Calendar history of the Kiowa Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 129-444))

by James Mooney

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

The Kiowa Apache are a small tribe of Athapascan stock, numbering now about two hundred and twenty-five, associated with the Kiowa from the earliest traditional period and forming a component part of the Kiowa tribal circle, although reserving their distinct language; they call themselves Nadíisha-dena, "our people." In the early French records of the seventeenth century, in Lewis and Clark's narrative, and in their first treaty, in 1837, they are called by various forms of the name Gáta`ka, the name by which they are known to the Pawnee, although this does not necessarily imply that the word is of Pawnee origin. They are possibly the Kaskaia or "Bad-hearts" of Long in 1820. The Kiowa call them by the contemptuous title of Semät, "thieves," a recent substitute for the older generic term Tagúi, applied also to other tribes of the same stock. They are now commonly known as Kiowa Apache, under a mistaken impression, arising from the fact of their Athapascan affinity, that they are a detached band of the Apache nation of Arizona. On the contrary, they have never had any political connection with the Apache proper and were probably unaware of their existence until about one hundred years ago. A few Mescalero Apache from New Mexico are now living with them, and individuals of the two tribes frequently exchange visits, but this friendly intimacy is a matter of only sixty or eighty years' standing, resulting from the peace between the Kiowa and Comanche, as already recorded.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY— SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LXXII

PHOTOS BY JACKSON, 1872.

DAHA, A KIOWA APACHE SUBCHIEF.

Photo by Hayden Survey, 1872.

Fig. 58—Gray-eagle, a Kiowa Apache subchief.

They have not migrated from the southwest into the plains country, but have come with the Kiowa from the extreme north, where they lay the scene of their oldest traditions, including their great medicine story. Their association with the Kiowa antedates the first removal of the latter from the mountains, as both tribes say they have no memory of a time when they were not together. It is probable that the Kiowa Apache, like the cognate Sarsi, have come down along the eastern base of the Rocky mountains from the great Athapascan hive of the Mackenzie river region instead of along the chain of the Sierras, the line followed by the kindred Tototin, Wailaki, Navaho, and Apache proper, and that, finding themselves too weak to stand alone, they took refuge with the Kiowa, as the Sarsi have done with the Blackfeet.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY— SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LXXIII

by James Mooney, 1872.

KIOWA MIGRATION ROUTE.

In regard to this northern origin and early association Clark says, in his valuable work on the sign language: "Tradition locates the Kiowas near and to the southwest of the Black Hills, Dakota, and without doubt they had previous to that time lived near the Missouri river. The Apaches with whom they are now associated were at this time with them." In another place he states that an old Apache told him, about 1881, that he was then about seventy years of age and had been born near Missouri river, northeast of the Black Hills (Clark, 10). Keim chooses to call them Lipan, in which he is mistaken, the Lipan being still another Athapascan tribe living farther south, and states that "these people are improperly known as Apaches and so called in the official documents of the government. They say of themselves that they are not Apaches, that the Apaches live away to the west." He says that they have a tradition of having formerly lived in the Bad-lands of Dakota, whence they drifted to the south, but adds somewhat naively that there is no other authority for this than their own story (Keim, 4).

As the Apache are practically a part of the Kiowa in everything but language, they need no extended separate notice. Curiously enough their authentic history begins nearly seventy years earlier than that of the dominant tribe with which they are associated. They are first mentioned by the French explorer La Salle, in an undated letter of 1681 or 1682, under the name of Gattacka. Writing from a post in what is now Illinois, he says that the Pana (Pawnee) live more than 200 leagues to the west, on one of the tributaries of the Mississippi, and are "neighbors and allies of the Gattacka and Manrhoet, who are south of their villages, and who sell to them horses, which they probably steal from the Spaniards of New Mexico." In another fragmentary letter of 1682, written from the same place, he proposes to make an overland journey by means of horses, "which may easily be had, as there are many with the savages called Pana, Pancassa, Manrhout, Gataea, Panimaha, and Pasos, who lie somewhat remote, it is true, but yet communication with them is very easy by means of the river of the Missourites, which flows into the river Colbert" (Margry, 1). In modern terms Pana, Pancassa (or Paneassa), Gataea (for Gataca), Panimaha, Missourites, and Colbert are respectively Pawnee, Ponca (?), Kiowa Apache, Pawnee-Maha or ——, Missouri, and Mississippi. Paso is problematic, and Manrhoet or Maurhout, which in both letters is mentioned in connection with the Kiowa Apache, may possibly be some obsolete name for the Kiowa themselves.

Fig. 59—Tsáyăditl-ti or White-man, present head-chief of the Kiowa Apache.

Fig. 60—Dävéko, "The-same-one," a Kiowa Apache subchief and medicine-man

From these references it is plain that the Kiowa Apache—and presumably also the Kiowa—ranged even at this early period in the same general region where they were known more than a hundred years later, namely, between the Platte and the frontiers of New Mexico, and that they already had herds of horses taken from the Spanish settlements. It appears also that they were then in friendship with the Pawnee. From the fact that they traded horses to the other tribes, and that La Salle proposed to supply himself from them or their neighbors, it is not impossible that they sometimes visited the French fort on Peoria lake. On a map in Harris' Collection of Voyages and Travels, published in 1705, we find the "Gataka" marked—probably on the authority of early French documents—on the west side of the Missouri, above the Quapaw (see the [Kiowa Apache synonymy], page [245]). In 1719 La Harpe found them ("Quataquois") living in connection with the Tawákoni and other affiliated tribes in a village which has been identified by Philip Walker, Esquire, of Washington, as situated on the south bank of the Cimarron, near its junction with the Arkansas, in what is now the Creek nation of Indian Territory (Margry, 2).

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PHOTOS BY HILLERS, 1894.

GOÑKOÑ OR APACHE JOHN, A KIOWA APACHE SUBCHIEF.