Wichita people
The Wichita people, or , are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. Historically they spoke the Wichita language and Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. Their ancestral homelands are in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.
Today, Wichita tribes, which include the Kichai people, Waco, Taovaya, Tawakoni, Yscani, and the Wichita proper, are federally recognized as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes .
Government
The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes are headquartered in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Caddo County, Oklahoma. The Wichitas are a self-governance tribe, who operate their own housing authority and issue tribal vehicle tags., the current administration is:
The current tribal administration is as follows.
- President: Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe
- Vice President: Tasha R. Mousseau, J.D.
- Secretary: Starr Chavez
- Treasurer: Vanessa Vance
- Committee Member: Claudia Spybuck
- Committee Member: Matt Roberson
- Committee Member: John Bowman
Economic development
Culture
The Wichita language is one of the Caddoan languages. They are related by language and culture to the Pawnee, with whom they have close relations.The Wichita lived in settled villages with domed-shaped, grass lodges, sometimes up to in diameter. The Wichita were successful hunters, farmers, traders, and negotiators. Their historical homelands stretched from San Antonio, Texas, in the south to Great Bend, Kansas, in the north. A semi-sedentary people, they occupied northern Texas in the early 18th century. They traded with other Southern Plains Indians on both sides of the Red River and south to Waco.
The Wichita made much of their own art, including ceramic pottery that greatly fascinated French and Spanish traders. To the untrained eye Wichita pottery was "virtually indistinguishable from the Osage and Pawnee", two other neighboring Indigenous groups.
Historically, for much of the year, the Wichita lived in huts made of forked cedar poles covered by dry grasses. In the winter, they followed American bison in a seasonal hunt and lived in hunting camps. Wichita people relied heavily on bison, using all parts—for clothing, food and cooking fat, winter shelter, leather supplies, sinew, medicine, and even armor. Each spring, Wichita families settled in their villages for another season of cultivating crops. Eventually, horses played a large role in the Wichita people's lifestyle. Increased access to horses in the mid 17th century caused Wichita hunting styles and seasons to become longer and more community-oriented. The Wichita economy also focused on horticulture, root-gathering, and fruits and nuts.
Wichita people wore clothing from tanned hides, which the women prepared and sewed. They often decorated their dresses with elk canine teeth. Both men and women tattooed their faces and bodies with solid and dotted lines and circles.
Wichita people had a history of intermarriage and alliance with other groups. Notably, the women of the Wichita worked with the Pueblo to harvest crops and engage in trade. Pueblo women were recorded to have intermarried with Wichita people and lived together in Wichita villages.
The social structure was organized by ranking of each tribe. Tribes were also led by two chiefs.
Names
The Wichita tribes call themselves kirikir?i:s, sometimes spelled Kitikiti'sh, because of the historical practice of tattooing marks around their eyes. The kindred Pawnee called them Kírikuuruks or Kírikuruks and the Arikara referred to them as Čirikuúnux. The Kiowa called them Thoe-Khoot.Bands
Wichita people have been a loose confederation of related peoples on the Southern Plains, including such bands or sub-tribes as Taovayas, Tawakonis, Wacos, and Guichitas or Wichita Proper; smaller bands are listed as well: Akwits, Itaz, Kishkat, and Korishkitsu. The Taovaya were the most important in the 18th century. The French called the Wichita peoples Panis Piqués or Panis Noirs, because they practiced tattooing; sometimes the Panis Piqués or Panis Noirs are included into the listing of Wichita sub-tribes, but it seems that there were no known separate sub-tribe which can be identified by this name. One Pawnee splinter grouping known as Panismahas moved from what is now Nebraska to the Texas-Arkansas border regions where they lived with the Taovayas.Language
The Wichita people had a unified language system with minor dialectical differences based on the geography of unique tribes. Derived from the Caddoan language, much of the Wichita language was indistinguishable between tribes they shared close alliances with.Cultural institutions
In 2018, the Wichita Tribes opened the Wichita Tribal History Center in Anadarko, which shares Wichita history, archaeology, visual arts, and culture with the public.The Wichita Annual Dance, a powwow, is held at the Wichita Tribal Park on US-281, north of Anadarko, every August.
History
Precontact history
The Ancestral Wichita people lived in the eastern Great Plains from the Red River in Arkansas north to Nebraska for at least 2,000 years. Early Wichita people were hunters and gatherers who gradually adopted agriculture. Farming villages were developed about 900 CE on terraces above the Washita and South Canadian Rivers in present-day Oklahoma. The women of these 10th-century communities cultivated varieties of maize, beans, and squash, marsh elder, and tobacco, which was important for religious purposes. The men hunted deer, rabbits, turkey, and, primarily, bison, and caught fish and harvested mussels from the rivers. These villagers lived in rectangular, thatched-roof houses.Archaeologists describe the Washita River Phase from 1250 to 1450, when local populations grew and villages of up to 20 houses were spaced every two or so miles along the rivers. These farmers may have had contact with the Panhandle culture villages in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, farming villages along the Canadian River. The Panhandle villagers showed signs of adopting cultural characteristics of the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande Valley, with whom they interacted.
In the late 15th century, most of these Washita River villages were abandoned for reasons that are not known today.
Great Bend settlements and council circles
Numerous archaeological sites in central Kansas near the Great Bend of the Arkansas River share common traits and are collectively known as the "Great Bend aspect." Radiocarbon dates from these sites range from AD 1450 to 1700. Great Bend aspect sites are generally accepted as ancestral to the Wichita peoples described by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and other early European explorers. The discovery of limited quantities of European artifacts, such as chain mail and iron axe heads at several Great Bend sites, suggests contact of these people with early Spanish explorers.Great Bend aspect peoples' subsistence economy included agriculture, hunting, gathering, and fishing. Villages were located on the upper terraces of rivers, and crops appear to have been grown on the fertile floodplains below. Primary crops were maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers, cultivated for their seeds. Gathered foods included walnut and hickory nuts, and the fruits of plum, hackberry, and grape. Remains of animal bones in Great Aspect sites include bison, elk, deer, pronghorn, and dog, one of the few domesticated animals in the pre-Contact Plains.
Several village sites contain the remains of unusual structures called "council circles," located at the center of settlements. Archaeological excavations suggest they consist of a central patio surrounded by four semi-subterranean structures. The function of the council circles is unclear. Archaeologist Waldo Wedel suggested in 1967 that they may be ceremonial structures, possibly associated with solstice observations. Recent analysis suggests that many non-local artifacts occur exclusively or primarily within council circles, implying the structures were occupied by political and/or ritual leaders of the Great Bend aspect peoples. Other archaeologists leave open the possibility that the council circle earthworks served a defensive role.
One of these sites was the city Etzanoa, located in present-day Arkansas City, Kansas, near the Arkansas River, that flourished between 1450 and 1700.
16th century
In 1541 Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado journeyed east from the Rio Grande Valley in search of a rich land called Quivira. In Texas, probably in the Blanco River Canyon near Lubbock, Coronado met people he called Teyas who might have been related to the Wichita and the earlier Plains villagers. The Teyas, if in fact they were Wichita, were probably the ancestors of the Iscani and Waco, although they might also have been the Kichai, who spoke a different language but later joined the Wichita tribe. Turning north, he found Quivira and the people later known as the Wichita near the town of Lyons, Kansas. He was disappointed in his search for gold as the Quivirans appear to have been prosperous farmers and good hunters but had no gold or silver. There were about 25 villages of up to 200 houses each in Quivira. Coronado said: "They were large people of very good build", and he was impressed with the land, which was "fat and black." Though Coronado was impressed with Wichita society, he often treated the Wichita poorly in his expedition. Even after Wichita migration, some settlements were thought to have remained in northern Quivira in 1680.It was also noted: "They eat meat raw/jerky like the Querechos and Teyas. They are enemies of one another...These people of Quivira have the advantage over the others in their houses and in growing of maize".
The Quivirans apparently called their land Tancoa and a neighboring province on the Smoky Hill River was called Tabas. Settlements existed here until the Wichita were driven away in the 18th century.