In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire built by Comanche Indians rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This book uncovers the lost story of Comanches.



From the author of Lakota America, an award-winning history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Comanche empire

“Cutting-edge revisionist western history.”—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books

“A landmark study that will make readers see the history of southwestern America in an entirely new way.”—David J. Weber, author of Bárbaros

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet until now the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history.

This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of Indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history.