Horseback (Comanche)

Horseback (Comanche, Tʉhʉya Kwahi "horse back") was a Nokoni Comanche chief.

In his prime, he made his career under the elder Huupi-pahati ("Tall Tree"), head chief of the Nokoni band, and Quenah-evah ("Eagle Drink"), second chief and later successor to Huupi-pahati himself possibly after the smallpox and cholera epidemics occurred in 1849; during the 1840s and 1850s he gained a good fame as a war leader against Comanche’s Indian enemies and a raider through Texas.

In 1861, along with the Yamparika head chief Ten Bears (Pawʉʉrasʉmʉnunʉ) and the Penateka chiefs Tosahwi and Asa-havey ("Wolf's Road"), went to Fort Cobb where they met C.S.A. gen. Albert Pike, and the Comanche chiefs (including Quena-evah) signed for an allegiance with the Confederation. He became head chief of the Nokoni after Quena-evah's death, possibly in 1866.

Horseback signed for the Nokoni the Medicine Lodge Treaty (21/10/1867), emerging as the leader of the "paceful" faction of the band, but the second-ranking chief, Pearua-akupakup ("Big Red Meat" or "Red Food"), took the leadership of the uncompromising faction, and on the same "hostile" line was Tahka ("Arrowpoint"), war chief of Horseback's own party.

On Dec. 12, 1868, while Horseback was not in his village in the spot after known as Soldier Spring, this one became the theater of a big fight against 3rd Cavalry and 37th Infantry U.S. troops; the soldiers came on the village and the war chief Tahka reacted against the "long knives" leading the Nokoni warriors to fight; the Nokoni were defeated, Tahka being killed in the battle, and the village was burnt and stocks destroyed.

On December 19, 1868 a large Comanche and Kiowa band faced a company of 10 Cavalry (maj. M.H. Kidd) on the way from Fort Arbuckle to Fort Cobb. On December 25, six companies of the 6 Cavalry and one company of 37 Infantry (maj. A.W. Evans), on the way from Fort Bascom (New Mexico) to the Antelope Hills, came on the Nokoni village (about 60 tipis) of Horseback and Arrowpoint, where Yamparika chief Howea was as a visitor; Horseback (Kiyou), the peaceful civil chief, was not in the camp, and Tahka’s blood was still boiling after the Washita massacre. Seeing the soldiers arriving, Arrowpoint (Tahka), the war chief, led the Comanche warriors in a charge, but he was killed and the village and the stoks went destroyed.

Kiowa warriors led by Manyi-ten came to take part in the fight; only one soldiers was killed. In December 1868, exhausted after lack of food and freezing weather, the Nokoni went to Fort Cobb and there surrendered.

Like Tosawi, Horseback managed to keep out the Nokoni preventing their involvement in the Red River War in 1873–1874, but only a faction of Nokoni band followed him along the "peace road", while Pearua-akup-akup joined the hostile Comanche and Kiowa faction, uniting himself and his Nokoni warriors to Quanah Parker, Parra-o-coom ("Bull Bear"), Kobay-oburra ("Wild Horse"), Kobay-otoho ("Black Horse"), Isatai'i, and their Quahadi Comanche, to Mow-way ("He pushing-aside" ot "He pushing-in-the-middle", but usually called "Shaking Hand") and his Kotsoteka, to Tabananika ("Sound-of-the-Sunrise"), Isa-rosa ("White Wolf") and Hitetetsi aka Tuwikaa-tiesuat ("Little Crow"), son to Ten Bears, and their Yamparika, and to the Kiowa led by Lone Wolf, Satanta, Zepko-ete ("Big Bow"), Tsen-tainte ("White Horse") and Mamanti ("He Walking-above").

After the Palo Duro campaign (1874) and the surrendering of the last hostile Comanche groups coming back from the Staked Plains, he was appointed by the Army as head chief of all the Comanches, and was ordered to pick out the "worst" Comanche, to send them to Fort Marion, Florida; the same happened to Tene-angopte for the Kiowas, and the Kiowa chief pointed out 27 chiefs and warriors, but Horseback was able to sacrifice only nine men (one "Black Horse", but probably not Kobay-otoho third chief of the Quahadi band, and eight "outlawed" warriors), preventing the deportation of all the defeated chiefs (but, unfortunately, not the life of Parra-ocoom, dead on June 27–28, 1874, during the Adobe Walls fighting, and that of Pearua-akup-akup, dead in the icehouse – temporarily used as a jail – of Fort Sill on January 1, 1875. Together with Quanah and some of the old chiefs, Horseback was a constant point of reference for the Comanche people in the reservation until his death in 1888.