Answer: Forming a part of the Eastern Shoshone linguistic group in southeastern Wyoming who moved on to the buffalo Plains around AD 1500 (based on glottochronological estimations), proto-Comanche groups split off and moved south some time before AD 1700.[1] The Shoshone migration to the Great Plains was apparently triggered by the Little Ice Age, which allowed bison herds to grow in population.[1] It remains unclear why the proto-Comanches broke away from the main Plains Shoshones and migrated south. The desire for Spanish horses released by the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 may have inspired the move as much as pressures from other groups drawn to the Plains by the changing environment.[1]
The Comanche's autonym is nʉmʉnʉʉ, meaning "the human beings" or "the people".[2] The earliest known use of the term "Comanche" dates to 1706, when Comanches were reported to be preparing to attack far-outlying Pueblo settlements in southern Colorado.[3] The Spanish adopted the Ute name for the people: kɨmantsi (enemy).[4]
From a population estimated at 20,000 to 40,000 in the 1780s, total Comanche population declined, because of disease and warfare, to about 1,500 in 1875.[5][6] In 1920 the United States Census listed fewer than 1,500. Comanche tribal enrollment in the 21st century numbered 15,191, with approximately 7,763 members residing in the Lawton-Fort Sill and surrounding areas of southwest Oklahoma. Of the three million acres (12,000 km²) promised the Comanche, Kiowa and Kiowa Apache by treaty in 1867, only 235,000 acres (951 km²) have remained in native hands. Of this, 4,400 acres (18 km²) are owned by the tribe itself.
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