Kiowa Indians Essay Research Paper The earliest

Kiowa Indians Essay, Research Paper

The earliest written mention of the Kiowa Indians was in 1682 by Ren Robert Cavelier who heard of them from a captive Pani slave, boy at Fort St. Louis who called them Manrhouts and Gattacha. The Kiowa are a group of warrior plains people who lived on the southern Great Plains. They became one of the most hated and feared of the plains tribes. The Kiowa tribe practices a peyotism religion and speaks a Kiowa-Tanoan language. The Kiowa are notable for their pictography portrayals, which are done twice a year of important tribal events. Many interesting things have been discovered about the Kiowa people, which make them unique from all other plains tribes.

There is a story about how the Kiowa people came about. It is said that Saynday, known to American Indians as Trickster, wandered alone on the sunless earth until he discovered the Kiowa living underground. He enabled the people, as ants, to crawl upward through a hollow cottonwood tree and pulled them through an owl hole upon the surface of the earth. There was woman who was very swollen because of pregnancy and she got stuck in the log. After that, no one could get through, and that is why the Kiowa are a small tribe in number. They looked all around and saw the world. It made them glad to see so many things. They called themselves Kwu-da, “coming out.” When a Kiowa says “Behold, I stand in good relation to all things,” he reflects his feeling of oneness with the universe. The Kiowa have also referred to themselves by the name “Kom-pa-bianta”, or people of the “large tipi flaps”, a distinguishing feature of their tipis. Today, some call themselves “Koi-gwu” which identifies them as a tribe. Kiowa means “principal people” in the tribe’s language.

In religion the Kiowa were polytheistic and animistic. They had a general belief in supernatural agencies. Their great tribal ceremony was the Sun Dance or K ado, which took place in early summer. The ritual characteristically, but not always, took place in a teepee around a crescent-shaped, earthen alter mound and a sacred fire. The all-night ceremony usually commenced about 8p.m. and was led by a peyote chief . Services included prayer, singing, sacramental eating of peyote, and water rites. They concluded the ceremony with a communion breakfast on Sunday morning. In the Sun Dance the tribe came together for ten days or more. Ten medicine bundles were believed to protect the tribe and became central in the Kiowan Sun Dance. The sun was believed to be one of the many spirit forces. There were several objects of religious veneration. Sun Boy was the great supernatural and mythic hero. He gave them medicine in ten portions which was kept by the priests in priestly tipis. The medicine was called the Grandmother Bundles.

The Taime was a sacred image of a human figure-the central figure in the Sun Dance, other small figures or sacred images were known. Seni or peyote was the worship of a cactus (Lophophora williamsii); it involved a system of myth and ritual in which buds from the cactus were eaten. Its use was long practiced by tribes along the Rio Grande and coastal Texas. The Sun Dance served both for religious and for social cohesion of the tribe. It was believed to recreate the buffalo and rededicated the beliefs and traditions. It lasted for ten days, six to prepare the lodge, set up the center post, and have a mock battle before its dedication, and four days for the dancers to seek a vision while dancing about the pole and the Taime. Self-inflicted torture, such as cutting of flesh and breaking of fingers, were employed on occasion but not to the extent as other tribes.

Peyotism or peyote religion was the basic religion of the Kiowa people. Peyotism first developed in about 1885 among the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Various forms of peyotist beliefs combine Indian and Christian elements in differing degrees. In general, peyotist doctrine consists of belief in one supreme God (the Great Spirit) who deals with men through various spirits. In many tribes peyote itself is personified as a peyote spirit, considered to be either God s equivalent for the Indians to his Jesus for the whites, or Jesus himself. Sometimes Jesus is regarded as an intercessor with God or as a guardian spirit who has turned to the Indians after being killed by the whites. Peyote is derived from the Nahuatl name of the peyotl for a cactus, the top of the cactus contains mescaline, an alkaloid drug that has hallucinogenic effects. The Kiowa people thought that eating peyote in the ritual context, enables the individual to commune with God and the spirits in contemplation and vision as so to receive from them spiritual power, guidance, reproof and healing.

Although in many ways the Kiowa displayed a typical Plains culture, they were among the most predatory and warlike people of their region and had an elaborate and effective military organization. Kiowa were fierce warriors who vigorously opposed white settlement on the southern plains. They, along with their Comanche allies, made daring raids far into Mexico, capturing large numbers of horses and captives. The Kiowa also gained horses, laves, and guns from the Spanish. The Crows taught them to ride horses and hunt buffalo. The main weapons and implements that were used were the arrow, spear, tomahawk, chipped flint, obsidian knives, flint saws, scrapers punch, needle of flint or bone, h