“Once there were a bunch of Comanche out looking for trouble”

(The usual start of an account by a Comanche informant, according to Hoebel)

I start with the Comanche; their government is the simplest of the three to describe, since they did not have one. A Comanche war chief was simply an entrepreneur, a warrior who announced his intent to go steal horses from the Mexicans, Americans, or some other tribe, and invited anyone interested to come along. Within the war party he had absolute rule but anyone unhappy with the situation was free to leave.1 A Comanche peace chief was simply an individual whom others were willing to follow. If he chose to go one direction and the rest of the band another, he was no longer a peace chief.

In addition to peace chiefs and war chiefs, there was also a council. As described by Wallace and Hoebel:

In theory, at least, the council was supreme, but its decisions were often indefinite. Generally the majority made little effort to impose its will on the minority, for, as in most Indian tribes, it was thought that agreement should be unanimous. The “council” “was composed of all the old men of the tribe who had shown exceptional ability as warriors, leaders, or guides. As in the selection of chiefs, there was no formal procedure for admission; one “just got that way” because of his achievement.2

The Comanche, in other words, were anarchists. Their social system included institutions for coordination at the level of the individual band but nothing we would recognize as a government over either the band or the entire tribe.3

One of the problems that concerns modern anarchists is how to defend an anarchist society against adjacent states, given the difficulty of raising and funding an army without a draft, taxation, feudal obligations, or something along similar lines.4 The Comanche reversed the situation, raising the problem of defending adjacent states, and anyone else in the neighborhood, from them. They drove the Apache from the southern plains, raided the Mexicans for horses and slaves and, despite the disadvantage of lower technology and smaller population, blocked American expansion across Texas for decades, fairly earning the title of Spartans of the plains. Facing an overwhelmingly superior enemy they were eventually defeated, but only after making a very impressive fight of it.

Part of the reason, seen from an economist’s perspective, is that they made warfare into a private rather than a public good. For most of their history, the incentive to fight was not the welfare of the tribe but of the individual warrior. Successful raids produced valuable loot. Heroic and successful fighting produced status.

One way of getting status was to steal horses from outsiders. Another was to face down another Comanche warrior. The opportunity to do so was provided by the common practice of wife stealing.

The strongest bond within the tribe was between brothers who, among other things, shared their wives and had the power to marry off their sisters.5 From the standpoint of the brother, the ideal brother-in-law was a wealthy and successful warrior. The sister might prefer someone earlier in his career, younger and more handsome–and, given the opportunity, leave the husband chosen for her by her brothers to run away with one such. The incentive of the wife stealer was less possession of the wife than the opportunity to outface the husband.

Wife stealing was done openly, so guilt was not an issue. Compensation was. The husband was expected to confront the wife stealer and demand generous compensation, with the amount an increasing function of the wealth of the stealer and the prowess of the husband, a decreasing function of the prowess of the stealer. There being no government to enforce the (unwritten) law, the threat that backed the demand was the private use of force. Pay or I will kill you.

Carrying out that threat was neither desired nor likely, since if the husband killed the stealer (or vice versa) the victim’s kin would take revenge by killing the killer.6 The intended result of the threat was to set off the game that economists call bilateral monopoly, a bargaining game in which the parties have a common interest in the resolution of their dispute but a conflict over the terms, in this case over how much will be given in compensation to the wronged husband.

What if the stealer was clearly the more dangerous man of the two–not unlikely, since a prudent man in search of status would prefer not to steal from too able a husband? The husband had the option of calling in his brothers or other kin to support his threats. The stealer, having set off the conflict in order to prove his status, had no such option–asking for help would be to admit that he had bitten off more than he could chew, and besides, he was on what everyone saw as the wrong side of the law. So at that point the stealer backs down and agrees to pay substantial damages, going not to the husband but to his helpers.

What if the husband had no brothers? His option then was to find a champion, a brave, generous, well-thought-of warrior willing to take over the case and face down the stealer. This time the damage payment went to the husband. The champion’s payment was the status gained by his willingness to risk himself in defense of the right and his success in forcing another warrior to back down. Much the same pattern appears in some of the Icelandic sagas, where a bully who relies too heavily on his and his friends’ strength to let him violate the rights of weaker men is brought down by someone still more formidable out to establish his own status.7

In addition to cases of wife stealing, there were also cases of adultery. The pattern there was the same, save that there might be a question of guilt. If the defendant denied it, the case ended unless there was proof of guilt available.

Cases of wife stealing and seduction seem to have been the nearest thing to legal disputes among the Comanche. So far as conflicts between husband and wife, most likely to occur when the husband suspected his wife of adultery, the husband had a free hand, up to killing his wife or torturing her to make her name her lover. One possible resolution was for the wife to swear by earth and sky that she was innocent, at which point the husband accepted the oath in the belief that if she was lying, earth and sky would eventually kill her. The same approach was used to settle some other disputes, such as disagreements as to which member of a war party had counted coup on an enemy or captured a particular horse, and similarly in some cases where a man accused of seduction denied it. As far as minor theft was concerned, the Comanche, like the other two tribes I will discuss, regarded such matters as beneath the notice of a warrior. As a Cheyenne would have put it, “if you had asked, I would have given it to you.”

That attitude, as well as other features of Plains Indian behavior, suggests one important feature of those societies–in their own terms, they were wealthy. Men frequently had more horses than they themselves had use for and so were free to use the surplus to prove their generosity by giving some away. In an uncertain environment, they were from time to time at risk of starving to death during the winter. But the most important form of portable, indeed self-portable on four legs, wealth was plentiful.8

What about murder? As already mentioned, a first killing required a second, of the killer by the kin of his victim. At that point the matter ended. The second killing was justified by the first and so required no further vengeance.9 For these purposes, killing a favorite horse, thought of as having a soul, counted as murder and so justified the killing of the responsible human in revenge.

An exception to the rule of a life for a life occurred in the context of sorcery. Every Comanche male was expected at some point to go on a vision quest and end up with some sort of magical power, typically restricted by a taboo whose violation could cost his life. For the most part such power was used for the good of the tribe and the individual, but there were “mean medicine men,” individuals with a greater than usual share of magical power and an inclination to misuse it, sometimes lethally.

The first recourse if someone was believed to be dying from sorcery was to get a good medicine man to cure him. If that failed, the next step was to confront the sorcerer believed responsible and try to get him to stop what he was doing. If that failed, however, there was no obligation to kill the sorcerer, possibly because doing so was seen as too dangerous, possibly because in that case, unlike an ordinary murder followed by revenge, there might be a serious risk of blaming the wrong man.

“The sorcerer who maintained his innocence, when threatened with force, in each recorded case immediately forestalled further legal steps by throwing the whole affair over to supernatural judgment. He swore his innocence with a conditional curse. If he was guilty he was killed by power of the Sun and the Earth. If he survived, his innocence was accepted as proved.” (Wallace and Hoebel p. 239)

What if it was believed that a particular bad medicine man was responsible for multiple deaths? At that point, the Comanche made use of the nearest thing their society had to criminal law. The rest of the tribe met together, concluded that the guilty individual must die, and either killed him or tricked him into violating his own taboo and so dying.

Footnotes

1.Wallace and Hoebel also use the term “war chief” for the individual within each band recognized as the “leading war chief.” P. 216.

2. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 213.

3. “No Individual action is considered as a crime, but every man acts for himself according to his own judgment, unless some superior power, for instance, that of a popular chief, should exercise authority over him.” Neighbors p. 131.

“The man whose advice was most consistently followed was a peace chief for his group.” As one Comanche informant put it, in response to the question of how peace chiefs were chosen, “No one made him such; he just got that way.” Wallace and Hoebel p. 211.

Lee, who was a captive for three years, describes a somewhat more organized system, writing about his first owner: “He was the civil chief as distinguished from the war chief, and consequently the head of the tribe. This dignity carried with it the privilege of possessing four wives, a common Indian being allowed to have but one, subordinate officers two, and the war chief three.” Lee 1859. But Neighbors writes that “Polygamy is practiced to a great extent, some chiefs having more than ten wives, …” Presumably Lee was generalizing from his observations of one or more of the bands he was in. It is unclear if he ever learned the Comanche language; he may have communicated with his captors in Spanish, which some of them would probably have known.

4. The problem is discussed in a modern context in Friedman 2014, Chapters 34 and 56.

5. According to Hoebel, but Neighbors writes, “The parents exercise full control in giving their daughters in marriage, …” p. 132.

6.“The ties of consanguinity are very strong, not only with regard to their blood relations, but extends itself to relations by marriage, &c., who are considered as, and generally called “brothers”–all offences committed against any member, are avenged by all, or any member connected with the family.” Neighbors p. 131.

7. Hrafnkel’s Saga provides an example. “Many people were pleased, even though Hrafnkel had ended up being humiliated. They remembered that Hrafnkel had treated many people unfairly.” Complete Sagas Volume V p. 272.

8. “From the liberality with which they dispose of their effects on all occasions of the kind, it would induce the belief that they acquire property merely for the purpose of giving it to others.” Neighbors p. 134.

9. Wallace and Hoebel p. 233.