Comanchería
The Comanches ran the southern plains for a hundred and fifty years and held the center of a continent from horseback.
Their territory ran to roughly 250,000 square miles: Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and reach extending hundreds of miles beyond it. It was held by horsemanship, trade, and skill, and it sat directly in the path of Spanish, French, English, and American expansion. You cannot know American history without knowing Comanche history.
Researched first, made second, and shown to the people whose history it is, whose feedback we welcome. Built for phones, because that’s where people are, and a history nobody sees is a history nobody keeps.
I have always loved history, and in 2021 I fell hard for the Comanche. A hundred and fifty years on the Southern Plains, an empire of 250,000 square miles, larger than France, Spain and England, sitting at the center of the story of the American West. The Spanish brought horses and the Comanches became masters, stymying Spanish American expansion for over a hundred years, likely why we are not speaking Spanish right now, and clashed with the Texans on the frontier for forty. Very cool. I knew almost none of it and it changed how I understood America. Deep rabbit hole of raging interest.
Then in 2023 I met a Comanche family entirely by chance, which led me to Oklahoma, to the community, to the land, to powwows, and a lot more YouTube and history books.
Then I met Sean and we started talking about how we could bring the history to life. That’s what this is.
A history that’s pieced together from oral histories, frontier soldiers and traders journals, military records and missionaries. We welcome the feedback and the collaboration of community members, elders and agencies in helping to tell their stories, and we work from historical records and original historians to authenticate and piece that history together. There’s a lot of AI slop out there, getting this right is important. Come follow the journey @beforethefences.
There are a lot of amazing people and organizations on the ground in Lawton, Oklahoma and in the Comanche community. Firewood does not handle the money and does not take a cut, so one hundred percent of proceeds go directly to those people and organizations: the Comanche Youth Dance Program, the Comanche Nation Historic Preservation Department, Comanche Nation Enterprises and Numu Crafts.
A Spanish governor spends ten years hunting the man his own people called Dangerous Man. The war crown ends up behind glass in the Vatican.
Before the horse, a people moved at the pace of a dog. Within a generation of it, they were the finest light cavalry on the continent.
Received. We read everything, and you will hear back.
Or write directly · firewoodstudio@gmail.com Firewood · New York