They were valued as trading partners, but they were also feared for their raids. The Comanches maintained an ambiguous relationship with the Europeans and later the Americans attempting to colonize their territory. The Comanche now dominated the area surrounding the Texas Panhandle, including western Oklahoma and northeastern New Mexico. In an attempt to prevent Apache incursions, the Spanish offered them help in their wars with the Comanches, but these efforts generally failed and the Apaches were finally forced out of the Southern Plains by mid-century. Their emergence around the turn of the eighteenth century and their subsequent migration southward brought them into conflict with the Apaches, who already lived in the region and began migrating themselves to Spanish-dominated Texas and New Mexico. In fact, warfare was a major part of Comanche life. They were formidable opponents, who developed entire strategies for fighting on horseback with traditional weapons. Their victims included Spanish and America settlers, as well as the other Plains tribes, often leading to war. Many of these horses were stolen, and the Comanches earned a reputation as formidable horse and later cattle thieves. By the mid-nineteenth century, they were also supplying horses to French and American traders and settlers and later to migrants passing through their territory on their way to California Gold Rush. The Comanches may even have been the first group of Plains natives to fully incorporate the horse into their culture, and may have even introduced the animal to the other Plains peoples. The horse was a key element in the emergence of a distinctive Comanche culture, and there have even been suggestions that it was the search for additional sources of horses among the Mexican settlers to the south (rather than the search for new herds of buffalo) that first led the Comanches to break off the Shoshone. These groups were very fluid and often joined together or separated, depending on circumstances. Nevertheless, the Comanches never formed a single cohesive tribal unit, and were divided into almost a dozen autonomous groups, which shared the same language and culture, but might have fought among themselves just as often as they cooperated. During that time, their population increased dramatically due to the abundance of buffalo, an influx of Shoshone migrants, and the adoption of significant numbers of women and children taken captive from rival groups. Their original migration took them to central plains, from where they moved southward into a sweep of territory extending from the Arkansas River to central Texas. This coincided with their acquisition of the horse, which allowed them greater mobility in their search for better hunting grounds. The Comanches emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. They were also called Paducah by early French and American explorers, but their own preferred name is Numunuh, meaning "the People." They speak an Uto-Aztecan language, sometimes classified as a Shoshone dialect. There are two accounts of the origin of the name Comanche, which is either a corruption of a Ute term, komants, meaning "those who always fight us," or of the Spanish camino ancho, meaning wide trail. The Comanche Nation is a Native American group of approximately 10,000 members, about half of whom live in Oklahoma and the remainder concentrated in Texas, California, and New Mexico.
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