The Comanche Trail, sometimes called the Comanche War Trail or the Comanche Trace, was a travel route in Texas established by the nomadic Comanche and their Kiowa and Kiowa Apache allies. Although called a "trail," the Comanche Trail was actually a network of parallel and branching trails, always running from one source of good water to another. The trail was especially important from the 1830s to 1850s when the Comanche launched large scale raids from Texas into Mexico. Hundreds of warriors annually followed the trail southward in fall and returned with their booty, mostly livestock, in late winter or spring.
Description
The route ran from the Comanche summer hunting grounds on the Great Plains of northern Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas to the Rio Grande river which formed the border of the United States and Mexico. In the 18th century, the Spanish had established a line of missions and presidios to defend from what was then called New Spain from the Comanche and other Indian tribes. Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 resulted in a decrease in the new country's capability to defend itself from Indian raids. At the same time, there was a growing demand for livestock, especially horses and mules, in the expanding United States. The Comanche took advantage of the situation by raiding hundreds of miles deep into Mexico for livestock which they marketed in the United States.[1] By 1857 parts of the trail had been named and appeared on maps.[2]
The Comanche launched their raids on Mexico in autumn, riding south on nights with a full moon, called a Comanche Moon in Texas.
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The Comanche Trail was noted as a beaten path as much as a mile wide. Much of the southeastern leg of the main trail runs through what is now Big Bend National Park, leaving the park through Persimmon Gap in the Santiago Mountains in the northern portion of the park.[10]U.S. Route 385 follows the same route through parts of the park.[11]
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Comanche_Trail, and is written by contributors.
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