He details the kinship patterns that underlay all social organization and behavior among the Comanches and uses these insights to explain the way Comanches lived and interacted with Europeans.
In Comanche Society, Gerald Betty develops an exciting perspective on the driving force of Comanche life: kinship. More recent studies of the Comanches have focused on adaptation and persistence in Comanche lifestyles and on their political organization and language-based alliances. Once called the Lords of the Plains, the Comanches were long portrayed as marauding raiders who capitalized on the Spanish introduction of horses to raise their people out of primitive poverty through bison hunting and fierce warfare. Accessible Archives will continue to add titles covering important topics and time periods to assist scholars and students at all academic levels. Developed by dedicated instructors and students of Americana, these databases allow access to the rich store of materials from leading books, newspapers and periodicals then current. Diverse primary source materials reflecting broad views across American history and culture have been assembled into comprehensive databases providing eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations and genealogical records. Fourteen fully-searchable databases covering American History, African American Studies, Women’s History, the Civil War and Genealogy allow access to the rich archival store of historical and cultural information published in leading books, newspapers and periodicals from the colonial and early America eras.įounded in 1990, Accessible Archives utilizes computer technology and a team of conversion specialists to provide vast quantities of archived historical information previously available only in microformat, hard copy or as images only.