SUMMER 1866
Hâñ-kopédal K`ádó, "Flat metal (i. e. German silver) sun dance," was held on Medicine-lodge creek, near its mouth, in Oklahoma. It was so called because a trader brought them at this time a large quantity of German silver, from which they made headdresses, belts for women, bracelets, and other ornaments. German silver is known to the Kiowa as "flat metal," because it is furnished to them in sheets, which they cut and hammer into the desired shapes. On both calendars the event is recorded in the same way, by the figure of a head pendent with silver disks placed near the medicine lodge. Such pendants were attached to the head of the scalplock, and consisted of a strip of buffalo hide reaching nearly to the ground and covered along the whole length with a row of silver, copper, or German-silver disks, gradually decreasing in size toward the bottom, which was usually finished off with a tuft of bright-colored horsehair. They were called góm-â´dal-hâ´ñgya, "back-hair-metal," and were highly prized by the warriors. This was not the first time the Kiowa had obtained German silver. In the old days these ornaments were made for them, of genuine silver, by Mexican silversmiths near the present Silver City, New Mexico.
Fig. 139—Summer 1866—German-silver sun dance.
Charles W. Whitacre (or Whittaker), the trader who brought their supply of metal on this occasion, together with sugar and other goods, had some knowledge of the Kiowa language, as well as of Comanche and Caddo, and is familiarly known to the older Kiowa as Tsâli, i. e., Charley. He was present at the Medicine Lodge treaty the next year, and afterward kept a trading store on the north side of the Washita, near the place where the Wichita school is now located, a short distance from the agency at Anadarko. He was killed by accidentally shooting himself about 1882.