The Wichita people, or , are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. Historically they spoke the Wichita language and Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. Their ancestral homelands are in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.
Today, Wichita tribes, which include the Kichai people, Waco, Taovaya, Tawakoni, Yscani, and the Wichita proper (or Guichita), are federally recognized as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (Wichita, Keechi, Waco and Tawakoni).
Government The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes are headquartered in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Caddo County, Oklahoma. The Wichitas are a self-governance tribe, who operate their own housing authority and issue tribal vehicle tags.2011 Oklahoma Indian Nations Pocket Pictorial Directory. Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission. 2011: 38. Retrieved 8 Feb 2012.
, the current administration is: The current tribal administration is as follows. President: Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe Vice President: Tasha R. Mousseau, J.D. Secretary: Starr Chavez Treasurer: Vanessa Vance Committee Member: Claudia Spybuck Committee Member: Matt Roberson Committee Member: John Bowman
Economic development The tribe owns the Sugar Creek Casino, several restaurants, the Sugar Creek Event Center, and Hinton Travel Inn in Hinton. It owns a smoke shop, travel plaza, and historical center in Anadarko. Their annual economic impact in 2010 was $4.5 million.
Culture The Wichita language is one of the Caddoan languages. They are related by language and culture to the Pawnee, with whom they have close relations.
The Wichita lived in settled villages with domed-shaped, grass lodges, sometimes up to in diameter. The Wichita were successful hunters, farmers, traders, and negotiators. Their historical homelands stretched from San Antonio, Texas, in the south to Great Bend, Kansas, in the north. A semi-sedentary people, they occupied northern Texas in the early 18th century. They traded with other Southern Plains Indians on both sides of the Red River and south to Waco.
The Wichita made much of their own art, including ceramic pottery that greatly fascinated French and Spanish traders.Long unreported artifact collections from Spanish Fort Bend Wichita Indian Sites in Oklahoma and Texas. Plains Anthropologist, 57 (221), 63-69. To the untrained eye Wichita pottery was "virtually indistinguishable from the Osage and Pawnee", two other neighboring Indigenous groups.Stephen M. Perkins & Timothy G. Baugh (2008) Protohistory and the Wichita, Plains Anthropologist, 53:208, 381–394,
Historically, for much of the year, the Wichita lived in huts made of forked cedar poles covered by dry grasses. In the winter, they followed American bison (buffalo) in a seasonal hunt and lived in hunting camps. Wichita people relied heavily on bison, using all parts—for clothing, food and cooking fat, winter shelter, leather supplies, sinew, medicine, and even armor. Each spring, Wichita families settled in their villages for another season of cultivating crops. Eventually, horses played a large role in the Wichita people's lifestyle. Increased access to horses in the mid 17th century caused Wichita hunting styles and seasons to become longer and more community-oriented. The Wichita economy also focused on horticulture, root-gathering, and fruits and nuts.
Wichita people wore clothing from tanned hides, which the women prepared and sewed. They often decorated their dresses with elk canine teeth. Both men and women tattooed their faces and bodies with solid and dotted lines and circles.
Wichita people had a history of intermarriage and alliance with other groups. Notably, the women of the Wichita worked with the Pueblo to harvest crops and engage in trade. Pueblo women were recorded to have intermarried with Wichita people and lived together in Wichita villages.
The social structure was organized by ranking of each tribe. Tribes were also led by two chiefs.
Names
The Wichita tribes call themselves kirikir?i:s, sometimes spelled Kitikiti'sh ("raccoon-eyed people"), because of the historical practice of tattooing marks around their eyes. The kindred Pawnee called them Kírikuuruks or Kírikuruks ("bear-eyed people") and the Arikara referred to them as Čirikuúnux (a reference to the Wichita practice of tattoos). The Kiowa called them Thoe-Khoot ("tattoo faces").
Bands Wichita people have been a loose confederation of related peoples on the Southern Plains, including such bands or sub-tribes as Taovayas (Tawehash), Tawakonis, Wacos (who appear to have been the Yscani or Iscanis of earlier times), and Guichitas or Wichita Proper; smaller bands are listed as well: Akwits (also Akwesh, Asidahetsh, or Asidahesh, a former northern Pawnee splinter group, which joined the Wichita), Itaz, Kishkat, and Korishkitsu (the two latter names may be a Wichita name for the Kichai). The Taovaya were the most important in the 18th century. The French called the Wichita peoples Panis Piqués (Pawnee Picts) or Panis Noirs (Black Pawnees), because they practiced tattooing; sometimes the Panis Piqués or Panis Noirs are included into the listing of Wichita sub-tribes, but it seems that there were no known separate sub-tribe which can be identified by this name. One Pawnee splinter grouping known as Panismahas moved from what is now Nebraska to the Texas-Arkansas border regions where they lived with the Taovayas.
Language The Wichita people had a unified language system with minor dialectical differences based on the geography of unique tribes. Derived from the Caddoan language, much of the Wichita language was indistinguishable between tribes they shared close alliances with.
Cultural institutions In 2018, the Wichita Tribes opened the Wichita Tribal History Center in Anadarko, which shares Wichita history, archaeology, visual arts, and culture with the public.
The Wichita Annual Dance, a powwow, is held at the Wichita Tribal Park on US-281, north of Anadarko, every August.
History Precontact history
The Ancestral Wichita people lived in the eastern Great Plains from the Red River in Arkansas north to Nebraska for at least 2,000 years.Schlesier, Karl H., Plains Indians, 500–1500 CE: The Archaeological Past of Historic Groups (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 347-348. Early Wichita people were hunters and gatherers who gradually adopted agriculture. Farming villages were developed about 900 CE on terraces above the Washita and South Canadian Rivers in present-day Oklahoma. The women of these 10th-century communities cultivated varieties of maize, beans, and squash (known as the Three Sisters), marsh elder (Iva annua), and tobacco, which was important for religious purposes. The men hunted deer, rabbits, turkey, and, primarily, bison, and caught fish and 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 and 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 and 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 15th century, most of these Washita River villages were abandoned for reasons that are not known today.
Great Bend settlements and council circles Numerous archaeological sites in central Kansas near the Great Bend of the Arkansas River share common traits and 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 and other early European explorers. The discovery of limited quantities of European artifacts, such as chain mail and iron axe heads at several Great Bend sites, suggests contact of these people with early Spanish explorers.Wood, W. Raymond (1998). Archaeology of the Great Plains University of Kansas Press.
Great Bend aspect peoples' subsistence economy included agriculture, hunting, gathering, and fishing. Villages were located on the upper terraces of rivers, and crops appear to have been grown on the fertile floodplains below. Primary crops were maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers, cultivated for their seeds. Gathered foods included walnut and hickory nuts, and the fruits of plum, hackberry, and grape. Remains of animal bones in Great Aspect sites include bison, elk, deer, pronghorn, and dog,Hoard, Robert J. and William E. Banks (2006). Kansas Archaeology. University Press of Kansas 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. Archaeologist Waldo Wedel suggested in 1967 that they may be ceremonial structures, possibly associated with solstice observations.Wedel, Waldo (1967). "The Council Circles of Central Kansas: Were They Solstice Registers?", American Antiquity 32: pp. 54-63. Recent analysis suggests that many non-local artifacts occur exclusively or primarily within council circles, implying the structures were occupied by political and/or ritual leaders of the Great Bend aspect peoples.Vehik, Susan C. 2002. "Conflict, Trade, and Political Development on the Southern Plains", American Antiquity 67, no. 1: pp. 37–64. Other archaeologists leave open the possibility that the council circle earthworks served a defensive role.Hollinger, Eric (2005). Conflict and Culture Change in the Late Prehistoric and Early Historic American Midcontinent, PhD Dissertation. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
One of these sites was the city Etzanoa, located in present-day Arkansas City, Kansas, near the Arkansas River, that flourished between 1450 and 1700.
16th century
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 and the earlier Plains villagers. The Teyas, if in fact they were Wichita, were probably the ancestors of the Iscani and Waco, although they might also have been the Kichai, who spoke a different language but later joined the Wichita tribe.Vehik, Susan C. "Wichita Cultural History." Plains Anthropologist, Vol 37, No. 141, 1992, 328 Turning north, he found Quivira and 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 and 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", and he was impressed with the land, which was "fat and black."Winship, George Parker, The Journey of Coronado, 1540–1542, etc. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1904, 124, 215, 219 Though Coronado was impressed with Wichita society, he often treated the Wichita poorly in his expedition.Wedel, Mildred M. 1982a The Wichita Indians in the Arkansas River Basin. In Plains Indian Studies: A Collection of Papers in Honor of John C. Ewers and Waldo R. Wedel, edited by D.H. Ubelaker and H.J. Viola, pp. 118-134. Smithsonian Even after Wichita migration, some settlements were thought to have remained in northern Quivira in 1680.