Kiowa Tribe History, Culture, and Facts

The Kiowa tribe is an indigenous American tribe and a native people of the Great Plains of the United States.

This tribe moved southward from Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado during the 17th and 18th centuries and finally into the Southern Plains by the early 19th century.

We review the historical development, culture, and facts of the Kiowa Tribe.

Kiowa History

Pre-colonial contact

The Kiowa surfaced as a distinct tribe in their primordial homeland of the northern Missouri River Basin.

Seeking their territory, the Kiowa journeyed south to the Black Hills in today’s South Dakota and Wyoming in 1650.

In the Black Hills area, the Kiowa people lived in peace with the Crow Indians, with whom they maintained a mutual friendship, ordered themselves into 10 groups, and totaled around 3000.

Harassment from the Ojibwe in the north woods and at the edge of the Great Plains in Minnesota coerced the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and later the Sioux westward into Kiowa territory by the Black Hills.

Kiowa tribe, in their early time, traveled with dogs pulling their belongings.

The Kiowa tribe were forced to the south by the invading Cheyenne, who were also coerced to the west out of the Black Hills by the Sioux tribe.

Finally, the Kiowa tribe obtained a large territory at the central and southern Great Plains in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and all of Oklahoma, including the panhandle and the LIano Estacado in the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico.

In 1790, in the region later known as Las Vegas, a Kiowa party led by Guikate (a war leader) made peace with the Comanche party while both were visiting the community of a mutual friend of both tribes.

This resulted in a meeting between the head chief of the Nikoni Comanche and Guikate.

Both groups agreed to share the same hunting grounds, entered into a mutual defense pact, and became the paramount inhabitants of the Southern Plains.

Colonial contact

From 1873 to 1878, the lifestyle of the Kiowa tribe drastically changed.

In June 1874, the Kiowa, alongside Comanche and Cheyenne warriors, made their last challenge against the invasion of European men at the Battle of Adobe Walls in Texas but was unsuccessful. In 1877, the first houses were built for the Native chiefs, and a plan was implemented to employ Indians at the agency.

As of then, thirty native Americans were employed to make the first police force on the reservation.

The Kiowa people concurred to settle on a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Certain bands of Kiowa tribe remained unconfined until 1875.

Some of the Mescalero Apache and Lioan Apache bands, with some Comanche in their band, remained in northern Mexico till the early 1880s when U.S. and Mexican Army forces drove them into reservation or extinction.

According to the Treaty of Medicine Lodge in 1867, the Kiowa inhabited Kansas and western Oklahoma.

They were pushed to relocate south of the Washita River into the Red River and Western Oklahoma, along with the Comanches and the Kiowa Apache Tribe.

The transformation from a free life of Plain people to a restricted life on the reservation was very difficult for certain families than others.

1860s–1900s: Reservation period

The first school in the Kiowa community was established in 1873 by the Quaker Thomas C. Battery.

Thirty Indians were employed to make up the first police force on the reservation.

The agency was relocated from Ft. Sill to Anadarko in 1879. The 1899 Census recorded 1,598 Comanche at the Fort Sill reservation, which they shared with 326 Kiowa Apache and 1,140 Kiowa.

An alliance made with the Cherokee Commission signed by 456 adult male Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache on September 28, 1892, paved the way for the country’s opening to European settlers.

The alliance provided for an allocation of 160 acres to individuals in the tribe, and the sale of the reservation to the United States – was to go into motion swiftly upon approval by Congress, even if the Medicine Lodge treaty of 1867 had warranted Indian possession of the reservation till 1898.

The Indian guarantors wanted their names removed, but it was too late.

The leader A’piatan went to Washington to protest.

Chief Lone Wolf the Younger instantly filed litigations against the action in the Supreme Court, but the Court ruled against him in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903).

In the end, agents were assigned to the Kiowa people.

Modern period

Since the 1960s, the Kiowa have been managed by the Kiowa Tribal Council, which oversees organizations associated with education, economics, health, and industrial development programs.

The Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma 13, March 1970, formulated its constitution and bylaws, and Kiowa voters legalized them on May 23, 1970. The present constitution was approved in 2017.

In 1998, in the turning point decision of the Kiowa people of Oklahoma v. Manufacturing Technologies, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court decided that native tribes withhold their sovereign immunity as nations from private lawsuits without their consent, even in off-reservation deals where they do not waive that immunity.

As of 2000, more than 4,000 of 12,500 registered Kiowa resided near the towns of Anadarko, Fort Cobb, and Carnegie in Caddo and Kiowa counties, Oklahoma.

Some Kiowa tribe members also live in urban and suburban communities throughout the United States, having relocated to areas with more jobs. Kiowa tribe culture and pride are evident in their evocative culture and strong influence on Southern Plains art and Gourd Dance.

Every year Kiowa veterans celebrate the warlike spirit of the 19th-century leaders with dances performed by the Kiowa Black Leggings Warrior Society and Kiowa Gourd Clan.

Kiowa Culture

Religious Beliefs

Sendeh is the major protagonist in the Kiowa tribe fables, as both a cheater and a cultural hero.

The Kiowa people worship the Sun and natural forces such as the Cyclone and the Pleiades and give special honor to the bison, eagle, and bear.

Natural forces and animal spirits are personified and were often encountered in visionary experiences.

Individuals looked for power through the Sun Dance and personal visionary encounters.

The medicine bundles, time (an anthropomorphic puppet), and several other fetishes were remarkable in hunting, curing, and healing rites.

The Quaker mission efforts in 1873 began among the Kiowa tribe and were succeeded by the Baptist, Methodist, and other denominations.

The Native American Church also began very important as the Sun Dance and other hunting, and war ceremonies decreased.

Currently, protestant affiliation is the norm; however, traditional rituals continue and have witnessed a revival.

Ceremonies

Several traditional dances, such as the warrior dance, also performed in the summer season, are now associated with the July 4 celebration.

The Sun Dance was hosted once a year until 1887, when it was outlawed by the government and stopped by military force.

The Feather Dance, the Kiowa reaction to the Ghost Dance movement, became institutionalized and was later prohibited in 1916.

Some traits of this movement entered into sectarian Christian churches.

Arts

Tipis were usually decorated with designs that illustrate the owner’s accomplishments; these designs, passed down through generations of the same family, formed a type of heraldic emblem.

The painted designs of Sun Dance shields also had a symbolic implication related to membership in warrior or medicine societies.

Kiowa artisans have effectively produced silverwork and jewelry based on traditional designs and distributed them through the Oklahoma Indian Arts and Crafts Cooperative.

Of recent, individual Kiowa have displayed remarkable talent in graphic arts.

Medicine

Buffalo doctors and other healers obtained power through visionary experiences; traditional methods were used in healing.

The sweat bath was used for healing and ritual purification.

Health and misfortune were usually seen as the result of supernatural harm or the violation of a taboo.

Specific older women ministered as midwives and herbalists, assisting with difficult births.

Death and Afterlife

The disabled and elderly were left behind if they could no longer travel.

They mourned by slashing their clothes, cropping their hair, and gashing their skin.

The dead are buried, preferably in a distant and isolated spot.

The deceased’s personal property is demolished, and the name is forbidden unless given to an heir before death.

Kiowa Tribe Facts

1. Mostly nomadic, the Kiowa tribe thrived on buffalo meat, gathered vegetables, dwelled in teepees, and relied on their horses for hunting and military uses.
2. They were confined to a reservation in southwestern Oklahomain 1867.
3. The Kiowa believed that dreams and visions gave them supernatural power in war, hunting, and healing.