In the 1720s, the Comanche completed the conquest of the Arkansas River valley of Colorado, and in the 1730s they became the first fully-mounted, bison-hunting nomads of the Great Plains—the first American Indians to make the cultural shift to an equestrian economy. The Comanche pushed the Apache south and west off the Great Plains and continued to expand southward. The Comanche grew apart from their Ute allies, both culturally and politically in the 1730s, and in 1749, the Ute asked the Spanish in New Mexico for military assistance against the Comanche. The war between the Ute and Comanche would continue for the remainder of the 18th century, although the Comanche had greater priorities than the Ute.
