Comanche Motivations for Capturing and Adopting Outsiders

The Clements Center for Southwest Studies invites you to bring your brown bag lunch to a lecture by Clements Center fellow, Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez, as he explains how scholars have traditionally related pre-reservation Comanche practices of captivity and adoption to Euro-American-induced phenomena, namely Comanche demographic decline and participation in the slave trade. Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez argues instead that capturing and adopting people were aboriginal practices that preceded Comanche demographic decline; and even though the proportion of captives and adoptees living in Comanche camps increased considerably after contact with Euro-Americans, most aboriginal Comanche patterns of captivity, bondage, and adoption persisted throughout the pre-reservation period of 1700-1875. Rivaya-Martínez received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from UCLA in September 2006. His primary area of specialization is the ethnohistory of the indigenous peoples of the South Plains and the so-called “Spanish Borderlands. He will spend the '07-'08 academic year at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies as a Research Fellow completing his manuscript “Captivity and Adoption Among the Comanche Indians, 1700-1875” for publication.

For more information call 214-768-3684.