Pekka Hämäläinen (2008) argues that from the 1750s to the 1850s, the Comanches were the dominant group in the Southwest, and the domain they ruled was known as Comanchería. Hämäläinen calls it an empire, which means that they expanded. Confronted with Spanish, Mexican, and American outposts on their periphery in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico, they worked to increase their own safety, prosperity and power. According to Hämäläinen, disease was the single most dangerous threat to Native Americans. The Comanche managed to avoid disease, which gave them an upper hand over the Apaches and other tribes in this area. Along with this, the Comanche were able to exchange goods with Europeans. The main thing exchanged for that gave them power was horses. Horses gave the Comanches more military power, and allowed them to hunt more buffalo. The Comanches used this military power to obtain more supplies and labor from the Americans, Mexicans, and Indians through thievery, tribute, and kidnappings. (See Comanche-Mexico War) Although powered by violence, the Comanche empire was primarily an economic construction, rooted in an extensive commercial network that facilitated long-distance trade. Dealing with subordinate Indians, the Comanche spread their language and culture across the region. In the early 1830s, the Comanche began to run out of resources in Comanchería. At this time, they had been conducting raids deep into Mexico and would take what they got back to Comanchería. In the mid 1830s, the Comanche formed a colony in Mexico called the Bolson colony. Conditions in this colony were similar to how they were in Comanchería when it was winter in the north. Eventually, there was a drought, and Comanchería and the Bolson colony struggled. Along with this, Comanche empire collapsed when their villages were repeatedly decimated by epidemics of smallpox and cholera in the late 1840s; the population plunged from 20,000 to just a few thousand by the 1870s.