Yapahruka

The Yapahruka, whose name means Root Eaters and was later recorded by the Spanish as the Yamparika, were a Shoshone-speaking people of the Wyoming mountains and the northernmost division that became the Comanche. In the fourteenth century they were foot-borne hunter-gatherers; by 1500 some had crossed the Rocky Mountains to hunt bison on the Great Plains.

After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 made Spanish horses available, they took to mounted life and drifted south. By the 1750s they generally lived north of the Arkansas River. Around 1790 pressure from the Cheyenne and Arapaho pushed some bands into the North Canadian River valley, where their later chief Ten Bears grew up.

In 1820 Ten Bears was a key figure in making peace between the Comanche and the Ute. Through the 1830s Cheyenne and Arapaho pressure broke their ties with the Shoshone of Wyoming, leaving them a southern-plains people.