This summer is noted for an epidemic of measles, which is said to have killed more children in the tribe than the measles epidemic of 1892. It is represented on both calendars by a human figure covered with red spots, above the medicine lodge. Strangely enough there is no notice of this epidemic in the report of the agent for this year, which may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that he was himself prostrated by sickness which occasioned his retirement in the following spring. From the report of the agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, however, we learn that the epidemic broke out among the latter tribes in April, and in spite of the best efforts of the physician, killed two hundred and nineteen children, so that almost every family was in mourning. In happy contrast to the more recent experience of the Kiowa, the government school was temporarily turned into a hospital, with the teachers for nurses, so that although seventy-four children were sick at the same time, not one died (Report, 95).
Fig. 163—Winter 1877—78—Camp at Signal mountain; hunt on Pecan creek.
WINTER 1877—78
K`op-taíde-do-tsédal-de Sai, "Signal-mountain winter." During this winter a part of the tribe camped near Mount Scott, while the remainder camped west of Fort Sill, at the foot of Signal mountain, called by the Kiowa "the mountain with a house built upon it," referring to a stone lookout station built during the last Indian outbreak. The figure on the Set-t´an calendar is sufficiently suggestive of a house upon a mountain.
Anko records the fact that he hunted buffalo this winter on Elk creek (on upper Red river), called by the Kiowa Dónä´-i P'a, "Pecan river." The rounded figure below the winter mark is intended to represent a pecan nut.
This winter is noted for an epidemic of fever, which is mentioned in the report for 1878. In the fall of 1877, under Agent Haworth, as an inducement to the Indians to abandon their roaming habit, the government built houses for ten prominent chiefs of the three tribes, including Stumbling-bear, Gaápiatañ (Heidsick), Guñsádalte (Cat), and Sun-boy, of the Kiowa, and White-man and Taha, of the Apache. These were the first Indian houses ever built upon the reservation, excepting two erected by the military. At first the new owners continued to live in the tipis, which they preferred from long usage, but by the further gift of beds and chairs they were induced to go into the houses. An attempt to get the Indians to cut the logs and do a part of the work themselves under instruction seems to have been a failure. The houses were reasonably good frame structures of three rooms, having doors, glass windows, and substantial double fireplaces and chimneys of stone; they cost $600 each (Report, 96). In 1886 there were nine Kiowa families living in houses (Report, 97), but a few years later most of these dwellings were vacant or occupied by white renters, the Indian owners being again in the tipis.
SUMMER 1878
Fig. 164.—Summer 1878—Repeated sun dance.