Penateka Comanches

The reservation the plaque mentions was created by a Texas law of February 6, 1854: four square leagues, 18,576 acres, at Camp Cooper on the Clear Fork of the Brazos. Under the treaty of August 30, 1855, about 450 Penatekas settled there. Their main village, under Chief Ketumse, stood in a bend of the river, and they raised corn, melons, beans and pumpkins, but drought cut the harvests. Chief Sanaco led away a larger group than stayed. Robert S. Neighbors recommended abandonment in 1858, and on September 1, 1859, he delivered the people to agents in Indian Territory.

What the plaque says

Penateka Comanches The Penateka, or "honey eaters," were the southernmost band of Comanches; their range extended from the Edwards Plateau to the beginnings of central Texas rivers. The nomadic Comanches followed buffalo as they migrated, depending on the animals for food, clothing and shelter. They also relied on horses and were unmatched in their horsemanship. A major Comanche trail passed through the Camp Verde area. Settlement west of here was avoided due to fear of the Penatekas. By the 1840s, Texas Rangers had some success against the Comanches and in 1855, the U.S. Army's Second Cavalry reduced raiding in the area; the division had outposts at Camp Verde and Camp Ives in Kerr county. Some of the Penateka Comanches were moved a year earlier to a reservation in what is now Throckmorton County; the group was later moved to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Other Penatekas continued to raid the county sporadically through the 1870s. After the Red River War (1874-75), the Comanches were forced onto a reservation established by the 1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek. Reservation life changed the entire societal structure for the formerly nomadic Comanches. In 1901, their reservation was broken up into allotments, and as many moved away in following years, the group dispersed. In the 1960s, the Comanches worked to rebuild their society and today they are united by common culture across geographic divides. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 11 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Frontier Times Museum — 12 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Treue der Union Monument — 13 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 22 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.

More markers nearby

• Camps Verde, C.S.A. — steps away
• Site of Camp Verde — 0.9 mi
• Bandera Pass — 2.4 mi
• Center Point Cemetery — 5.0 mi