The Wichita people or Kitikiti'sh are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. They spoke the Wichita language & Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. They are indigenous to Oklahoma, Texas, & Kansas. Early Wichita people lived in the eastern Great Plains from the Red River in Arkansas north to Nebraska for at least 2,000 years. They were hunters & gatherers who gradually adopted agriculture. Farming villages were developed about 900 CE on terraces above the Washita & South Canadian Rivers in present-day Oklahoma.
The women of these 10C communities cultivated varieties of maize, beans, & squash (known as the Three Sisters), marsh elder (Iva annua), & tobacco, which was important for religious purposes. The men hunted deer, rabbits, turkey, &, primarily, bison, & caught fish & harvested mussels from the rivers. These villagers lived in rectangular, thatched-roof houses.
Archaeologists describe the Washita River Phase from 1250 to 1450, when local populations grew & villages of up to 20 houses were spaced every two or so miles along the rivers. These farmers may have had contact with the Panhandle culture villages in the Oklahoma & Texas Panhandles, farming villages along the Canadian River. The Panhandle villagers showed signs of adopting cultural characteristics of the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande Valley, with whom they interacted. In the late 15C, most of these Washita River villages were abandoned for reasons that not known today.
Numerous archaeological sites in central Kansas near the Great Bend of the Arkansas River share common traits & are collectively known as the "Great Bend aspect." Radiocarbon dates from these sites range from AD 1450 to 1700. Great Bend aspect sites are generally accepted as ancestral to the Wichita peoples described by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado & other early European explorers. The discovery of limited quantities of European artifacts, such as chain mail & iron axe heads at several Great Bend sites, suggests contact of these people with early Spanish explorers.
Great Bend aspect peoples' subsistence economy included agriculture, hunting, gathering, & fishing. Villages were located on the upper terraces of rivers, & crops appear to have been grown on the fertile floodplains below. Primary crops were maize, beans, squash, & sunflowers, cultivated for their seeds. Gathered foods included walnut & hickory nuts, & the fruits of plum, hack-berry, & grape. Remains of animal bones in Great Aspect sites include bison, elk, deer, pronghorn, & dog, one of the few domesticated animals in the pre-Contact Plains.
Several village sites contain the remains of unusual structures called "council circles," located at the center of settlements. Archaeological excavations suggest they consist of a central patio surrounded by four semi-subterranean structures. The function of the council circles is unclear. Recent analysis suggests that many non-local artifacts occur exclusively or primarily within council circles, implying the structures were occupied by political &/or ritual leaders of the Great Bend aspect peoples. Other archaeologists leave open the possibility that the council circle earthworks served a defensive role.
In 1541 Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado journeyed east from the Rio Grande Valley in search of a rich land called Quivira. In Texas, probably in the Blanco River Canyon near Lubbock, Coronado met people he called Teyas who might have been related to the Wichita & the earlier Plains villagers. The Teyas, if in fact they were Wichita, were probably the ancestors of the Iscani & Waco, although they might also have been the Kichai, who spoke a different language but later joined the Wichita tribe. Turning north, he found Quivira & the people later known as the Wichita near the town of Lyons, Kansas. He was disappointed in his search for gold as the Quivirans appear to have been prosperous farmers & good hunters but had no gold or silver. There were about 25 villages of up to 200 houses each in Quivira. Coronado said: "They were large people of very good build," & he was impressed with the land, which was "fat & black."
Sixty years after Coronado's expedition the founder of New Mexico Juan de Oñate visited Etzanoa, the Wichita city. Oñate journeyed east from New Mexico, crossing the Great Plains & encountering 2 large settlements of people he called Escanjaques (possibly Yscani) & Rayados, most certainly Wichita. The Rayado city was probably on the Walnut River near Arkansas City, Kansas. Oñate described the city as containing "more than twelve hundred houses" which would indicate a population of about 12,000. His description of the Etzanoa was similar to that of Coronado's description of Quivira. The homesteads were dispersed; the houses round, thatched with grass & surrounded by large granaries to store the corn, beans, & squash they grew in their fields. Oñate's Rayados were Wichita, probably the sub-tribe later known as the Guichitas.
The Coronado & Oñate expeditions showed was that the Wichita people of the 16C were numerous & widespread. They were not, however, a single tribe at this time but rather a group of several related tribes speaking a common language. The dispersed nature of their villages probably indicated that they were not seriously threatened by attack by enemies, although that would change as they would soon be squeezed between the Apache on the West & the powerful Osage on the East. European diseases would also probably be responsible for a large decline in the Wichita population in the 17C.
In 1719, French explorers visited 2 groups of Wichita. Bernard de la Harpe found a large village near present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma & Claude Charles Du Tisne found 2 villages near Neodesha, Kansas. Coronado's Quivira was abandoned early in the 18C, probably due to Apache attacks. The Rayados of Oñate were probably still living in about the same Walnut River location. Archaeologists have located a Wichita village at the Deer Creek Site dating from the 1750s on the Arkansas River east of Newkirk, Oklahoma. By 1757, however, it appears that the Wichita had migrated south to the Red River.
The most prominent of the Wichita sub-tribes were the Taovayas. In the 1720s they had moved south from Kansas to the Red River establishing a large village on the north side of the River at Petersburg, Oklahoma & on the south side at Spanish Fort, Texas. They adopted many traits of the nomadic Plains Indians & were noted for raiding, trading. They had a close alliance with the French, & in 1746 a French brokered alliance with the Comanche revived the fortunes of the Wichita. The village at Petersburg was "a lively emporium where Comanches brought Apache slaves, horses & mules to trade for French packs of powder, balls, knives, & textiles & for Taovaya-grown maize, melons, pumpkins, squash, & tobacco."
The Wichita & their Comanche allies were known to the Spanish as the Norteños (Northerners). In 1759, in response to the destruction by the Norteños of the San Saba Mission the Spanish undertook an expedition to punish the Indians. Their 500-man army attacked the twin villages on Red River, but was defeated by the Wichita & Comanche in the Battle of the Twin Villages. The Spanish suffered 19 dead & 14 wounded, leaving 2 cannons on the battlefield, although they claimed to have killed more than 100 Indians.
The alliance between the Wichita, especially the Taovayas, & the Comanche began to break up in the 1770s, as the Wichita sought a better relationship with the Spanish. Taovaya power in Texas declined sharply after an epidemic, probably smallpox, in 1777 & 1778 killed about one-third of the tribe. After the Americans took over their territory as a result of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 & the independence of Texas in 1836, all the related tribes were increasingly lumped together & dubbed "Wichita." That designation also included the Kichai of northern Texas, who spoke a different although a related language.
The principal village of the Wichita in the 1830s was near the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma although the Tawakoni & Wacos still lived in Texas & were moved onto a reservation on the upper Brazos River. They were forced out of Texas to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1859. During the Civil War, the Wichita allied with the Union side. They moved to Kansas, where they established a village at the site of present-day Wichita, Kansas. In 1867 they were relocated to a reservation in southwest Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma] in the area where most of them continue to reside today. On June 4, 1891, the affiliated tribes signed an agreement with the Cherokee Commission for individual allotments.
