Buffalo Hump was a leading war chief of the Penateka Comanche during the mid-nineteenth century. He helped organise the Great Raid of 1840, in which Comanche forces struck deep into the Republic of Texas after the Council House Fight.
Later he negotiated with United States officials, moved his people towards reservation life and tried to adapt to the destruction of traditional hunting grounds and the growth of settler power. Buffalo Hump was born in Texas and died in Fort Sill.
In Larry McMurtry’s Comanche Moon, The effort to recover Scull unfolds beside the ageing Buffalo Hump’s struggle to preserve authority and the growing violence of his son Blue Duck. In Larry McMurtry’s Dead Man’s Walk, Their first service exposes them to Comanche warfare and to Buffalo Hump, whose attacks reveal how little the new recruits understand about the plains.