The Kiowa emerged as a distinct people in their original homeland of the northern Missouri River Basin. Searching for more lands of their own, the Kiowa traveled southeast to the Black Hills in present-day South Dakota & Wyoming around 1650. In the Black Hills region, the Kiowa lived peacefully alongside the Crow Indians, with whom they long maintained a close friendship, organized themselves into 10 bands, & numbered around 3000. Pressure from the Ojibwe in the north woods & edge of the great plains in Minnesota forced the Cheyenne, Arapaho, & later the Sioux westward into Kiowa territory around the Black Hills. The Kiowa were pushed south by the invading Cheyenne who were then pushed westward out of the Black Hills by the Sioux. Eventually the Kiowa obtained a vast territory on the central & southern great plains in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, most of Oklahoma including the panhandle, & the Llano Estacado in the Texas Panhandle & eastern New Mexico.[33] In their early history, the Kiowa traveled with dogs pulling their belongings until horses were obtained through trade & raid with the Spanish & other Indian nations in the southwest.
In the early spring of 1790 at the place that would become Las Vegas, New Mexico, a Kiowa party led by war leader Guikate, made an offer of peace to a Comanche party while both were visiting the home of a mutual friend of both tribes. This led to a later meeting between Guikate & the head chief of the Nokoni Comanche. The two groups made an alliance to share the same hunting grounds & entered into a mutual defense pact & became the dominant inhabitants of the Southern Plains. From that time on, the Comanche & Kiowa hunted, traveled, & made war together. In addition to the Comanche, the Kiowa formed a very close alliance with the Plains Apache (Kiowa-Apache), with the two nations sharing much of the same culture & participating in each other's annual council meetings & events. The strong alliance of southern plains nations kept the invading Spanish from gaining a strong colonial hold on the southern plains & eventually forced them completely out of the area, pushing them eastward & south past the Rio Grande into present day Mexico.
