Kiowa

Kiowa
Total population
12,000[1]
Regions with significant populations
United States (Oklahoma)
Languages
English, Kiowa
Religions
Traditional
Related ethnic groups
other Tanoan peoples

The Kiowa are a nation of Native Americans who lived mostly in north Texas, Oklahoma and eastern New Mexico at the time of the arrival of Europeans. Kiowa means "principal people" in their tribal language. Today the Kiowa Tribe is federally recognized, with about 12,000 members living in southwestern Oklahoma.

History

Original Southern Plains territory of the Kiowa Nation

According to historic accounts the Kiowa resided in the northern basin of the Missouri River where the migrating Crow Nation first met them in the Pryor Mountains. The Kiowa then migrated easterly to the Black Hills around 1650. Pushed southward by the invading Cheyenne and Sioux, who were being pushed out of their lands in the great lakes regions by the Ojibwa tribes, the Kiowa moved down the Platte River basin to the Arkansas River area. There they fought with the Comanche, who already occupied the land.

In the early spring of 1790, at the place that would become Las Vegas, New Mexico, a Kiowa party lead by war leader Guikate made an offer of peace to a Comanche party while both were visiting the home of a friend of both tribes. This led to a later meeting between Guikate and the head chief of the Nokoni Comanches. The two groups made an alliance to share the same hunting grounds, and entered into a mutual defense pact. From that time on, the Comanches and Kiowa hunted, traveled, and made war together. An additional group, the Plains Apache (also called Kiowa-Apache), affiliated with the Kiowa at this time.

The Kiowa lived a typical Plains Indian lifestyle. Mostly nomadic, they survived on buffalo meat and gathered vegetables, lived in lodges, and depended on their horses for hunting and military uses. From their hunting grounds south of the Arkansas River the Kiowa were notorious for long-distance raids as far west as the Grand Canyon region, south into Mexico and Central America, and north into Canada.

In 1871 Kiowa leaders Satanta (White Bear), Satank (Sitting Bear) and Big Tree were accused, arrested, transported, and confined at Fort Richardson, Texas, after being convicted by a "cowboy jury" in Jacksboro, Texas for participating in the Warren Wagon Train Raid. During the transport to Fort Richardson, Texas, Satank was shot by accompanying cavalry troops in an escape attempt near Fort Sill, Indian Territory.

The Indian Wars

After 1840 the Kiowa, with their former enemies the Cheyenne, as well as their allies the Comanche and the Apache, fought and raided the Eastern natives then moving into the Indian Territory. The United States military intervened, and in the Treaty of Medicine Lodge of 1867 the Kiowa agreed to settle on a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Some bands of Kiowa remained at large until 1875.

On August 6, 1901 Kiowa land in Oklahoma was opened for white settlement, effectively dissolving the contiguous reservation. While each Kiowa head of household was allotted 160 acres (320,000 m²), the only land remaining in Kiowa tribal ownership today is what was the scattered parcels of "grass land" that had been leased to the white settlers for grazing before the reservation was opened for settlement.

Famous Kiowa leaders were Dohasan (Tauhawsin, BIA), Over-Hanging Butte, alias Little Mountain, alias Little Bluff; Guipahgah (Old Chief Lonewolf), alias Guibayhawgu (Rescued From Wolves); sub-leaders Satanta and Satank.

Culture

Art

A Kiowa ledger drawing possibly depicting the Buffalo Wallow battle in 1874, a fight between Southern Plains Indians and the U.S. Army during the Red River War.

Kiowa artists are well known for a pictographic art form that is now referred to as "Plains Indian ledger art," and its contribution to the development of contemporary Native American art. The earliest of these Kiowa artists were those held in captivity by the US Army at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida at the conclusion of the Southern Plains Indian war. Traditionally the artist's medium for their pictographic images were natural objects and animal skins, but for the Kiowa in captivity the lined pages of the white man's record keeping books became a popular substitute, thus the name "ledger art."

File:Kiowa.jpg

Guipago, a Kiowa Chief

Music

Kiowa music is often noted for its hymns that were traditionally accompanied by dance or played on the flute. Traditional performers include Cornel Pewewardy and Phillip "Yogi" Bread. Modern Kiowa musicians such as Tom Mauchahty-Ware.

Contemporary life

Twentieth century Kiowa artists include the Kiowa Five, a group of artists whom studied at the University of Oklahoma. The "Five" referred to are the male members of the group. The pictographic art form known as "ledger art" was an Indian art form which had historically been dominated by the male members of the plains culture. However, the "Five" actually had a sixth member, a woman named Lois Smokey. Another prolific and significant pre-Kiowa Five artisan during the early twentieth century was Silverhorn. Well known Kiowa artists of the later twentieth century include Bobby Hill (White Buffalo), Robert Redbird, Roland N. Whitehorse, and T. C. Cannon. The pictographic art of contemporary and traditional artist Sherman Chaddlesone has revived the ledger art form that was absent in most of the art of the Second Generation Modernists that had developed since Silverhorn and the Kiowa Five. Chaddlesone studied under Native American masters Allan Houser and Fritz Scholder and is considered a versatile and widely respected artist.

The influence of Kiowa art and the revival of the plains ledger art is also illustrated in the early work of Cherokee-Creek female artist Virginia Stroud and Spokane artist George Flett. While Stroud is of Cherokee-Creek descent, she was raised by a Kiowa family and the traditions of that culture, and the influence of the Kiowa tradition is evident in her early pictographic images.

Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn. Other Kiowa authors include playwright Hanay Geiogamah, poet and film maker Gus Palmer, Jr., Alyce Sadongei, and Tocakut.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Boyd, Maurice. 1983. Kiowa Voices: Myths, Legends and Folktales. Texas Christian University Press. ISBN 0912646764
• Corwin, Hugh. 1958. The Kiowa Indians, Their History and Life Stories.
• Greene, Candace S. 2002. Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowas. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806133072
• Hoig, Stan. 2000. The Kiowas and the Legend of Kicking Bird. Boulder: The University Press of Colorado. ISBN 0870815644
• Mishkin, Bernard. 1988. Rank and Warfare Among The Plains Indians. AMS Press. ISBN 0404629032
• Richardson, Jane. 1988. Law & Status Among the Kiowa Indians American Ethnological Society Monographs; No 1. AMS Press. ISBN 0404629016
• Nye, Colonel W.S. 1983. Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806118563
• Momaday, N. Scott. 1977. The Way to Rainy Mountain. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826304362
• Waldman, Carl. 2006. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York, NY: Checkmark Books. ISBN 978-0816062744

External links

All links Retrieved on December 6, 2007.

• Kiowa Collection: Selections from the Papers of Hugh Lenox Scott
• Kiowa Comanche Apache Indian Territory Project
• Kiowa ledger drawing in the Smithsonian.
• Photographs of Kiowa Indians hosted by the Portal to Texas History
• The Handbook of Texas Online: Kiowa Indians
• The Kiowa Five.
• Sketch of a Chief of the Kiowas from A pictorial history of Texas, from the earliest visits of European adventurers, to AD 1879, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
• The Kiowa Five, Kiowa Indian Art Collection Western History Collections University of Oklahoma Libraries.

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