The Kiowa are indigenous to the American Great Plains, although they moved southward from the Montana area into the Colorado Rockies during the 17th and 18th centuries and finally into the Southern Plains by the 19th century. In 1867, they were moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.
In the Black Hills area, the Kiowa lived in peace with the Crow, with whom they maintained a mutual friendship. However, the Kiowa were eventually pushed out of their original homeland by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux, who were themselves pushed out of their lands in the Great Lakes region by the Ojibwa.
In the central and southern Great Plains, the Kiowa occupied a large territory that included western Kansas, eastern Colorado, all of Oklahoma, and portions of the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico. In a portion of this area, they shared hunting grounds with the Comanche, with whom they established good relations after a period of conflict.
In the Southern Plains, the Kiowa developed close relations with the Plains Apaches. This relationship became so close that the Plains Apaches were often known as the Kiowa Apaches. The Kiowa and the Plains Apaches hunted, traveled, made war, and often lived together. The Kiowa lived a characteristic Plains Indian lifestyle. Largely nomadic, they depended heavily on bison, although they also gathered vegetables and other edible plants, lived in tipis, and grew proficient in the use of horses for hunting and war.
In the face of growing contacts with European and European-Americans, the Kiowa eventually formed alliances with the Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne, as well as their relationships with the Plains Apache and Comanche. The Kiowa and their allies were among the last of the Plains Indians to capitulate to the United States military.
In June of 1874, the Kiowa, along with the Cheyenne and Comanche, made their last major challenge to the U.S. military at what became known as the Battle of Adobe Walls. This was actually the second Battle of Adobe Walls, the first having occurred in November of 1864, almost ten years earlier, which also included the Plains Apache.
Adobe Walls was the name of a trading post in the Texas Panhandle, just north of the Canadian River, around which a white settlement had developed. On June 25, 1874, Adobe Walls was attacked by a force of about 700 warriors. However, the defending whites, which included Bat Masterson and Billy Dixon, armed with large-caliber, long-range Sharps rifles, were able to hold them off until reinforcements arrived, followed by a troop of Cavalry by August.
The 2nd Battle of Adobe Walls was a crushing defeat for the Indians, and it led to the Red River War of 1874, resulting in the final relocation of the Southern Plains Indians to reservations in Oklahoma.
Before that occurred, however, the Kiowas and Comanches were involved in an incident that became known as the Battle of Buffalo Wallow, in which they attacked a U.S. Army dispatch detail consisting of Billy Dixon and four troopers from the 6th Cavalry. They were able to hold the Indians off for a full day, after which a cold rainstorm led to an end to the siege. Every man in the detail was wounded, and one trooper was killed.
The Kiowa agreed to settle on a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma, although some bands of Kiowa remained free until 1875, and others held out in northern Mexico with the Lipan Apache, Mescalero Apache, and Comanche until the early 1880s.
The 1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge required the Kiowa to settle on a reservation in Western Oklahoma and Kansas, sharing the land with the Comanches and Kiowa Apaches. 1868 to 1906 was the reservation period for the Kiowa. A Kiowa school was established in 1873, and the U.S. government built homes for the Kiowa chiefs in 1877 and hired thirty Indians to form a police force on the reservation. According to the 1890 census, the reservation held 1,598 Comanche, 1,140 Kiowa, and 326 Kiowa Apache.
In 1892, an agreement led to the opening of the country to European-American settlers. It provided for an allotment of 160 acres to each individual in the tribes, and for the sale of the reservation lands to the United States. The Indian signers tried to back out of the agreement, but it was too late. In Lone Wolf versus Hitchcock, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Kiowa in 1903.
Since 1968, the Kiowa have been governed by the Kiowa Tribal Council. In 1970, the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma drafted a constitution and bylaws, which were ratified in 1970. As of 2000, more than 4,000 of 12,500 members of the Kiowa Tribe lived near the Oklahoma towns of Anadarko, Fort Cobb, and Carnegie, in Caddo and Kiowa counties, although other Kiowa are scattered throughout the country.
In 2020, the tribe chartered Cacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma as its tribal college.
The focus of this category is on the Kiowa people.
Recommended Resources
Khoiye Tdoen Gyah (Kiowa Talk)
Funded in part by the Oklahoma Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the site offers a way of hearing the Kiowa language in order to learn it, relying on the knowledge of fluent Kiowa speakers, most of whom are elders in the community. A project of the Kiowa Clemente Course in the Humanities, and sponsored by the Oklahoma Regional Writing Project, the course was incubated by the University of Oklahoma Writing Center. Stories, songs, basic sounds, and vocabulary are included.
https://kiowatalk.org/
Owned and operated by the Kiowa Tribe, and regulated by the Kiowa Gaming Commission and the Kiowa Casino Operations Authority, the casino and hotel in Devol, Oklahoma, features hundreds of slots, cards, and table games, an on-site restaurant, and more than sixty hotel accommodations, all of which are described and shown in photographs. A telephone number is posted, the address and directions are given, and rooms may be booked online. A win/loss statement is offered.
https://kiowacasino.com/
The Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma is headquartered in Carnegie, and its tribal area includes Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Jackson, Kiowa, Tillman, Greer, and Harmon counties. The tribal government issues its own vehicle tags and owns three casinos, a smoke shop, and a few restaurants. The tribe's governmental structure, councils, and commissions are highlighted, and an overview of its services, facilities, and departments are featured. Enrollment and election policies are noted.
https://www.kiowatribe.org/
Ledger Art of Sharron Ahtone Harjo
On this site, using a blogging platform, Richard Pearce profiles the ledger drawings of Ahtone Harjo, a full-blood Kiowa, who illustrates things that are peculiar to the Kiowa women in their roles as historical recorders for the tribe. One drawing focuses on the return of the trophy lance, celebrated in the Kiowa Gourd Dance, originally called Tian-Paye, after the battlefield where the Kiowas fought the Cheyennes and the Arapahos. Each is shown in a photo, with the story behind each discussed.
http://ahtoneharjo.blogspot.com/
Teri Greeves is an American Indian beadwork artist, residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, although she was born on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1970. In her work, she portrays Kiowa realities and oral history, as well as her own life experience and pop imagery. Her biography, an artist statement, selected museum collections, and available works are featured, along with media mentions, news, events, and contacts.
https://www.terigreevesbeadwork.com/
