By the mid-19th century, the Comanche were among the most powerful tribes of the Great Plains, having migrated southward from the colder high plains and mountains of Wyoming. They were innovative warriors and adapted quickly to the arrival of Spanish horses. By the time of the so-called “Indian Wars,” many people viewed the Comanches as the most skillful riders and breeders of horses in the world. Their mastery of the horse—a lifestyle perfectly suited to the Great Plains environment—made them virtually unstoppable. They raided other tribes as they carved out a huge new area of control, displacing other powerful groups like the Apache, with whom they carried out a long and bitter rivalry. In theorizing the Comanche people as a nomadic empire, S.C. Gwynne compares them to the Mongols, another nomadic people who conquered vast territories through their superior horsemanship.

Indeed, the Comanche were strong enough to successfully resist Spanish encroachment into their territories. While the Spanish thought of themselves as possessing a wide empire, much of this territory was theoretical, consisting of little more than a legal claim of dominion over lands the colonizers had scarcely laid eyes on. Gwynne emphasizes that the Spanish mode of imperialism—“conquering” vast territories in hopes of finding gold and other natural resources without establishing large-scale agriculture or permanent settlements—was ill-suited to the challenges of a skilled and motivated resistance like that of the Comanches.