The Comanche Census Lists


The lists before 1895 are at the Oklahoma Historical Society, microfilm rolls KA 1 and KA 1a. The annual lists after 1895 are at the National Archives, microfilm publication M595, rolls 211-223.

The earliest extant name-based Comanche censuses are from July 1876, recording the Penateka local bands of Tosawa and Asehabit, residents of the Wichita Reservation north of the Washita River at modern Anadarko.The lists are by head of extended family under the two chiefs, and show a total of 166 people in twenty-four families.

The earliest extant name-based list for the rest of the Comanches is from 1879. It is ordered by the heads of nuclear households. It seems probable that the change from listing by head of extended family to head of nuclear family was related to the situation refered to by the Commission of Indian Affairs, in a letter to agent Haworth in 1878:
Only one name should appear upon the rolls in any one family. Any male or female adults, other than the female or male or Husband or Wife as the case may be should be entered onthe role as individual Indians. It appears from the roll as furnished by you that in some of the families, 15, 20 or even 30 adults are included.[Hayt 1878]
In June, the new agent, Philemon Berry Hunt, wrote back,
Referring to your letter of 13th inst in regards to a list of all the heads of families and individual Indians of this agency, I have to state that I will send the list by this mail. It has been quite a tedious undertaking and have caused greater delay than I wished but I hope it as near perfect as it can be made. [Hunt 1878]
It listed 1,427 people under 602 heads of families under 41 "chiefs". But although the Kiowa and Wichita Agencies were consolidated in 1879, it did not include the Penatekas at the Wichita Agency. They were not included in the Comanche totals until 1885. There are similar lists for 1880, 1881, and 1883.

The earliest name by name is list from 1885, but it is problematic. There are only some 912 names are on it, and several whole band were excluded. There are more comprehensive name-by-name censuses for 1889, 1892, and 1895--the last year the censuses were listed by "bands" under "chiefs" -- and annually for the years thereafter through 1939. After 1929, the lists are alphabetical by the curname of the headofthe family, although spouses continued to be listed with their own surname

Even as listings of individuals, there are pitfalls in using the lists. First, there is the simple problem of misnumbering; the handwritten 1895 list has a total of 1507, a figure also used in the "Recapitulation" at the end. But the list omitted the numbers 1330-1339, so the total is really 1497.

Then there is the problem of exactly who is counted. From 1879, a number of non-Comanches were listed. These range from various other Indians, both captives and spouses, to non-Indian captives who remained with the Comanches after capture: Asewaynah was the Texas-German Rudolph Fisher; Waysee, the "oldest Comanche" when he died, was also non-Indian, although his origin is unknown. After the so-called Jerome Allotment Agreement of 1892, a number of other non-Comanches were listed. Some were captives who came back in hopes of getting an allotment; Herman Lehman got on the rolls in 1904, but Bianca Babb was rejected. There were "squaw men," non-Indians who had married Comanches; George Chandler was married to a non-Comanche captive woman. There were hangers-on such as the old interpreter Horace P. Jones, and Quanah Parker's handyman, David Grantham.

Finally, there is the question of fraud. It is sometimes claimed that people placed dogs in cradleboards to get extra rations or allotments (Jackson 1979:112). While this cannot be ruled out, comparison of the original allotment lists, both the allotment list and the original allotment maps with census lists from both before and after allotment, shows near 100 percent alignment over the next decades: there were no allotments attributed to otherwise unknown individuals. While there are cases of new-borns being listed as "no name" on censuses, in most cases they can be linked to later-named children.

A Few Words on Comanche "Bands"

In the following lists, the term 'band' refers to what I have elsewhere called the "local residential band," that is, the group of people who normally lived year-round together. It was composed of one or more sets of extended families (numunahkahnuu, 'the people who live together in a household'), all linked by kinship ties to a central core family, whose family head was the 'local band chief', the paraibo. Thus, when Wallace and Hoebel (The Comanches, 1952, p 212), quoting Tahsuda but without citation, describe the paraibo as a "father," and the pople were his "children," they misunderstood his words. Tahsuda was not being metaphorical, he was describing the actual kinship situation: the local band paraibo was indeed the father of his people, the head of the kinship group.

Local residential bands were named, although very few of those names were recorded.

On the other hand, the unit usually refered to in the literature as "bands" (e.g. Yamparika, Quahada, Penateka, etc.) are what I call the "regional political division." These were groups of multiple local bands linked more by political ties than by the kinship ties of the local residential bands. Moreover, while the local band paraibo was the head of the family, there is evidence that the divisional paraibo was, in fact, elected from among the constituent local band paraibo.
The following list is alphabetical.
The Lists