 1797, for example, Governor Chacón recognized Canaguaipe as leader of a large Kotseteka (Kuhtsutuuka) Comanche group and presented him with two fanegas (about 50kg) of maize, along with tobacco, sugar, a medal, a silverheaded cane, and a scarlet cape (ibid.: 143). However, the relatively small quantities involved do not suggest that any particular importance was attached to the maize itself. Other records support this. For example, two accounts from the Béxar archives for 1789 emphasize cloth, beads, tobacco, and metal tools but make no mention of food (Bustillo, Menchaca, and de la Santa 1789; Gutiérrez 1789). Subsequently, maize was absent from two out of three sets of gifts presented to Chief Sofais in 1800–1801, as well as from articles purchased for other presentations in 1795 and 1811 (Kavanagh 1996: 183–84, 188–89). Paralleling records for more commercially oriented trade, maize was also of little significance in the gifts made to, or purchased for, Comanche leaders by newly independent Published by Duke University Press Table 2. Goods (diplomatic gifts) exchanged with the Comanches, 1795–ca. 1840 Firearms Ammunition Gunpowder Horses Bridles Metal knives Metal hatchets/ axes Metal lances Metal tools Metal awls Clothing/ blankets Colored cloth Glass beads Glass mirrors Metal bells, wire, buttons 1797 1800–1801 1811 Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish 1825 1827 1827 1829 Mexican Mexican Mexican Mexican 1838 1839 1843 Texan American Texan Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: 290) 246) 290) 204) 289) 288) 288) 184) 188–89) 143) 183) X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Item 1795 Table 2. Continued Item 1797 1800–1801 1811 Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish 1825 1827 1827 1829 Mexican Mexican Mexican Mexican 1838 1839 1843 Texan American Texan Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh Kavanagh (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: (1996: 290) 246) 290) 204) 289) 288) 288) 184) 188–89) 143) 183) X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Vermillion paint “Other things/ trifles,” etc. Salt Brandy Sugar Tobacco Meat Maize Flour Bread 1795 Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 248 Mexico in the 1820s (ibid.: 204, 288–89). The one exception to this pattern— a donation of almost three hundred bushels of maize to droughtstricken Comanches in 1787–89 just after the conclusion of the 1786 Comanche-Spanish peace treaty (ibid.: 182; Hämäläinen 2008: 127)— can only have been a drop in the nutritional ocean, regardless of the numbers of those benefiting from it.2 In fact, only after Comanches and other Southern Plains groups began concluding treaties with the US government in the 1850s does a clear difference emerge. In 1858 the annuities provided along the Arkansas River included some 8,000 kilograms of flour, 3,260 kilograms of rice, and 3,840 kilograms of “pilot bread” (i.e., hardtack biscuits), but even now we must remember that these quantities were intended not only for 3,200 Comanche adults but also for a further 8,270 men and women of other groups (Kavanagh 1996: 377–79). Given that the rice was “but little used” (Robert Miller, quoted in Kavanagh 1996: 377),3 these amounts still do not seem compellingly large for so many people over an entire year. Certainly, they cannot have made up for the “chronic carbohydrate deficiency” from which Comanches and other equestrian Plains hunters supposedly suffered. Comanches did not, of course, trade only with people in New Mexico or Texas, and it is possible that they acquired maize from Spanish or Native American sources through routes and in ways that escaped the attention (or at least the written, quantified descriptions) of literate observers. Nevertheless, accounts of their relations with communities east of the Plains give similarly little sense that foodstuffs dominated exchanges. They are absent, for example, from the goods traded by a mostly Wichita expedition to Comanches living along the Arkansas River in 1750 (Kavanagh 1996: 72), as well as from a 1754 account of French-Comanche trade (Hämäläinen 1998: 491). Most subsequent descriptions of Comanche exchanges with Wichita, especially Taovaya, farmers, also exclude food. Thus in 1773 the French trader J. Gaignard noted that Comanches exchanged captives and bison hides for “trifles” like tobacco, axes, beads, and knives (Kavanagh 1996: 83), and in 1785 Francisco Xavier Chaves and Pedro Vial reported merely that those Comanches who traded with Taovaya and other Wichita farmers sought salt, though they also obtained guns and ammunition (ibid.: 102). Quite likely drawing on their report, Texas governor Domingo Cabello y Robles noted in 1786 that western (Yamparika Yaparuhka) Comanches acquired “guns, powder, balls, lances, cloth, jars, knives, etc.” from Kansa, Pawnee, and other sedentary groups that they in turn exchanged for eastern Comanche horses (Cabello y Robles 1786; Kavanagh 1996: 107). Even where maize has been claimed to feature in Comanche-Taovaya trade (Hämäläinen 2008: 58), it turns out to be absent Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 249 from many of the specific references cited in its support (cf. Treviño 1765; Cabello y Robles 1786: 128; Harper 1953: 278–79; John et al. 1994: 50).4 If Comanches did not go out of their way to seek cultivated carbohydrates when visiting European settlements in New Mexico and Texas or Native Americans elsewhere, did foodstuffs enter Comanchería by other means? There is no doubt that Comanchero traders operating out of New Mexico used wheeled vehicles (carretas) and pack animals to transport bread, maize meal, flour, and beans into Comanche territory (Fowler 1898: 85; Kenner 1994: 84–85, 178; Hämäläinen 2008: 205, 211). In the last decades of Comanche independence, when bison herds were dwindling (Hämäläinen 2008: 295–99), such goods may have represented a significant part of Comanchero trade: witness the approximately 90 kilograms of maize meal, 230 kilograms of bread, and unspecified quantities of flour and shelled corn carried by one small trading party intercepted in 1867 (Kavanagh 1996: 470). However, in earlier decades such documentation as exists is insufficient to demonstrate that cultivated carbohydrates formed a major component of Comanchero trade, even though one account of 1814 does include 5.5 fanegas of unspecified “provisions” alongside clothing and tobacco (Levine 1991: 158–59). Looking at Comanche presence on the Southern Plains as a whole, significant input of maize by New Mexican– based traders is all the more unlikely if we recall that Comancheros were largely confined to the western fringes of Comanchería, expanded their trade significantly only in the 1830s, and were scarcely active at all before the late 1780s (Hämäläinen 2008: 176, 211).5 In the face of so few mentions in historical documents, it has been argued that “maize is rarely mentioned in the contemporary account of Comanche-Taos trade, probably because it was so commonplace” (ibid.: 102), but this is unconvincing. Absence of evidence cannot be taken as evidence of presence, not least because other “commonplace” items do receive frequent mention. Instead, maize’s omission in most surviving accounts of Comanche trade and diplomatic prestations, or its presence as but one among many other goods, surely suggests that it did not hold a position of preeminence. I now show why the expectation that it should do so is itself misplaced. Alternative Solutions to High-Protein Diets Bison meat, it is generally agreed, was the cornerstone of Plains huntergatherer diets; like many other large ungulates in northerly environments, however, bison become very lean in late winter and spring. This poses a significant challenge to people who rely on them for food, since Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 250 high-protein diets that are low in other sources of calories can quickly lead to serious nutritional problems: elevated metabolic rates with correspondingly high caloric needs; use of amino acids from ingested protein for energy (rather than for tissue repair); inadequate intake of essential fatty acids; appetite depression; and, ultimately, starvation as muscle protein is broken down to produce glucose. Estimates vary, but diets in which protein constitutes more than 50 percent of all calories (for pregnant women, this figure may be as low as 20 percent) may be unsustainable without serious adverse health consequences (Speth 1991: 29–30). This situation, first highlighted by Speth and Spielmann (1983), is rightly recognized in recent historical writing (cf. Cordain et al. 2000). However, comments that “few societies in history have relied so totally on a single food source” (Hämäläinen 2008: 66), that “the new bison-based diet was high in protein but desperately low in carbohydrates” (ibid.: 31), or that “Comanches needed corn, beans, squash, and fruits [from agricultural communities] to eliminate the chronic carbohydrate deficiency from their diets” overstate the case (Hämäläinen 1998: 492; emphasis added; cf. Hämäläinen 2001: 105; 2010: 180, 184; Calloway 2003: 286). Detailed consideration of Speth and Spielmann’s arguments shows that this “chronic nutritional imbalance” (Hämäläinen 2008: 31) was neither year-round nor one for which maize offered the only solution. Speth (1983: 151–53) shows clearly that hunter-gatherer exposure to the dangers of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate, and low-fat diet is a seasonal problem, since animal body-fat levels are normally lowest in late winter or spring. The combination of increased energy demands and reduced access to quality grazing readily explains this. Adding to the nutritional challenge this posed for people was their own need to increase caloric intake in very cold conditions, the reduced availability of most other foods, and the appetite-depressing effects of a high-protein diet (Speth and Spielmann 1983: 13). How could this challenge be overcome? Speth and Spielmann (ibid.: 18– 19) identify three strategies, only one of which involves exchange (cf. Cordain et al. 2000). While historical and ethnographic data for the Comanches clearly exclude the limited cultivation of carbohydrates practiced by many Apache groups (Hämäläinen 2008: 32), their other possibilities still need considering before accepting that trading for carbohydrate-rich foods was an obligatory response. A first alternative involves selectively procuring and processing animals (species, individuals, or both) with a high-fat content, a strategy widely followed on the historic and precolonial Plains (e.g., Arthur, Wilson, Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 251 and Forbis 1975: 30; Speth 1983). In the absence of archaeological data specific to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Comanches, it is difficult to know how far they pursued this option, but eating animals that might maintain higher levels of body fat is attested. Fish and wildfowl, for example, although generally taboo, could be eaten in the season “when the babies cry for food,” that is, in February and March, and a range of small mammals and reptiles, including turtles, was also consumed (Wallace and Hoebel 1952: 70–71). Potentially more significant is the very animal that made equestrian hunting possible, the horse. This is because horsemeat is rich in certain essential fatty acids, such as linoleic and alpha-linolenic acids, that are vital to human health but rare in the meat of ruminants, including bison (Levine 1998). Horsemeat could therefore have been an important nutritional supplement, especially at times when bison and other game could not deliver a balanced diet. Intriguingly, Wallace and Hoebel (1952: 68) indicate, albeit with frustrating brevity, that horses were indeed principally consumed when other meat was unavailable. Although some nineteenthcentury accounts are untrustworthy (Kavanagh 1996: 492n2), others suggest that horses were consumed on a more habitual basis (e.g., Richardson 1933: 27; Ruiz 1972: 8; Rister 1989: 132, 136, 197; Anderson 1999: 338n34). We should not therefore discount the possibility that horsemeat helped Comanches meet the challenges of a high-protein diet, just as it did for other hunter-gatherers in contexts as diverse as Upper Paleolithic Europe (Levine 1998) and nineteenth-century Patagonia (Mitchell 2015: 282). A second strategy involves storing fat for use in times of scarcity. Humans can accumulate reserves of fat as protection against the wasting of body proteins when diets are restricted (Speth and Spielmann 1983). The gorging on meat at bison kills that is widely reported in ethnohistoric accounts is certainly explicable in this way (ibid.: 19; Anderson 1999: 107). On a larger and longer-lasting scale, people can also store fat from bone marrow, body fat, or bone grease externally. Extracted by boiling smashedup pieces of bone until the fat separates and can be skimmed off and removed, bone grease may have been particularly important for Plains hunters in winter (Brink 1997: 271). Such fat was then typically stored in the form of pemmican, that is, mixed with dried meat and fruits and kept in skin containers (parfleches) or the paunches and large intestines of animals. Properly sealed, it lasted for years (Stefanson 1956: 179, 188). Its production is clearly documented in both the Southern Plains archaeological record (Quigg 1997) and Comanche ethnography (Wallace and Hoebel 1952: 74).6 Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 252 The third and final possibility involves consuming or storing carbohydrates,7 a topic that directs us to the wider question of how extensively Comanches used wild plant foods. Comanche Ethnobotanical Lore and Plant Use In 1786 Domingo Cabello y Robles described Comanches as “living off of nothing but buffalo meat and deer, and of the search for the root of a type of sweet potato which abounds in much of the territory through which they travel” (Kavanagh 1996: 108; emphasis added). Almost a century later, as the last free Comanches moved back to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma, they spent a day digging for “a certain kind of vegetable of which they are very fond” and constructing the pits needed to bake it (ibid.: 451; cf. Sternberg 1931: 223). Archaeological evidence of this practice, which renders accessible otherwise indigestible inulin, a complex carbohydrate, reaches back more than eight thousand years; it was applied to the aboveground storage organs of agave (Agave lecheguilla) and sotol (Dasylirion spp.), as well as to roots and tubers (Dering 1999; Thoms 2008). Grass seed exploitation has an even greater antiquity (Perry and Quigg 2011a) and continued into recent centuries (see, e.g., Perry and Quigg 2011b with reference to boiling wild rye flour [Elymus spp.]). Data from across the Southern Plains and adjacent parts of Texas confirm that “a remarkably broad diet of plant and animal resources” was in place at least ten thousand years ago (Bousman and Oksanen 2012: 210), though Drass (2008: 7) points out how few people “realize the importance of . . . wild plants in the economies of Plains groups directly before and after the introduction of the horse and gun” (emphasis added). This certainly seems true of recent historical work on the Comanche, which has included claims that they had actively stopped using wild plants, lost most of their botanical knowledge, and largely abandoned gathering (Hämäläinen 2008, 2010). None of these assertions can be maintained. As Wallace and Hoebel (1952: 73) note in their classic ethnography, Comanches “came from a background of food gatherers and did not forget their heritage [but] utilized a large number of vegetables and fruits.” Although drawing on only a handful of informants, just one of them female, Carlson and Jones’s (1940) survey counted a minimum of thirty-four edible species out of at least seventy-three wild plant taxa with known uses of all kinds.8 Prominent among them were fruits (persimmons, mulberries, plums, grapes, currants, prickly pear, sumac, etc.), pecan nuts, and several root plants, including Indian breadroot (Pediomelum hypogaeum), Indian potatoes (Pomaria jamesii), Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus), Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 253 and sego lilies (Calochortus nuttallii) (see table 3). Although thirty-four edible taxa “would compare rather favorably with the variety of fruits and vegetables eaten by most Americans” in the early 1950s (Wallace and Hoebel 1952: 73), this is far from exhaustive. A more recent report of traditional Native American plant use in southern Colorado, for example, extends the number of Comanche food plants to forty-two and the total of plant taxa used to ninety-seven (Campbell 2007; see also table 3). Consistent with this, Robinson and Armagost’s (1991) Comanche Dictionary and Grammar gives some 140 terms for nondomesticated plants, many of them unrecorded by Carlson and Jones (1940), and Jones (1972) adds yet others. Even this is unlikely to be the whole story, however, because ethnobotanical knowledge can attenuate rapidly with time (Jordan et al. 2008: 26) and because not all informants will know the functions of every plant (Carlson and Jones 1940: 539–40). Both the fruits of skunkbush (Rhus aromatica) and the roots, stalks, and pollen of the cattail (Typha latifolia), for example, were eaten by other Native American groups, even though neither is specifically recorded as a Comanche comestible despite having Comanche names (ibid.: 539; Kavanagh 2008: 513–14). Moreover, several entries in table 3 encompass multiple taxa. At least five species of wild grape (Vitis sp.), for example, exist within the historical Comanche range in southwestern Oklahoma, all producing edible fruits (Jordan, Minnis, and Elisens 2008: 83). In other words, the actual number of wild plants eaten by Comanches almost certainly exceeded—perhaps by some considerable margin— those remembered today or in the mid-twentieth century. As Wallace and Hoebel (1952: 73) note of a much earlier claim of the same kind, “the facts, when marshaled, simply do not support” assertions that Comanches had “stopped actively using plants” or that “gathering no longer formed a major economic activity” (Hämäläinen 2008: 31). To say that Comanches had “lost two-thirds of their ethnobotanical lore” (ibid.) is also misleading. Its origin lies in Flores’s (1991: 471) comparison of plants listed in a linguistic study of unspecified “Shoshones” (172 species; see Spykerman 1977, the original source for Flores’s statement) with the summary given by Carlson and Jones (1940; 67 species). But this is flawed on multiple counts. First, Carlson and Jones’s study actually identifies the Linnaean names of at least 58 taxa (three comprising more than one species), plus a further 15 plants that could not be identified botanically, to give a total of at least 73 (not 67). Second, as we have just seen, this still provides a quite minimal view of Comanche ethnobotanical knowledge and wild plant consumption, and it almost certainly understates what was known and likely practiced in the precolonial past. Drawing on Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 254 Table 3. Wild plants eaten by the Comanches Current Linnaean name (former synonyms in nonitalicized parentheses) Current English name Comanche name (those in parentheses after Kavanagh 2008) Bulbs, roots, and tubers Agave americana Century plant ? Agave parryi Parry’s agave ? Allium canadense Wild onion Allium spp. Wild onion Pakoik (pakuukA); t?diekoik (tuekuukA) Pakoik (pakuukA); t?diekoik (tuekuukA) Calochortus nuttallii Camassia quamash (Camassia esculenta) Camassia scilloides Sego lily ? Common camas siko: (siiko) Atlantic camas siko: Cirsium undulatum Wavyleaf thistle tsen Cymopterus glomeratus (Cymopterus acaulis) Dalea purpurea (Petalostemum purpureum) Plains spring parsley tun’ha (tuhna) Purple prairie clover pak :tsc (pakeetso) Jerusalem artichoke paiyap (paiyapI) e Helianthus tuberosus Published by Duke University Press References Castetter (1935); Campbell (2007) Castetter (1935); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 511) Hoebel and Wallace (1952) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 138) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Carlson and Jones (1940); Hoebel and Wallace (1952); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 255 Table 3. Continued Current Linnaean name (former synonyms in nonitalicized parentheses) Current English name Comanche name (those in parentheses after Kavanagh 2008) Liatris punctata Dotted gayfeather atabitsunoi Nelumbo lutea American lotus kekiata Nicotiana rustica Aztec tobacco tabaxko (tabahko) Nuphar lutea Yellow pond-lily kekiata Pediomelum hypogaeum (Psoralea hypogeae) Perideridia gairdneri Pomaria jamesii (Caesalpinia jamesii; Hoffmanseggia jamesii) Smilax sp.? Scurfpea; Indian breadroot eE’kakoni (ekakoni) Common yampah yampa Indian potato; James’ holdback pintsamu (pihtsamuu) Greenbrier? tsuns (tsunUsu) Solanum stoloniferum (Solanum fendleri) Solanum jamesii — Fendler’s horsenettle totox’d Wild potato — totox’d q tanarixka (ketanaruhka) — Potato-like sehetistsina — — to?roponii? Fruits Celtis laevigata Sugarberry natsckw ; mirtscná (mitsonaa?) e e Published by Duke University Press References Carlson and Jones (1940) Carlson and Jones (1940) Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 138) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 138) Kavanagh (1996: xvi) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Campbell (2007) Campbell (2007) Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 138) Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Kavanagh (2008: 139) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 256 Table 3. Continued Current Linnaean name (former synonyms in nonitalicized parentheses) Current English name Comanche name (those in parentheses after Kavanagh 2008) Crataegus sp. (= C. chryscocarpa?) Hawthorn (red haw) tidiamcwo (tu?amowoo) Crataegus sp. (= C. coccinoides?) Hawthorn (black haw) túpckc wckwékate (tupokopI) Cylindropuntia imbricata Diospyros texana (Brayodendron texanum) Tree cholla (tree cactus) Texas (Mexican) persimmon up?ai Diospyros virgininiana Common persimmon nase’ka (naséka) Ferocactus sp. Barrel cactus eka mitsa (ekamitsáa?) Fragaria sp. Wild strawberry Juniperus virginiana Eastern redcedar ekapokopI; (kuxbara) ekawai:pv (tubitsiwaapI, waapokopI) Morus rubra Red mulberry etehupv; schcBoko (etuhuupI, soho bo?ko, etuai) Opuntia sp. Prickly pear w_kw_si (wokwéesi) Prunus americana American plum Prunus angustifolia Chickasaw plum nase’ka; dunaseika (tuhnaséka) yuseke; parawaskeke; kuisiseke; su:kui yuseke; parawaskeke; kuisiseke; (tuahpI) Published by Duke University Press References Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Kavanagh (2008: 140) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Kavanagh (2008: 140) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 264) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 257 Table 3. Continued Current Linnaean name (former synonyms in nonitalicized parentheses) Current English name Prunus virginiana Chokecherry Prunus sp. Black cherry (serotina?) Comanche name (those in parentheses after Kavanagh 2008) ? yuseke; parawaskeke; kuisiseke; su:kui (pibiarona; suku?i) dimeyov; kusi:poko References Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 140, 336) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Kavanagh (2008: 140) Carlson and Jones (1940); Kavanagh (2008: 140) Kavanagh (2008: 377) Carlson and Jones (1940) Rhus glabra Smooth sumac Ribes aureum (Rhus aureum; Ribes odoratum) Rubus sp. Golden currant Blackberry Vitis spp. Wild grape — — — Unidentified cactus ? Giant hyssop ? Castetter (1935); Campbell (2007) White sagebrush (pohóobi) Prairie tea kapIsimawa Holly ? Carlson and Jones (1940); Kavanagh (2008: 336) Kavanagh (2008: 512) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 264) Leaves (eaten) Agastache pallidiflora Leaves (for tea) Artemisia ludoviciana Croton monanthogynus Ilex sp. Lespedeza capitata Roundhead lespedeza (bush clover) Legumes Prosopis glandulosa Honey mesquite huaBcko (huaboko); (po?a?pokopI) panatsayaa? (natsomukwe; nosinatsomukwe; tubitsi; tue) (tonopI) puhohuBiv (puhi huubA) namobitscni; natsckwe (natsohkwe) Published by Duke University Press Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 139) Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 258 Table 3. Continued Current Linnaean name (former synonyms in nonitalicized parentheses) Current English name Comanche name (those in parentheses after Kavanagh 2008) Nuts Carya illinoinensis Pecan nakutBai (nakkutaba?i) Juglans nigra Black walnut muBitai (mubitai) Pinus sp. Pine tibapt Quercus alba White oak (tuhuupit) Quercus marilandica Blackjack oak duhu:p (tuhuupit) Quercus sp. Oak Pasapcni (pa?sa ponii) Quercus sp. Oak tubitsihuupi tubitsipa?sa ponii References Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 337) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 337) Hoebel and Wallace (1952); Kavanagh (2008: 337) Kavanagh (2008: 264) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 264) Carlson and Jones (1940); Campbell (2007); Kavanagh (2008: 513) Kavanagh (2008: 337) Kavanagh (2008: 337) Note: Species recorded as having been stored for later consumption have their Linnaean and English names placed in bold. the previously cited sources for Comanche plant use and on analyses of plant usage among Southern Plains hunter-gatherers as a whole (Elisens and Wills 2014) effectively wipes out the contrast that Flores (1991) imagined and that Calloway (2003: 284) and Hämäläinen (2008: 31) have repeated. Finally, recall that the historical Comanches inhabited the mostly grassland environments of the Great Plains, not the Shoshone territories of the Rocky Mountains or the eastern Great Basin. Given the pronounced differences in Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 259 vegetation between these regions, a “loss” of botanical terminology on moving from one environment to the other is scarcely unexpected. While Comanches no doubt made less use of gathered plant foods than their ancestors, who inhabited a quite different ecology, “less” does not equate to “none” or even to “of little significance.” This conclusion is borne out by the fact that Comanches stored several plants they ate for later use, particularly during winter. Persimmons, for example, were sun-dried into cakes after their seeds were removed and the remaining fruit was beaten into a pulp. Plums, cherries, grapes, and prickly pears were dried (Wallace and Hoebel 1952: 73) and then sometimes baked, with or without added fat (Carlson and Jones 1940: 527). Pecans, black walnuts, and the acorns of the blackjack oak were also stored (Campbell 2007), while berries, cherries, plums, walnuts, pecans, and piñon nuts flavored pemmican and enhanced its nutritional value (Wallace and Hoebel 1952: 74). In short, although we have no evidence for the storage of tubers or roots, Comanches did prepare and store other plants for winter use. Even if the abundance, predictability, and reliability of edible plants were limited in some parts of their territory (cf. Spielmann 1982: 248), many carbohydrate-rich plants did exist and were exploited elsewhere in Comanchería (cf. Speth 1991: 32). It has been claimed that Comanches “had two basic options in solving [their] dietary dilemmas”: growing carbohydrate-rich plants of their own or acquiring them in trade (Hämäläinen 2008: 31–32). Along with the other two possibilities discussed by Speth and Spielmann (1983), namely, eating fat-rich animals and storing fat for later consumption, the evidence I have just detailed shows that this was not so. Experimental data indicate that carbohydrates should be preferred over fats only “when both total calories and protein are in short supply” (Speth and Spielmann 1983: 15). This situation has yet to be demonstrated for the Comanches. The scarcity of hard evidence for an extensive trade in maize and the fact that huntergatherers used wild plants to survive on the Southern Plains for more than ten millennia before any kind of agricultural produce was available further strengthen my case (Adair 2003). Archaeological studies of the Comanche past are limited, although explorations of their movements immediately before entering the Southern Plains have begun (Newton 2011). However, so long as archaeological research remains restricted to rock art (Loendorf and Olson 2003; Mitchell 2004; Fowles and Arterberry 2013) and a few burials, typically encountered by chance (Walsh 1998), we are unlikely to obtain direct evidence of how far pre-reservation-era Comanches consumed maize. If and when occupation sites in key areas of Comanche settlement (such as their long-term winter aggregation focused on the upper Arkansas River) are Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 260 investigated, it may nevertheless be possible to detect the presence of maize using microfossils, stable isotopes, and trace elements (cf. Boyd et al. 2008). Alternatively, with appropriate permission (cf. Aguayo 2012), stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains or hair samples is a tried-and-tested method for determining the relative contributions of different food classes to the diet and could be productively applied to the Southern Plains (cf. Spielmann et al. 1990; Roy et al. 2005; Wion 2014). If Not Food, Then What? New Technologies and Prestige Goods Discussing Comanche diet, Wallace and Hoebel (1952: 74) conclude that “corn was not really used very much.” If this is indeed a more accurate representation of their trading preferences than the scenario developed by Hämäläinen (2008), then what did Comanches seek from their exchange partners? To answer this, we need to look more closely at the full range of items they obtained. The descriptions provided above and summarized in tables 1–2 suggest that Comanche trade and diplomatic exchanges with Spain, Mexico, Texas, the United States, and other Native Americans emphasized two kinds of goods: those with a clearly practical function—firearms, metal weapons and tools, horses, and horse gear— and those used for personal decoration and adornment, such as clothing, cloth, glass beads, and paint. Thus, of thirty-three accounts of trade or diplomatic gift giving between 1749 and 1843, guns and associated equipment feature in thirteen, horses and/or horse gear in eleven (mostly in the eighteenth century), metal tools or weapons in all but seven (two of these involving trade with Wichita groups), and items of adornment and display in twenty-eight (including all eleven diplomatic prestations). Tobacco features ten times, sugar eight, and carbohydrates in the form of maize, bread, or flour just eleven (mostly in the 1800s). Clearly, this reinforces the picture I have developed previously, but it also directs attention at the technological, social, and symbolic aspects of Comanche trade. Before arriving on the Southern Plains, Comanches had little if any access to iron, and the greater effectiveness of metal knives, axes, hatchets, lances, awls, and other tools in daily tasks such as meat processing and hide working or, indeed, in fighting is self-evident.9 Horses, too, served an obvious and quotidian function in facilitating transport, hunting, and raiding; their Shoshone cousins remembered that “ponies” were, along with game — that is, bison— the principal reason that ancestral Comanches moved onto the grasslands in the first place (ibid.: 23). Finally, guns, ammunition, powder, and related equipment not only provided military advantage but also offered an additional means of acquiring meat. Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 261 Although all these novelties had clear technological benefits, they were also full of potential for creating, encouraging, and ultimately reinforcing distinctions within Comanche society. Firearms, for example, long remained relatively rare, and demand for them was high (Anderson 1999: 232). Horses, too, came to be far from equally distributed, and men who had few or none found it difficult to marry, acquire trade goods, or play a full role in community politics (Anderson 1999: 235; Hämäläinen 2008: 263). Spanish, and later Mexican and Texan, practice contributed to growing social disparities by rewarding the leaders of Comanche bands with items designed to enhance and reflect their status as allies: the silverheaded cane, medal, and scarlet cape given to Canaguaipe in 1797 are but one instance of this (Kavanagh 1996: 143; cf. 182). On the other side of these exchanges, it was often the same leaders who brokered negotiations with traders and officials, setting prices, and securing for themselves the best of what was available. Displaying the items acquired came to denote, assert, and validate leadership claims, just as their redistribution secured allegiance and alliance from others (ibid.: 40; Anderson 1999: 233–35).10 And it is here that we can understand Comanche interest in the less obviously utilitarian items gained through trade and diplomatic prestations, such as clothing and cloth, glass beads, mirrors, metal buttons, bells, wire, other jewelry, and body paint. All created opportunities for those possessing them to display, show off, and make visual statements of their success as traders and as politically well-connected individuals (Kavanagh 1996: 181; Anderson 1999: 233). The significance of such status goods, like that of horse gear, firearms, and metal weapons, even extended into the afterlife: descriptions of Comanche burial practices (Ruiz 1972: 12; Dodge 1989: 262) and archaeological finds of probable Comanche burials (Walsh 1998) confirm that such items were interred with the dead. They also raise the possibility that this gave survivors opportunities to engage in acts of conspicuous consumption that maintained the value of status goods among the living by removing them from further use and circulation. The 150,000 glass beads that accompanied the Cogdell burial in the eastern Llano Estacado are just one example of this (Word and Fox 1975).11 This is by no means new information. Levine (1991: 163–64), Kavanagh (1996), Anderson (1999: 233–35), and Hämäläinen (1998: 488, 491, 492, 497) have all made similar points. Hämäläinen, in particular, emphasizes the critical role of Comanches in channeling a southern abundance of horses (traded and raided from Spanish sources but also raised by the Comanches) north and east in return for guns and other European manufactures. For the late prehistoric period, Carter (1997) and Vehik (2002) mount similar critiques of claims for economic symbiosis between Southern Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 262 Plains hunter-gatherers and neighboring agriculturally based communities. Noting, as I have done, that “bison hunters would not have regularly needed trade corn to supply carbohydrates or calories” because they “also intensively produced bone grease” and made extensive use of wild plants, Vehik (ibid.: 39) argues that any symbiotic, or mutualistic, model requires that native farmers (or Spanish-ruled village communities) had a need for bison meat and could regularly produce sufficient agricultural surplus. Yet historical sources for Southwestern and Southern Plains farmers make plain that they hunted bison for themselves, with Pueblo villagers also increasingly gaining access to European livestock (Chapin-Pyritz 2000; Tarcan 2005; Spielmann et al. 2009). Moreover, seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury records show that climatic variability frequently rendered Pueblo crop yields (and thus opportunities to exchange surpluses) inconsistent and uncertain (Vehik 2002: 38). Focusing on how resources were procured through trade as a means of increasing wealth, power, and prestige (ibid.: 41) does not rule out food as an exchange item. It does, however, direct attention away from the largescale and continuous movement of foodstuffs, for which there is little evidence, toward broader social and political processes for which there is much historical support.12 Indeed, some consumables — sugar, brandy, new varieties of tobacco, and even bread— may fit comfortably with such a focus on the social and political dimensions of exchange, since their very exoticness reinforced the power and prestige of Comanche political leaders (Hämäläinen 2008: 272), just as other nonlocal items had done for their late prehistoric counterparts (Vehik 2002: 41). Thinking of Comanche trade in terms of the technological, social, and political gains that it brought has two additional benefits. First, it suggests that, far from having been “fought over carbohydrates” (Hämäläinen 2008: 32), the Comanches’ violent displacement of the Apache from the Southern Plains may have been motivated principally by their desire to access the new, rare, and valuable utilitarian and status goods that Spanish New Mexico could provide. Second, it situates Comanche history within a much broader context focused on the changes that acquiring horses, metal, firearms, and new forms of social display wrought among indigenous societies in the fast-evolving world set in motion by Europe’s transoceanic expansion. While not denying Comanches their importance in North American history, this underlines that they were far from unique: comparisons with other Plains groups, including the Lakota (White 1978), or with the Wayúu (Guajiro) of Colombia (Picon 1983; Polo Acuña 1999), the Mapuche of Chile (Boccara 1999), the native inhabitants of the Gran Chaco (Saeger 2000), the Pampas (Mandrini 1997), and Patagonia Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 263 (Martinić 1995), or even the San hunter-gatherers of Lesotho (Challis 2012), are all worthwhile.13 Conclusion I have not argued that bison were anything but central to Comanche subsistence, that Comanches did not trade for maize or other cultivated foodstuffs, or that a diet high in lean meat would not have posed nutritional challenges. However, arguments that eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Comanche trade networks with the Spanish- or Mexican-ruled Southwest or Native American villagers were primarily structured around the need to acquire carbohydrates, that alternative solutions to a diet rich in protein did not exist or were not exploited, or that Comanches had actively stopped using wild plant foods simply are not sustained by the documentary evidence presented in their favor or by broader ethnographic and historical data. Instead, a more likely motivation for Comanche trade was to gain horses and goods of European manufacture, such as metal, firearms, cloth, clothing, tobacco, and items of personal decoration. Their function lay not in the dietary domain but in the domains of technology, social relations, and politics. As Susan Vehik (2002) has argued for late prehistoric contacts between Southern Plains hunters and Pueblo villagers, the practical and prestige implications of these other goods provided the trade-based underpinning to the emergence of the Comanche empire (Tutino 2013: 68, 73). Notes 1 Comanches did not, of course, form a politically or economically unified whole, and Kavanagh (1996) provides a detailed analysis of their subdivisions. I mention three of the highest-order entities he identifies (the Kotseteka, Penateka, and Yamparika). Although fine-grained analyses exploring the individual histories of these “divisions” are vital, such differences are not relevant to my argument. This is because bison were the core dietary resource for all Comanches. If trade for agricultural produce was indeed a nutritional necessity, then it must have been so for all their divisions, not just for some. 2 Estimates for the total Comanche population vary greatly. Hämäläinen (2008: 102) makes a case for their numbers having reached as many as forty thousand around this time. Even if the true figure were only half this, total daily requirements would have been in the order of 40 million calories (assuming a minimal caloric intake of 2,500 calories per day per adult and three-fifths of this per child and an adult-to-child ratio of 1:1). Three hundred bushels (7,500kg; 1 bushel=56 pounds [25.4kg] of shelled corn; Murphy 2008) equates to approximately 27,375,000 calories, or 68 percent of this, enough to feed two- Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Peter Mitchell 264 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 thirds of the Comanche population for a single day. Crude as it is, this ballpark figure makes clear that what superficially seems to be a substantial quantity of food was nothing of the kind. Comanches disdained rice because it resembled maggots, calling it wo’arihkapi or “worm meat” (Campbell 2007: 602–3). Hämäläinen (2008: 58) cites Smith (2000: 28, 42) as further support for Comanches obtaining maize from Taovaya communities. The correct reference (Smith 2000: 165n35) draws on observations by John Sibley (1806: 723), who noted that some Comanches “occasionally purchase . . . corn, beans, and pumpkins, but they are so numerous, any quantity of these articles the Panis are able to supply them with, must make but a small proportion of their food” (emphasis added). Consistent with this, the American trader Josiah Gregg commented that in the 1830s Comanchero traders “launch[ed] upon the plains with a few trinkets and trumperies of all kinds, and perhaps a loaf of bread another of pinole to barter for horses and mules” (quoted in Haley 1935: 162)—no large-scale exchange of carbohydrates here. Only “in later years,” as the livestock trade expanded, did bread, alongside many other goods, become more important (ibid.: 163). Hämäläinen (2008: 290) notes that Comanches did process and store “buffalo tallow, and bear oil” for winter use, but he does not then acknowledge the role that stored fat likely played in meeting the nutritional challenges of a winter diet high in lean meat. Concentrated carbohydrates in the form of honey offer another solution and are well attested in the broader hunter-gatherer literature (e.g., Micheli 2013). Intriguingly, one mid-nineteenth-century Comanche division (the Penateka, Penatuka) was known as the “Honey-eaters” (Kavanagh 1996: 298). Consumption of honey is directly attested elsewhere (Kavanagh 2008: 400). To minimize any possible duplication, I have excluded those botanically unidentified plants for which the Comanche name given is also applied to another known taxon. I have also noted in table 3 those rare situations where two no longer acceptable taxa have been collapsed into one. Plant uses were checked against the Native American ethnobotany website of the University of Michigan–Dearborn (herb.umd.umich.edu, accessed 27 April 2015). Metal’s value and scarcity are amply demonstrated by the fact that as late as 1838 Comanches visiting Houston were observed scavenging for “old tin plates, iron hoops, clippings of tin, glass bottles, and similar rubbish” (Kavanagh 1996: 256). It also features in one of the earliest accounts of Comanche trade in New Mexico, when Diego de Torres illegally exchanged knives for bison hides in 1735 (Kavanagh 1996: 67–68). This is not to say that trade and political gifts were uniquely or universally the basis for Comanche political power—far from it. Access to supernatural potency, family ties, diplomatic skill, and success in warfare and raiding were also important (Kavanagh 1996: 57; Hämäläinen 2008: 259–70). Collectively, these factors may help explain regional and temporal differences in the histories of the various Comanche divisions (e.g., Kavanagh 1996: 191). Making precisely this point, Hämäläinen (1998: 497) notes that “the value of many Euro-American goods was less utilitarian than supernatural and symbolic”; that such goods, even if few, may have been “a major transaction . . . laden with symbolic value”; and that “a telling manifestation of the Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory Going Back to Their Roots 265 power of beads, mirrors, medals, and other non-utilitarian trade good is that a large portion of them accompanied their owners to graves and the afterlife.” 12 Carter (1997: 27) agrees when noting that “Apaches obtained regional political power through their monopoly of widely sought after trade items” via exchange with Pueblo communities in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. 13 Weber (2005) discusses this for some of these groups along the frontiers of Spain’s New World empire, and Mitchell (2015) considers the consequences for indigenous peoples of the acquisition of horses in both the Americas and southern Africa. 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