“This is the most important pre-reservation document that we have for the Comanche language . . . It should be in every university research library.” —James A. Goss, Professor of Anthropology, Texas Tech University The Comanche Vocabulary collected in Mexico during the years 1861–1864 by Manuel García Rejón is by far the most extensive Comanche word list compiled before the establishment of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in 1867. It preserves words and concepts that have since changed or even disappeared from the language, thus offering a unique historical window on earlier Comanche culture. This translation adds the English equivalents to the original Spanish-Comanche list of 857 words, as well as a Comanche-English vocabulary and comparisons with later Comanche word lists. Daniel J. Gelo’s introduction discusses the circumstances in which García Rejón gathered his material and annotates significant aspects of the vocabulary in light of current knowledge of Comanche language and culture. The book also includes information on pictography, preserving a rare sample of Comanche scapula drawing. This information will help scholars understand the processes of language evolution and cultural change that occurred among all Native American peoples following European contact. The Comanche Vocabulary will also hold great interest for the large public fascinated by this once-dominant tribe.

The Comanche Vocabulary collected in Mexico during the years 1861-1864, by Manuel García Rejón is by far the most extensive Comanche word list compiled before the establishment of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in 1867. It preserves words and concepts that have since changed or even disappeared from the language, thus offering a unique historical window on earlier Comanche culture. This translation adds the English equivalents to the original Spanish-Comanche list of 857 words, as well as a Comanche-English vocabulary and comparisons with late Comanche word lists. Daniel J. Gelo's introduction discusses the circumstances in which García Rejón gathered his material and annotates significant aspects of the vocabulary in light of current knowledge of Comanche language and culture. The book also includes information on pictography, preserving a rare sample of Comanche scapula drawing. This information will help scholars understand the process of language evolution and cultural change that occurred among all Native American peoples following European contact. The Comanche Vocabulary will also hold great interest for the large public fascination by this once dominate tribe -- Back cover.

Presents the Comanche-English dictionary with illustrative sentences, a brief grammar, photographs and original art.

A study that uncovers the lost history of the Comanches shows in detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they were defeated in 1875.

2022 WHA W. Turrentine Jackson Award for best first book on the history of the American West 2022 WHA David J. Weber Prize for the best book on Southwestern History In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Texas--a hotly contested land where states wielded little to no real power--local alliances and controversies, face-to-face relationships, and kin ties structured personal dynamics and cross-communal concerns alike. Country of the Cursed and the Driven brings readers into this world through a sweeping analysis of Hispanic, Comanche, and Anglo-American slaving regimes, illuminating how slaving violence, in its capacity to bolster and shatter families and entire communities, became both the foundation and the scourge, the panacea and the curse, of life in the borderlands. As scholars have begun to assert more forcefully over the past two decades, slavery was much more diverse and widespread in North America than previously recognized, engulfing the lives of Native, European, and African descended people across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. Paul Barba details the rise of Texas's slaving regimes, spotlighting the ubiquitous, if uneven and evolving, influences of colonialism and anti-Blackness. By weaving together and reframing traditionally disparate historical narratives, Country of the Cursed and the Driven challenges the common assumption that slavery was insignificant to the history of Texas prior to Anglo American colonization, arguing instead that the slavery imported by Stephen F. Austin and his colonial followers in the 1820s found a comfortable home in the slavery-stained borderlands, where for decades Spanish colonists and their Comanche neighbors had already unleashed waves of slaving devastation.