The multiple bands of Comanche, ultimately cleaving from the Shoshone, were early opportunists in the “Great Horse Dispersal” of 17th-century America, when -- through trade, raiding and the growth of feral herds -- Spanish mustangs and their descendants spread across the Great Plains and beyond. Many American Indians incorporated these strange new animals into their lifestyle with astonishing speed. Horses allowed the Comanche -- considered the preeminent Plains equestrians by many Spanish and American observers -- to hunt bison more efficiently and to conduct fast-moving raids and warfare against rivals, from Apaches to Mexicans. By the 18th century, the Comanche dominated a veritable empire -- "Comancheria” -- sprawling across the High Plains, including the Llano Estacado and Edwards Plateau, and eastward down the Arkansas, Cimarron, Red and Brazos rivers to the Cross-Timbers. From spring to fall, the Comanche were generally horse-mounted nomads and raiders; they typically wintered in riverine gallery forests in relatively sedentary camps.
Comanche excursions from their Comancheria heartland into northern Mexico along their trail network had begun by the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and peaked in the 1840s. In Texas, the main route descended from the High Plains to Big Spring, an important wildlife watering hole and Indian rendezvous site, then split into two major distributaries leading to at least three habitual crossings of the Rio Grande. Comanche cattle- and horse-rustling penetrated deep into Mexico, as far south as Durango; the remote Bolsón de Mapimi plateau in the Chihuahuan Desert provided a major refuge. The transport of thousands of horses and other stock at a time along the Comanche Trail made sections of it very broad and beaten-down, forming an unmistakable, highly visible road on the landscape.
Among the finest places to shadow the Comanche Trail is Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande, a deeply wild and mountainous swath of the Chihuahuan Desert. The park road traces part of the route, which crossed Persimmon Gap in the Santiago Mountains and led southward to two fords of the Rio Grande, one near Lajitas and one west of Mariscal Canyon. Campsites and water sources used by the Comanche in the park include Neville Springs and Glenn Spring north and south-southeast, respectively, from Panther Junction.
Other sites across Texas give travelers the chance to visit portions of the Comanche Trail. Big Spring State Park in the city of Big Spring marks that great crossroads landmark of the route. Pathways out of Big Spring traversed two of the defiles that dramatically strike off the Llano Estacado to the Osage Plains near Lubbock: Yellow House and Blanco canyons. The Comanche Trail forded the Pecos River at Horsehead Crossing -- named, so the story goes, for the numerous horse skulls strewn over the site, testament to the danger the river-crossing presented to the Comanches’ big herds. Near Fort Stockton southwest of Horsehead Crossing the trail split into two southerly branches bound for the Rio Grande. Motorists on State Highway 173 crossing Bandera Pass, a limestone gap along the Medina-Guadalupe divide south of Kerrville, trace a leg of the Comanche Trail leading to Las Moras Spring and ultimately an eastern portal to Mexico. A Frenchman, Jean Louis Berlandier, noted a Comanche grave shrine at Bandera Pass in 1828.
