Comanche Nation (formerly the Comanche Tribe of Oklahoma)

Before European contact, the Comanche Nation was part of the southern groups of Eastern Shoshoni. After they entered the northern plains as part of the Eastern Shoshoni around 1500, the people who would become the Comanches lived along the upper reaches of the Platte River in southeastern Wyoming ranging between the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills.After acquiring the horse, groups of Comanches separated from the Shoshoni and began to move south sometime around 1700. Other groups followed at later dates up to about 1830.

Comanches were not a unified tribe in the usual sense of the word. There were from 8 to 12 independent divisions, which for the most part cooperated to some degree, but at other times were mutually antagonistic. In turn, each division could contain several semi-autonomous bands. For reasons known only to themselves, Comanche groups changed their names over the years. Division and band names often followed the Shoshoni custom of referring to a type of food.

For the next 50 years most groups of Comanches were located between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers in eastern Colorado and western Kansas. Beginning in the 1740s they began crossing the Arkansas River and established themselves on margins of the Llano Estacado (or Staked Plains, which got its name from the large stakes which were driven in the ground to mark the trails because it was so flat and there were few landmarks) which extended from western Oklahoma across the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico. The area they controlled became known as Comancheria and extended south from the Arkansas River across central Texas to the vicinity of San Antonio including the entire Edwards Plateau west to the Pecos River and then north again following the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the Arkansas.