On a day in 1840, the Comanche camp erupted into grief. Booker Webster, a young white boy who had been captured by the tribe a few seasons earlier and adopted into their world, watched as the people around him wailed in mourning. Several of their leaders had been killed in what the tribe viewed as a great betrayal during what was supposed to be a peaceful council meeting with the Texans. The cries grew louder as the men cut off their sacred long hair, a profound symbol of sorrow among the Comanche.
The women, driven by anguish, took knives to their arms and legs, slicing their own skin in a ritualistic expression of grief. But the mourning did not last. Anger swiftly replaced sorrow, and Booker watched in horror as preparations for a darker ritual began. Fires were built.
Stakes were prepared. He understood what was coming. Though Booker was spared, protected by his Comanche mother, other white captives—mostly women and children—were not so fortunate. The captives were subjected to unimaginable tortures, not by the Comanche warriors as one might expect, but by the women.
The Comanche women, often overshadowed by the men’s fearsome reputation for brutality, were in many cases even more vicious. Their lives were hard, arguably tougher than the warriors’. While they did not carry the same social status as men, their roles were vital to the tribe’s survival. Practically everything outside of war, hunting, and weapon making fell to them.
Clothing, tools, and housing were all their responsibility. It was said that a Comanche woman could set up a teepee in fifteen minutes and take it down in five, preparing it for transport on horseback. Given the tribe’s nomadic lifestyle, this efficiency was essential as they moved across the Great Plains. When the men returned from a hunt, it was the women who skinned the animals, dried the meat, and tanned the hides.
Their workload increased when buffalo hides became a highly valuable trade commodity during the 1800s, bringing greater wealth to the tribe and encouraging men to take on multiple wives. In this polygamous society, the more work a woman could do, the more valuable she was. Comanche women were known for their practicality. Unlike the men, who cherished their long hair as a symbol of status, the women had no such attachment.
They often kept their hair short for convenience and to minimize lice and ticks. While the men painted their faces black for war, representing death, the women used brighter, more vivid colors like reds and yellows. Though they shared in the same fierce spirit that defined their people, this was one way they differentiated themselves. Despite their smaller stature—many were under five feet tall—they were as tough as they came.
They were not warriors by design, but they were expert riders and archers in a culture constantly under threat. When Comanche camps were attacked by outsiders, it was not uncommon for women to fight just as fiercely as the men. Accounts from Texas Rangers and U. S.
soldiers described Comanche women fighting to the death, blurring the line between warrior and non-combatant. These women knew what awaited them if captured: slavery, abuse, or worse. Surrender was never an option. Their strength extended beyond the battlefield.
The women played a crucial role in encouraging raids, and when warriors returned with captives, it was often the women who meted out the punishment. In many cases, this meant torture, as Booker Webster had witnessed. Not all captives were killed, however. Some, like Booker himself, were adopted into the tribe.
But this came with its own risks, especially for female captives, who were seen as rivals by Comanche women. Establishing dominance within the tribe could be brutal. Matilda Lockhart was captured at fourteen and endured horrific abuse at the hands of the Comanche women. By the time she was returned to the Texans in 1840, she was unrecognizable.
Her nose had been burnt off, and her feet had been burned to prevent her from escaping. Such acts of cruelty were commonplace, seen as a way of reinforcing the social hierarchy within the tribe. Rachel Plummer’s story offers another chilling example. She was taken during the infamous raid on Parker’s Fort in Texas in 1836, while pregnant.
Throughout her captivity, Rachel was beaten mercilessly, her skin constantly raw and bruised. After giving birth, her baby was killed—an act of cold pragmatism, as the child was seen as a hindrance to her work. The abuse pushed Rachel to the brink, and she often contemplated death as an escape from her torment. On one occasion, she defied a Comanche woman who ordered her to fetch a tool for digging roots, hoping the confrontation would lead to her death.
The woman attacked her, pushing her to the ground, but Rachel survived. In another incident, Rachel found herself locked in a brutal, primal fight with another Comanche woman, surrounded by a ring of men who cheered and howled. The two women scratched, bit, and grappled on the ground. Rachel, in sheer desperation, managed to grab a bloody buffalo bone and stood over the woman, stunned that she was still alive.
She could not fathom why the men, who watched with such indifference, did not intervene—not to save her, nor even the other woman. They simply did not care. The fight concluded, and the men dispersed as if nothing had happened, leaving Rachel confused but relieved. Her ordeal was far from over.
An older woman, clearly insulted by Rachel’s earlier altercation, decided to assert her authority. She demanded Rachel gather straw for a fire, intending to burn her alive. But by now Rachel had found a new will to live and once again refused. This sparked yet another savage battle, with the flames from the fire they had started burning them both as the older woman tried to force Rachel into the blaze.
Amused by the spectacle, the men continued to watch but did nothing. As the fight raged on, the women broke one of the lodge poles holding up a teepee. Rachel, despite being injured, once again emerged victorious. The next morning she was summoned to the men’s council house, expecting some form of punishment.
To her surprise, they only asked her to repair the lodge pole she had broken during the fight. Her one condition was that the older woman who had attacked her assist in fixing it. The whole situation left Rachel baffled. What Rachel did not understand at the time was that these fights among the women were a form of establishing hierarchy.
Unlike the men, who focused on hunting, war, and tribal matters, the women had their own social structure, and disputes often played out in these physical confrontations. The men, uninterested in the women’s internal struggles, allowed these fights to happen naturally, sometimes for their own amusement. In some cases, these fights actually led to improved relationships. After her first fight, Rachel surprisingly washed the face of the woman she had beaten.
From that point on, the woman became unusually friendly toward her, illustrating how these customs solidified boundaries and respect among the women. This system of hierarchy reveals a side of Comanche culture often overshadowed by the men’s dominance in warfare. Though seemingly subjugated, these women were fierce and independent in their own way. Rachel’s case, however, was different from many other captives.
She was a slave to the tribe, valued for her labor and meant to be ransomed eventually. Her life, though harsh, had some worth in the eyes of the Comanche. But not all captives were treated this way. Many, especially those who did not serve a purpose, faced a much darker fate.
In 1840, tensions between the Comanche and the Texans reached a boiling point when Texan soldiers attacked a group of Penateka Comanche during what was supposed to be a peaceful council meeting, killing dozens. The Texans had demanded the return of their white captives, but when the captives did not appear, violence erupted. To the Comanche, this attack was a betrayal beyond words. After learning that their leaders had been slain, the warriors cut off portions of their sacred long hair in a display of deep grief.
Yet it was the women who expressed their sorrow in a far more disturbing manner. They entered a frenzied state of mourning, wailing and cutting themselves across their arms, legs, and even breasts. Booker Webster later recalled witnessing women go to even greater extremes: some chopped off their fingers, while others mutilated themselves so severely that they died from their injuries. Once their mourning turned to fury, the women directed their anger toward the remaining white captives.
As the Comanche men prepared for war, the women were left to exact vengeance on the prisoners. They carried out horrifying acts of torture, mutilating the bodies of captives—both adults and children alike—cutting and skinning them before burning them alive. Some of these executions lasted for hours; others lasted for days. To the Comanche women, this was not just about revenge.
It was a cultural practice. Mutilating the enemy was a way of ensuring that their souls would be damaged in the afterlife. In the Comanche worldview, their true tribal name, the Numa, meant “the people,” and only they were considered worthy of existence. All others were outsiders, destined to suffer the consequences if captured.
This grim ritual was seen as an expected part of life on the plains. If the roles were reversed, the Comanche women fully expected to meet the same fate. While the men fought swiftly on the battlefield, it was in the safety of the camp that the women had the time and freedom to unleash their wrath upon their enemies. They relished these acts and even took trophies, just as the men did on their raids.
For settlers on the frontier, the thought of being captured by the Comanche was terrifying. But being taken alive to their camp was often considered a fate worse than death. Those who understood the customs knew that the real horror awaited them at the hands of the women, who were just as brutal—if not more so—than the men.
The frontier was a place of constant fear, where survival often meant avoiding capture at all costs.