READ ME, COMANCHE HISTORY CONTINUED..The Laramie (Wyoming) Peace Treaty Proceedings are critical to understanding the forces which shaped the plains territories for each tribe that occupied land there. The government wanted the Comanches to attend for one grand council, but the Comanches declined because their ally, the Kiowas would be surrounded by their enemies, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. At those proceedings, the Sioux boasted, "We whipped the Kiowa at the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek" (late 1700 or early 1800's). Kiowa oral history tells how the bravest stood their ground and were wiped out while the old, the women, and children escaped South to the Comanches. During the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty Proceedings, the Kiowa were told by the Commissioners to stop stealing horses, which they denied. Angered by this denial, after heavy losses to horse thieves, the Head Chief of the Comanches retorted, "When we first met you, you had dogs pulling your belongings, where did you get your horses?" This statement reverses many modern day conclusions that the Kiowa bravely fought their way into Comanche territory. Now taking their place as full allies of the Comanche (but not owning any Comanche land) the Kiowa chief Satanta declared, "All the land between the Arkansas River (in kansas) and the Rio Grande belongs to the Comanches and Kiowas." Thus confirming the Kiowa had full rights to roam all of the Comanche lands or Comancheria and did not claim land of their own as some revisionist historians have claimed, and even gone further as to produce "maps" of Kiowa lands. Thus, in effect, the KCA, the Kiowas, Comanches, and Plains Apache (formerly called Kiowa-Apache) became one tribe. It was not until 1967, when the Comanches separated themselves from the KCA to form their own government under their own constitution that this situation was changed. The Kiowas and Plains Apache later followed suit to become independent nations. "At one time we were all one tribe, the Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches..." - Billy Evans Horse, then Chairman of the Kiowa Tribe, spoken at the Comanche Homecoming Powwow a few years back. However, the KCA Committee originally set up with a majority of Comanches around the turn of the century, had somehow been changed by the Kiowa Agency, representative wise, to have any equal number of Comanches on one side, and an equal number of Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apaches on the other. The votes were hopelessly deadlocked by the 1950's and 1960's when my uncle served on this committee, and where I witnessed continuous bickering, as a child. Not accomplishing anything with this arrangement, the Comanches were the first to break away and form their own government in the late 1960's. This was a monumental moment in Comanche history that is little recognized and mostly forgotten. The Comanches were finally free to go their own road again, unimpeded by bickering and political infighting whiich deadlocked all decision making.

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