"The most powerful Indian tribe in American history:..." Topic

…. Excerpt from "Empire of the Summer Moon".

"Prior to the 17th century, the tribe of Indians known as Comanches was nothing special. Though they were in most ways fairly typical hunter-gatherers, they had a remarkably simple culture. They did not build anything, did not farm, and had little or no social organization beyond the hunting band. In social development they were culturally eons behind the dazzlingly urban Aztecs or the stratified, highly organized, clan-based Iroquois. They were not very good fighters either, having been driven by stronger tribes to the eastern slopes of the Wind River Mountains in what is now Wyoming.

Though what happened to them was unseen by any white man, between roughly 1625 and 1750 they underwent one of the great social and military transformations in history. Few nations have ever progressed with such breathtaking speed from the status of skulking pariah to dominant power. The change was total and irrevocable, and it was accompanied by a complete reordering of the balance of power on the American plains. The agent of this astonishing change was the horse. Or, more precisely, what this undistinguished group of Stone Age hunters did with the horse, a piece of transformative technology that had as much of an effect on the Great Plains as steam and electricity had on the rest of human civilization.

They had gotten the horse from the Spanish and had immediately understood it better than anyone else. That included breaking, breeding, and riding them, hunting with them and going into battle with them. The Comanches adapted to the horse earlier and more completely than any other plains tribe, and whatever it was, whatever sort of accidental brilliance, whatever the particular, subliminal bond between warrior and horse, it must have thrilled these dark-skinned pariahs from the Wind River country…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Powerful? I guess that all depends on what years we are talking about.

Dan
PS. Still, my money is on the Incas (Quechua) before the Spanish, or the Mapuche after the Spanish arrived. Of those the Inca were an actual empire.

Wow! Obviously we've heard of the Commanche's before but I thought they were just another one of the Plains Tribes not the dominant force suggested here.

Dan – No, I think it all depends on what the original author means by "American". Quechua and others from the southern continent presumably don't count.

This isn't the first book to talk of a "Comanche Empire" – see Hamalainen's 2009 title, for instance: link

One of the most fascinating details about the Comanche is their use of leather horse-armour – see link

Gurkhan +1

The introduction of the Horse and gun, dramatically changed the migrational patterns on the Plains. The tribes that were closer to the source (New Mexico/Texas) gained them first and quickly dominated the tribes that were farther north. This changed after the British and US started Supplying the other tribes.

A good book on the whole plains area during the late 1700's-1860 is

The Contested Plains
Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado
by Elliott West

Many thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand