The Comanche power was its own little empire in the Texas panhandle and a few Midwest states for hundreds of years before jackbooted bluecoats from out East lead a ruthless systematic campaign to destroy it. It should come as no coincidence that gold discoveries lead to the increase demand to settle the frontier before the Comanche empire proved more difficult for the empire of the United States to fully subdue it.
Clearly without technological weaponry advances that only an industrial nation could provide was what doomed perhaps the greatest warrior nomadic race since the Mongols. This history is conveyed in the book "Empire Of The Summer Moon" which tells the story of the rise and fall of the Comanche's empire. Much of this book recounts the early battles between texians and the Comanches. This is a fascinating book that tells the readers the importance of the horse to Comanche culture and how their mastery of this beast lead them to overrun neighboring tribes after a history of long being a weak tribe once pushed around by the very same native groups they would master. The Comanches were the most feared Indian group by both whites and Indians and their evolutionary progress as a continental power was thwarted only by advances of settlers, buffalo hunters ,soldiers, and traders pushing West into the Comanche lands that were once considered the most inhospitable of all. It was the wanton destruction of the Buffalo that really undid the wild nomadic life of this great tribe as even the great ones need to eat and farming was never on the agenda of a hardened tribe of the plains.
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