These findings raise critical questions concerning widely accepted interpretations of Native American population decline that attribute the decline to external forces without exploring in depth the consequences of the manifold courses of action followed by Indians themselves. A premeditated intention to capture enemies for adoption was seldom (if ever) the primary motivation for Comanche raids, which were fundamentally aimed at obtaining horses.
I further argue that Comanches primarily seized captives to use them as laborers. Hence, rather than compensating Comanche population decline, as is often assumed, those expeditions brought about a net population loss. The ethnonym Comanche probably derives from the Ute word komantsia 'anyone who wants to fight me all the time.'Their name for themselves is Nemene, or 'Our People.'.
The Comanches in these groups could speak Spanish, French, and four or five Indian languages at any given time.
Comanches were more than just warriors, they were also a lot more than that. In this study I contend that Comanche looting expeditions, including raids in which captives were taken, resulted in Comanche deaths outnumbering the captives who were eventually assimilated. The Comanches were the first Native people to adopt the classic horse-mounted lifestyle of the Plains. Comanches are one of the most important Indian cultures in Texas, and they have been around for thousands of years. It has often been argued that the widespread Native American practice of capturing and adopting outsiders served, for some indigenous groups, as a way to recover from Euro-American–induced population decline.