Comancheros: Terror on the frontier

By Murray Montgomery

Staff Writer

Anytime I watch a Western movie that has anything to do with Comancheros, they are always depicted as the bad guys. But evidently, that was not true in the beginning. My research found that they were peaceful until unscrupulous characters came to their area. Perhaps this bad influence caused the Comancheros to believe they could make more money by operating on the other side of the law.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online, the Comancheros were natives of northern and central New Mexico who conducted trade for a living with the nomadic plains tribes. They cut trails followed by traders and later ranchers and settlers. They got their name because they traded mostly with the Comanches – the name seems to have been slang used by the United States Army to identify them as something other than Native Americans.

After becoming more known as rustlers and bandits rather than honest traders, the Comancheros began to live up to that new designation. They roamed a vast territory from Oklahoma to the Davis Mountains in Texas. But they certainly were not restricted to any area – the Comancheros could be found rustling cattle in New Mexico and trading them to the Indians.

The merchandise most sought after by the different tribes consisted of tobacco, knives, pots, pans, coffee, and flour. Indians also preferred metal spikes over flint for their arrows, which the Comancheros were more than happy to provide for a price.

The Comanches soon figured out that they could also profit by supplying the bandits with items stolen from frontier families living in Texas and northern Mexico. The Comancheros would turn around and trade those goods to merchants in Arizona and New Mexico.

This illicit trade business was becoming more lucrative for corrupt merchants who put up a false front of being honest – all those involved in the business were doing well. Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens on the frontier were suffering.

When they started to get more pressure from lawmen, the Comancheros began to set up secret meetings, with the Indians, at remote locations to do their trading. Information from the Handbook of Texas has some examples of how the bandits profited in the trades, “A shrewd Comanchero could take back with him a mule for five pounds of tobacco or a keg of whiskey, a good pack horse for ten pounds of coffee, or a buffalo robe for little or nothing.”

Some things found in my research indicate that the Comancheros’ most profitable business was eventually the one that led to their demise. They encouraged Indians to raid places for the sole purpose of taking captives that could be sold or ransomed. The bandits would then buy the hostages and make their families pay a huge reward to get them back.

At the Comancheros’ direction, the Indians would go after “highborn” individuals that would bring even a greater price. As usual, the bandits would pay the raiders a small sum for the captives and then make three times as much from families who would pay anything to get their loved ones returned.

Finally, efforts by the Texas Rangers and Army patrols to defeat the Comanches put an end to the Comancheros and their despicable human trafficking trade which caused so much sorrow to the settlers living on the Southwest frontier.