Portraits TOC KIOWA: AN EMERGENT PEOPLE Nancy P. Hickerson …this is how it was: The Kiowas came one by one into the world through a hollow log. There were many more than now, but not all of them got out. There was a woman whose body was swollen up with child, and she got stuck in the log. After that, no one could get through, and that is why the Kiowas are a small tribe in number….1 n midsummer of the year 1805, the expedition led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark made camp on Ithe Missouri River some miles above its junction with the Platte. Nearby were the villages of the Otoes and Pawnees. Farther to the west, near the headwaters of the Platte, they learned of a number of nomadic tribes including the “Kiawa.”2 This was the first official notice given to a people who would, in future decades, become familiar to the soldiers, trappers, and settlers of the American fron- tier as the Kiowa. Like the neighboring Arapahoes, Crows, and Cheyennes, the Kiowas were equestrian (horse-riding) hunters who followed the great herds of buffalo. Their needs in food, containers, clothing, and housing were, in large part, supplied directly from the hunt. Horses, which had been introduced by Spanish colonizers, were essential to the life of the Plains Indians, and the Kiowas were famous for the size of their herds. They counted their wealth in horses, and also traded them to other groups, both Indian and non-Indian, even the invading Americans. Within a few decades of the Lewis and Clark expedition, aggres- sive white hunters all but exterminated the buffaloes, and the U.S. cavalry forced the surrender of the Kiowa and other Plains tribes. The Indians were reduced to an impoverished existence on reservations. In the Great Plains, the reservation period began around 1870. This marked a sudden change from autonomy to dependence, which meant a forced compromise with the laws and values of the dominant power, the United States of America. Much of the early ethnographic research on Plains tribes began during this period. The focus of inter- est, for many anthropologists, was the salvaging of information on cultures which, it was assumed, were doomed to extinction. Traditional Plains cultures have long held a special fascination for non-Indian observers. This fascination was stimulated, at first, by the color and excitement that outsiders saw in Indian life. American and European anthropologists were inspired early to col- lect tribal traditions and customs, to study languages, record folk- lore, and document religious rituals (many of which were banned by U.S. authorities). Even today, it is possible to add to the docu- mentation of traditional cultures, through the collection of family 3 4PORTRAITS OF CULTURE lore and individual life histories and by documentary research. Contemporary Kiowas and other Native Americans generally encourage this type of study, since they realize the importance of documenting and preserving their cultural heritage. Moreover, these groups have proved to be more resilient than the early anthro- pologists expected. Today, they are a growing segment of the United States population. In what follows, I describe: (1) the origin and evolution (ethno- genesis) of the Kiowa nation; (2) Kiowa life prior to the reservation period; and (3) cultural changes and innovations that followed the forced incorporation of the Kiowas into the larger American society. THE PROBLEM OF KIOWA ETHNOGENESIS In late prehistoric times, the only significant populations in the grasslands of the Great Plains could be found in farming villages sit- uated along the banks of certain rivers. There, the Kansa, Pawnee, and Wichita can point to a continuity in cultural heritage extending unbroken from prehistoric to historic times. By contrast, outside of the agricultural areas there was, at the most, a thin scattering of for- aging bands. Seasonal hunting parties entered the open grasslands on foot, to kill buffalo and other big game and to carry away the meat and skins. On a permanent basis, these vast areas were virtual- ly unpopulated. Much remains to be discovered concerning the ori- gin, identity, and historical background of the thirty or more tribal peoples whose territories can be mapped in the Great Plains. One thing, however, is evident: the historic tribes, with few exceptions, are recent and complex in origin. Most of these groups appear to derive from outside of the Plains area itself. Migrations, divisions, mergings, and separations of groups and subgroups occurred many times during the peopling of the Plains. The stories of the individual nations can be approached through oral traditions, though these are often highly symbolic and may be vague as to place, time, and cir- cumstances of events. Tradition can, at times, be amplified by records of explorers, traders, and other outsiders, documenting con- tacts and the locations of bands and tribes. In some cases, also, archaeological sites can be attributed to particular historic tribes. KIOWA 5 When modern Kiowas recall their own past, they begin with a myth of their ancestors’ emergence out of an underworld onto the earth’s surface. The scene is a cold land, in the far north. This is thought to be the Yellowstone River valley, which lies in the Rocky Mountains but borders on the Great Plains. There are Kiowa place- names for mountains and other features in this region, and there is a tradition of contacts and marriages with northern peoples such as the Crow and Sarsi. It was in the Rocky Mountains, not far from the mythic place of emergence, that Lewis and Clark first learned of the Kiowas. Lewis’s map pinpoints the location of a Kiowa encampment on the upper Platte River, close to the headwaters of the Yellowstone. Two years earlier, in 1803, a Kiowa party visited Santa Fe; they were accompa- nied by a fur company agent, James Purseley, who acted as their spokesman in requesting permission to trade in New Mexico.3 Thus, at the turn of the century, the Kiowas were to be found over a vast range, north to south. They were active players in the economic life of the Great Plains, and were not strangers to white traders— Purseley, like many other agents, may have spent years living with his Indian clients. Although the Kiowa presence is well attested near the beginning of the nineteenth century, their earlier existence as a nation cannot be traced with any certainty. Who were the ancestral Kiowas? Where did they come from, and when and how did the Kiowa peo- ple arrive in their historical homeland in the South Plains? These questions were of little interest to an earlier generation of scholars, many of whom believed that traditional peoples such as the Native Americans were virtually changeless. It was even assumed that the way of life of the Plains Indians had remained stable since prehis- toric times, despite the introduction of the horse. In the present century, with advances in ethnohistory and archaeology, the naivete of such earlier views has become apparent. In addition, approaches such as cultural ecology and the application of systems theory to cultural studies have revealed the potential impact of changes in subsistence economy (such as the shift from pedestrian to equestrian hunting) on territoriality, demography, and the entire texture of social and political life. In a groundbreaking study of Cheyenne history, John Moore reveals the rapidity with which such changes can occur. Around 1680, three independent Algonkian villages began a series of west- ward moves from the vicinity of Lake Superior. Over the next centu- ry, these groups gradually switched from mostly sedentary farming 6PORTRAITS OF CULTURE to fully nomadic hunting, and became the nucleus of the Cheyenne people. Increments were also drawn from the Sioux, Kiowa, Arapaho, and other tribes with which the early Cheyennes traded and intermarried. Adoption of a common language—that of the Algonkian majority—is one aspect of ethnogenesis, the formation of a new cultural identity. From their neighbors, the Cheyennes adopt- ed a new type of political organization: they became a tribal nation. This innovation transformed a group of culturally related, autonomous bands (comprising a tribe in the usual anthropological sense) into a more unified political entity. Throughout the Great Plains, tribal nationhood was expressed in the performance of a great annual ceremonial, the Sun Dance (a composite of rituals which was, in certain details and meanings, unique to each tribe in which it was performed). The complex of pan-tribal political and ceremonial forms evidently had its beginnings in the northern Plains experience. It was adopted by the Cheyennes as they entered into alliances and trade relations with already established Plains tribes such as the Sioux and Crow.4 The Kiowas were, like the Cheyennes, friends and trading partners of these northern tribes. PROLOGUE TO KIOWA HISTORY: 1100–1700 A.D. As for the Kiowas—how closely does their history approximate that of the Cheyennes? A similarity in overall outlines may be anticipat- ed, but the particulars appear to be quite different. One important clue, language, appears to contradict Kiowa traditional history. Just as the Cheyenne language indicates an affiliation with the Algonkian language family of eastern North America, the Kiowa language belongs to a southwestern family, Tanoan. The other liv- ing Tanoan languages, in three divisions, are spoken by Pueblo groups (including Jemez and Taos) along the upper Rio Grande. The Tanoan family developed and diversified in the deserts of western North America. Kiowa is, thus, an outlying splinter group of this southwestern family. When language groups fragment or splinter, the causes may be twofold. Segments may simply break away and move into alien ter- ritory, as was the case with the Cheyennes.