What the authors miss while being hung up on the warrior/raider aspects of the Comanche, along with their women's abilities at creative torture, is that regardless of what they did, they were damned good at it, whether that was adapting to using the horse, intimidating enemies, or functioning in "the white man's world".
They adapted successfully, whether we liked the results or not.
For all those who have some sort of TEOTWAWKI vision of peaceful folks taking on the occasional marauder, I'd suggest dusting off the plans for a death ray and maybe grinding out a few against the time when they'll be needed.
Chances are there will be groups every bit as fearsome as the Comanche of old, and for a while, the raiders will outnumber the peaceful folks--and perhaps prevail over them. The structural units are already in place in the wide variety of street gangs, drug cartels, and affiliated loose organizations present in North America even today.
Even now, while we claim to be civilized, we tolerate the existence of a feral element within our own society, and forcibly ignore it in our media.
“The Comanches differed from the Apaches in that they were fully nomadic, and they would always respond to an attack with a counter-attack. And there were ...”
Nomadic people have always raided the sedentary agriculture people for food if nothing else. They tend to be very good horseman so better mobile raiding force and able to shoot guns and arrows from a moving horse
Warriors of the Steppe-— about the nomadic Mongol way of war on horses is very informative. They invented the cursive bow.
http://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Of-The-Steppe-Military/dp/1885119437
There are some very cruel female “destroyer of worlds” (Kali) figures in Hindu mythology. For a man, spend a minute or two ruining a kiler then then put a bullet through his head. Be done! Delight in extended torture is gay and depraved. More of a female thing like you say