According to historian Pekka H m l inen, this makes Comanche more than just an Native American tribe or people. It made it an empire. They conquered land and absorbed other races and cultures, imposed their own political and military structures, and negotiated as a whole. In fact, the Comanche Empire was more powerful and advanced than many thought. That is why whenever the French and Americans attacked Comanchelia, they reached an impasse.
In many U.S. histories, wars between the Comanche family and the United States are not usually described as wars at all. But the Comanches fought a war against Texas that lasted nearly 40 years. It began when Texas was still under Spanish control, continued to exist when it was an independent state, and finally became part of the United States The Texas Rangers were formed in part to protect settlers from attacks by the Comanches, and quickly adopted the all-out war methods employed by Native American warriors. But in the decades that followed, Texas couldn't stop Comanche. In fact, they even expanded their territory into Texas several times. Until Texas joined the United States, President Ulysses Grant postponed the defeat of the Comanche family as their ultimate top priority, triggering a series of events that eventually led to their ultimate defeat in the 1870s.
In 1836, a woman named Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanche raiders. She was assimilated into the tribe and eventually married in 1852 and had a son named Kwana. When Kwana came of age, the Comanche nation was in the midst of its final dying struggle, and he was destined to be its last great leader. As a young warrior, Kwana is the epitome of the bravery and ferocity of a Comanche warrior. Kwana was very young for a chief who led a series of violent attacks and fought the American army in 1871 when he was only 19 years old. In 1874, Kwana gathered 300 Comanche warriors and launched a final attack on the Americans who had invaded Comancheria. The chief intended to drive the Americans away once and for all, as the Comanches had always done. They attacked a trading post called Adobe Walls, where about 28 hunters took refuge. Instead of achieving a shocking victory, it turned into a tough game. The siege lasted five days and ended with the retreat of native Americans. However, the Comanche continued their raids, and the Americans pursued the Comanches, burning the Comanche supplies and horses, which broke the last psychological defense of the Comanche nation, and Kwana led his surviving warriors to surrender and agreed to move to the reservation. Kwana proved to be a popular and capable peacetime leader who spent the rest of his life serving his people as the peace chief of the Comanche state.
By the 1870s, the Comanche family was on the brink of defeat at the hands of the U.S. military. The brutal fighting has left the United States with an experienced and well-equipped modern combat force, and the U.S. military is killing Native Americans. President Ulysses Grant was determined to put an end to their strength once and for all.
While the factor of force is at work, there is another factor at work: disease. Like many other Native American tribes, they traded and interacted with American settlers, who became victims of diseases such as smallpox and cholera. These infectious diseases had never been encountered before, and the Comanche were defenseless against them. Two pandemics, 1816 and 1849, cut the population of Comanche in half. In fact, one of the reasons why the Comanche army led by Kwana had a formidable fighting power was because they had always disdained to contact the settlers in any form, and after avoiding the Americans who had advanced westward, they had avoided these plagues.