Comanche, definitely. But the Apache weren't one group, the Comanche were a couple of autonomous groups that acted together more often than not. Granted, the Comanche were able to do so well because of repeated critical miscalculations by the Spanish as well as many sprees of genius luck and skill. They did drive the Plains Apache mostly into Mexico (and that was with Spanish helping the Plains Apache, IIRC).
I do not believe either could maintain any more sovereignity than is granted to American Indian groups, however. Their way of life wasn't compatible for that, and they (Comanche at least) were approaching both ecological devastation (brought on by them, but made far, far worse thanks to whites) as well as the steamroller of white settlement which, let's face it, they couldn't possibly beat.
I think the key to survival is to get it in writing early on and pray that the treaty is actually worth the paper it's printed on. The big declines never happened until the 1870-1880s, so if you can get a treaty guarantee in the 50s you might be able to make it through with some semblance of territory.
The 1850s? Like the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which was worth nothing in the end, precisely because it was the best way of dealing with the Sioux (at their height) at the time and nothing else.
I really don't see survival. The 1840s and 1850s were horrible years on the Plains thanks to drought and the onset of major white interaction with the Plains, which helped decimate the bison herds. Like we saw in the 1860s, this forced the Plains Indians into relations with the US government to make up for the deficit. Predictably, both sides utterly hated the arrangement and regularly accused each other of deceit and theft, and hence the final period of Indian Wars on the Plains (as well as more one-sided and tragic affairs like the Sand Creek Massacre).
I don't have a lot of respect for the Navajo (as a fighting force, not culture. That being said my native American friends seem to have a cultural bias against them, why I have no clue.) But they did not have a warrior culture and they occupied land no one really wanted. Compare that to the Comanche who had Texas and Oklahoma. They also tend to as a people not to be in good physical shape (genetics?). They also were not a horse culture, which I think the great tribes (Sioux and Comanche.
I have a huge bias towards the Sioux. My best friend is a Sioux we have been friends since the military. They were fierce warriors and had great leadership in spades. I also admire their culture very much.
Go read about Navajo raids on Spanish New Mexico. Seems as if they were just as much of a factor as the Comanche (and others) for the fall of that province. They were
very skilled fighters, and proved impossible to really deal with since they were so damn good with terrain. They also were experts at herding sheep (which they stole by the wagonload from the Spanish and Mexicans)--seems like what the Comanche were to horses, Navajo were to sheep. And their success against US campaigns is pretty impressive--you simply did not enter Navajo land and expect a quick, easy victory. If I recall, it took two campaigns of mass burning and starvation tactics (granted, pretty common in Indian warfare) to make them submit. That sort of resilience has got to count for something--they didn't become the most spoken Native American language in the US for nothing. Although I guess the Navajo succeeded precisely because they weren't as bad as the Comanche or Sioux in attracting negative attention through massive amounts of raiding.
I don't know about the Sioux. They seem like a group that got extremely lucky moreso than the Comanche. The story of the smallpox epidemic (1839 or so was it?), the US attempting to vaccinate various American Indian groups, and running out of funding when the get to the Sioux and thus can't vaccinate rival groups like the Arikara and Mandan, causing their decimation and the rise of Sioux ascendence, seems like case in point. On the other hand, the origins of the Sioux as a farming people is very interesting.
I'm also wondering if it's possible if an Indian Territory of the west could have created for any of these nations, since the historical one hosted many of the most powerful and prestigious tribes of the East.
The experience of the Navajo and Apache at Bosque Redondo suggests that putting a bunch of competing tribes in one reservation is a poor idea (although granted Bosque Redondo was screwed the moment they deported the Navajo there).
The Apaches held out longer. The final surrender of Goyaale ("Geronimo") to General Nelson Miles in 1886 is generally considered the end of the Apache wars, although sporadic acts of resistance did occur into the 20th century. By contrast, Comancheria was defunct by 1875 after the destruction of the Comanche-Kiowa-Cheyenne village in Palo Duro Canyon in the autumn of 1874 and the surrender of the last Comanche bands during winter and spring. But that in itself does not mean that the Apaches were stronger, just as the fact that African kingdoms held out longer than Indian kingdoms does not mean that Burundi was stronger than the Sikhs. The Apaches were further away from the East, lived in more rugged terrain, and had very easy access to Mexican territory.
In 1800, there were almost three times more Cherokees than Navajos, and the Cherokees were organizing into a state. Yet the Navajos retain the core of their homeland while the Cherokees do not. "Retaining some sovereignty or at least autonomy" is less about Native strength and more about geography.
As for territory, both nations were scattered fairly widely across the Southwest and the Plains. In particular, population mobility makes it difficult to measure how much area really was occupied. The Plains Apaches, for example, variously ranged from the Black Hills to the Canadian in the 18th (edit: and 19th) century. So do all these lands count as land occupied by Apaches, even if there were never more than a few hundred Plains Apaches?
Yes. Besides the Lakota, Osage hegemony in the prairie-plains between the Arkansas and the Red in the 18th century is well documented. Osages acted as middlemen between Europeans from the East and the Plains and Southwest nations, raided surrounding peoples with impunity for slaves and horses, and regularly clashed with the Comanche over eastern buffalo grounds. You don't hear much about them, though, because American perception of the Indian Wars is extremely settler-centered while the Osage world collapsed in the early 19th century due to invasions from Eastern Indians (Cherokees, Shawnees, etc) whom the Americans had forced into migration.
The Shoshones and the Blackfeet were also hegemonic powers in the far Northern Plains, if you're interested in them.
Osage served a nice block for Comanche expansion, but the Comanche were likely at the limit of what they could've done by that point.
Shoshone seem to have had remarkably poor luck once the horse and gunpowder had diffused enough amongst the Blackfoot Confederacy, though they were winning for a good while (thanks to their southerly location). But from my reading, I don't get the same
dominance factor the Lakota, Comanche, etc. had from the Blackfeet. Probably because it was more marginal land and there's less European accounts to work off of compared to the Lakota and Comanche who were regularly running into major areas (or at least areas that tried to be that) of Euroamerican settlement.
