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NINE: The Kiowa Homeland in Oklahoma
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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c h a p t e r n i n e The Kiowa Homeland in Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven M. Schnell Homeland Background The earliest place where the Kiowas are known to have lived is the northern Rocky Mountains, near the headwaters of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. Unlike Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Kiowas have no memory of ever having been an agricultural people. Sometime prior to 1700, the tribe moved east out of the mountains into the Black Hills area. About this same time, they acquired horses, probably from the neighboring Crows, and began to develop the buffalo -hunting culture that was to define them as a people for future generations (Mooney 1979) (fig. 9.1). In about 1750, Cheyennes and Lakotas forced the Kiowas from the Black Hills, and they began a long, gradual southward migration. By 1833, Kiowas had centered their lives near the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma , and along with their allies the Comanches, they soon held firm control over the southern Plains from the Arkansas River into central Texas, and from the Cross Timbers of central Oklahoma west into the Llano Estacado of the Texas Panhandle. In 1867, the Medicine Lodge Treaty required Kiowas to settle on a reservation (along with the Comanches and Plains Apaches, who are usually misleadingly referred to as Kiowa-Apaches) in southwestern Oklahoma . Their new reservation was a fraction of the size of their previous range (Mooney 1979) (map 9.1). 139 Even this reduced range was not to remain theirs for long. As the so-called Boomers agitated for opening lands in Indian Territory to white settlement, Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, which provided for the dissolution of tribal reservations. The legislation allotted each Indian a 160-acre homestead ; the government purchased the remainder of the land and opened it to white settlement in 1901. While Kiowas settled almost exclusively along creeks north of the Wichita Mountains, Comanches tended to take their allotments south of the modern town of Apache and farther south of the mountains . Members of the much smaller Plains Apache tribe generally chose land along a strip running roughly from Apache north to the intersection of today’s Oklahoma Route 9 and US Route 62/281 just south of Washita. By the time of the last allotment, the amount of land in Indian hands had shrunk by twothirds , to 443,338 acres (Mayhall 1971, 319). Land sales and outright swindling soon deprived tribal members of many more acres. 140 . . . steven m. schnell Fig. 9.1. The way to Rainy Mountain. Photograph by Steven M. Schnell, August 1999. [35.175.212.5] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:01 GMT) Map 9.1. The one-time Kiowa–Comanche–Plains Apache Reservation, 1900. Shown are Kiowa (also Comanche and Plains Apache) allotments made in 1901 and various landmarks including mission churches. Sources: Griffin 1901, Bureau of Indian Affairs ca. 1901. The insufficient size of land allotments and the lack of farming knowledge doomed any chance the tribe had of maintaining a self-sufficient economy. To gain income, Kiowas began to lease their lands to white farmers and ranchers. This practice continues today; Kiowas who farm or ranch their own land are the exception. Landholdings have become increasingly fragmented through inheritance, and quarter-sections with 20 or 30 Kiowa owners are common. In order to make a living, many Kiowas have been forced to move from rural allotment lands to towns and cities, both in the region and even farther afield, and today, about half of the tribe’s more than 8,600 members live outside the former reservation lands, with about a quarter living out of state. Because the federal government dissolved the Kiowa reservation almost a century ago and because half the tribe no longer lives there, one might think that the Kiowas would place less importance on southeastern Oklahoma. Yet this is decidedly not the case. The region remains an important psychological anchor for them, an intrinsic part of who they are. They maintain an intense loyalty to this particular area, a loyalty that their white neighbors are often completely unaware of. Material and Mythological Landscape Features The material and mythological imprint of Kiowas on the landscape binds them emotionally to their homeland and allows them to identify with it. Among the material features that strengthen the Kiowas’ attachment to place are arbors and mission churches. The more mythological features include Devil’s Tower, Palo Duro Canyon, Fort Sill, and Rainy Mountain...