SUMMER 1879
Tséñ-píä K`ádó, "Horse-eating sun dance." It is indicated on the Set-t'an calendar by the figure of a horse's head above the medicine lodge. This dance was held on Elm fork of Red river, and was so called because the buffalo had now become so scarce that the Kiowa, who had gone on their regular hunt the preceding winter, had found so few that they were obliged to kill and eat their ponies during the summer to save themselves from starving. This may be recorded as the date of the disappearance of the buffalo from the Kiowa country. Thenceforth the appearance of even a single animal was a rare event. The official report says:
In the month of June last a portion of each band was permitted to go to the western part of the reservation to subsist themselves awhile on buffalo, deer, etc, as the supplies for the year had been so nearly expended it was not seen how they could all be fed until those for the next year were received. But again they failed to find game sufficient to feed themselves, and the Kiowa, who while out were engaged in their annual medicine dance, suffered some with hunger. I think their failures in finding buffalo the past year, and their consequent suffering while out, will have a good effect in causing them to abandon their idea of subsisting in this way and to look to their crops and stock for a support. It is a fact worthy of note that the reports of the agents show the value of the robes and furs sold by the Indians now belonging to the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita agency for the year 1876 amounted to $70,400; for 1877, $64,500; for 1878, $26,375; while in 1879 only $5,068 was received, showing that buffalo hunting is not a thing of profit as it once was; and, besides, the most serious drawback to the Indians is the lack of the buffalo meat which at one time helped to subsist them, and which, added to the insufficient rations furnished by the government, kept them partly comfortable. As that supply is cut off, the Indian must go to work and help himself or remain hungry on the rations furnished (Report, 100).
The Anko calendar records the fact that while the Kiowa were driving away their issue of beef cattle some mischievous boys, shooting at the cattle with their arrows, accidentally shot another boy in the shoulder, but not fatally. In giving this explanation it was evident that Anko did not want to mention the boy's name, probably because he was now dead.
Fig. 167—Winter 1879—80—Eye-triumph winter.
WINTER 1879—80
Tä´kágyä Sai, "Eye-triumph winter." The name and story furnish a curious illustration of Indian belief. Káäsä´nte, "Little-robe" (or Little-hide), with two or three others, had gone to the North fork of Red river to look for antelope. According to another story they went to look for their old enemies, the Navaho, who, it seems, although now removed to their former reservation in western New Mexico, still occasionally penetrated thus far. Among them was a man named Pódodal (a variety of bird), who claimed to understand the language of owls, a bird believed by the Kiowa to be an embodied spirit. While resting one night in camp this man warned Little-robe not to go to bed, but to round up the ponies and keep watch over them, for an owl had told him that the Navaho would try to steal them that night. During the night Pódodal fired at something in the darkness, and on looking in the morning they found the trail of a man, and blood drops, which they followed for a long distance, but at last gave up the pursuit. That night the owl again came and told Pódodal that the wounded Navaho was lying dead beyond the point where they had turned back, and that he (the owl) would go and fetch him.
On rising in the morning Pódodal saw some strange-looking object lying on the ground in the lodge, and on examining it it proved to be the eye of a dead Navaho. On the advice of Pódodal they then abandoned the hunt and returned to the Kiowa camp, on a small branch of Apache creek (Sémät P'a), an upper branch of Cache creek. They carried with them the eye, hung at the end of a pole after the manner of a scalp, and danced over it as over a scalp on arriving at the camp on the small stream, since called Tä´-kágyä P'a, "Eye-triumph creek" from this circumstance.
It should be added that there were some skeptics who laughed at the whole story and declared that the eye was that of an antelope which Pódodal had secretly shot.