Comanche

The Comanche, Numunuu (the People), rose from a Shoshone offshoot of the Great Basin to become the lords of the Southern Plains. After adopting the horse in the early 18th century they broke away, and within generations their autonomous kin-linked divisions ruled Comancheria, a vast domain across northwestern Texas, eastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas and western Oklahoma. Judged some of the finest light cavalry in history, they lived by bison hunting and raiding, exacted tribute from Spanish, Mexican and Texan settlements, and made their Numic language the lingua franca of the southern Plains. Rather than a centralised state, Comanche power flowed through flexible bands that could unite thousands of warriors. American campaigns, the slaughter of the bison herds and reservations ended the free alliance in 1875; today the Comanche Nation, headquartered at Lawton, Oklahoma, sustains the language, the war dance and the load-bearing memory of an Indigenous empire.