![]() ![]() The Army base would implement many structures that would target Native culture, including the boarding school and a prison called the Ice House.Īt the Ice House, Minthorn said, Comanches were incarcerated and mistreated for refusing the restraints placed on them by military supervision. We had Fort Sill right here in our backyard.”įort Sill was built in 1864 – just north of what would become Comanche Nation lands. It happened because it was forced to happen. “We didn’t give it up slowly, over time,” Minthorn said. Having to abandon their way of life was detrimental to their culture and language. Before then, the tribe, which divided itself into bands, spanned the majority of the Great Plains and migrated to follow buffalo herds. Minthorn said the termination of the Comanche people’s nomadic lifestyle came with the signing of the Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty in 1867. ![]() The word is a variation of “Kimantsi,” a Ute Indian word, and, while its exact meaning is debated, it is commonly thought to translate to “enemy.” Today, the tribe uses the Comanche name alongside the name they have always given themselves – Nʉmʉnʉʉ, which means “people.” It’s been happening to our people since before then.”Įven the name “Comanche” itself is a marker of European intervention, given to the tribe by the Spanish authorities in New Mexico. “It’s been happening to our people since we were first confined to Oklahoma. “Education for extinction is not something that started with Grandma Rita,” she said. ![]() A tribal historic preservation officer, Minthorn explained that in her line of work, stories like her grandmother’s are common. Her granddaughter, Martina Minthorn, reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and they shared an unspoken understanding. The trauma of re-education, she explained, had been passed down for generations. Many of her peers’ parents, who had been disciplined there before her, had never taught their children to speak Native languages out of fear of the repercussions. Most had forgotten the Comanche language by the time they left the school, if they had ever known it at all, she said.Ĭoosewoon’s class was not the first to be educated at the school. She said she watched as her peers slowly conceded pieces of their Native cultures. “ I know I shouldn’t remember, but I am so thankful that I do.” “I don’t know if it’s my stubbornness or by the grace of God that I remember the things that I remember,” she said. Those who spoke them risked severe punishment, and Coosewoon often found herself among the disciplined students. That expertise in her first language has not been easy to maintain.Ĭoosewoon couldn’t recall exactly which of her relatives dropped her off at the boarding school as a young child, but she remembers the moment as being the greatest threat she faced in preserving her mother tongue and culture.Īt Fort Sill Indian School, native languages were banned. “My brain still thinks in Comanche, and sometimes the English translation just can’t do it justice.”Ī prominent tribal judge, Coosewoon wears many hats in the Comanche Nation, but as one of the few fluent Comanche speakers, she considers herself to be, above all else, a linguist. ![]() “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said with a smile that never reached her eyes. Rita Coosewoon, 87, was reminiscing about her childhood spent in the Fort Sill Indian School when she stopped herself mid-sentence, grasping for a word. ![]()
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