The Kiowa and the Quiohuan (Part 2 of 2)

[This is part 2 of a 2-part series of posts about the identity of the Quiohuan Indians.  Click here for part 1.]

So... why do I not think that the "Quiohuan", who show up in several documents from 1687 to 1719 as a tribe living in or near eastern Texas, were the same people as the Kiowa?  If you've read part 1 (please do so before reading this) you might think it's because, according to James Mooney's telling of Kiowa history, the Kiowa were located too far to the north prior to 1775 or so.  And you would be right, that is an important reason.  As historian William Newcomb put it:

"Mooney (1907, Volume I:701) identifies them [the Quiohuan] as Kiowas, an improbable speculation since the migration of Kiowas into the Southern Plains did not occur until almost a century later." (Newcomb 1993)

But the truth is, it's more complicated than that.  Mooney's Calendar History is not exactly an obscure text in this field: of course the scholars who support the Quiohuan=Kiowa hypothesis are already well aware of it.  It's no secret to them that the Kiowa formerly resided in the Northern Plains and the Kiowa Mountains.  They already know.  I mean, look at that Newcomb quotation again: who is it he says first identified the Quiohuan as the Kiowa?  James Mooney.  Mooney may have been wrong—about many things—but one thing you can't accuse him of is being unaware of his own prior research.

So why do scholars [most that I've seen, at any rate...] think that the Quiohuan were the Kiowa regardless?  Well, to be honest I'm not entirely sure, because I don't often see them explicitly argue the point: usually they just... assert it, and move on.  But I can think of a few possible arguments one could make in defense of the Quiohuan=Kiowa hypothesis.

Argument #1:  The Kiowa actually do originate in the Southern Plains, despite all that stuff I wrote in Part 1.  There have been scholars who have questioned the accuracy of Mooney's version of Kiowa protohistory.  Robert Lowie, an expert on the Crow Indians, specifically attacked the idea that the Kiowa had once enjoyed a long and close relationship with the Crow:

"Since Mooney's thesis rests on tradition, I ought to premise that while the briefest of stays with the Kiowa sufficed to corroborate that the story is indeed part of their folklore, I never once heard the Crow refer to the Kiowa in this connection, though I spent seven or eight field sessions with them[...]  As for the Kiowa, they play so slight a figure in Crow thought that though constant mention is made of the Hidatsa, the Dakota, the Cheyenne, the Shoshone, and the Piegan, references to the Kiowa hardly ever occurred during my visits." (Lowie 1953)

That is a very interesting point—enough indeed to throw doubt on the accuracy of Mooney's narrative—and I take it very seriously.  However, as Lowie also notes:

"Two questions must be distinguished here—the [Kiowas'] earlier residence in the north and the specific affinity with the Crow." (Lowie 1953)

Indeed.

"As for the former, what is involved is of course not whether the ancestors of the Kiowa, along with other Indians, came from the north ten thousand or five thousand years ago; the question is whether in, say 1500 AD, they had their home in western Montana or, as has been alleged, even in the neighborhood of the Sarsi; whether their occupancy of the southern Plains falls into a very recent past.  On this point, I have no new observation to offer: I merely accept whole-heartedly the suggestions made by Wissler and Kroeber, viz. that the tribe has been in the region of the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers for a considerable period; that their presence in the north 'may have been due to their periodic wanderings' (Wissler); that after a temporary sojourn in the north they returned to their southern habitat, 'legend retaining only the last of the events' (Kroeber)." (Lowie 1953)

I like the Mooney narrative because it's thorough and precise and it has a lot of dates.  But it's true that precision and accuracy aren't the same thing, and I don't really have the scholarly toolset to evaluate how reliable it is: all I can do is rely on what the experts say.  And while it's interesting to learn that Clark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber both believed the Kiowas' northern residence to be a temporary interruption of a more permanent residence in the south... it is my distinct impression that modern experts have come to agree with the Mooney narrative, at least in broad terms.  Wissler and Kroeber were working during a time when the Kiowas' northern origin was still an anomaly, when archaeologists thought that the Fremont culture represented the early Apache.  Scott Ortman makes (what seems to me, at least) a strong case for the Proto-Kiowa being in the Fremont area... or, if not there, then at least at the northern end of a Kiowa-Tanoan dialect chain extending north from the Colorado Plateau.  From that point, it's a matter of simple geometry to explain how they ended up in Montana.

Argument #2:  The Kiowa were found in the east Texas region in 1687-1719, but they didn't live there—they were just visiting ("visiting") from the north.  There's a lot to be said for this argument.  It is true that the Kiowa in historic days were incredibly mobile.  Mildred Mayhall says that Kiowa raiding parties could range as far and wide as the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California, and Canada.  One raiding party allegedly went as far as Belize (British Honduras), which I find a little incredible...

Furthermore, it's a matter of record that Kiowas did occasionally wander as far south as New Mexico in the early 18th century.  Spanish records from the 1730's onward report groups of "Caiguas" (etc.) pillaging New Mexico settlements alongside Ute, Comanche, and Apache raiders.  And David Brugge even found references to a Kiowa burial as early as 1727 in the church records of New Mexico (Brugge 1965).  This fact alone would seem to belie the notion that the Kiowas were too far away to have been the "Quiohuans": if they could travel to New Mexico in the 1720's, what's to stop them from traveling to the east end of Texas as well?

Two responses to that.  Firstly, the Kiowa as they appear in the 18th century New Mexico records all share an important dissimilarity to the Quiohuan, but I'll get back to that later.  Secondly—and I could be wrong here—but it's probably safe to assume that the Kiowas' globetrotting habits of later eras were enabled by the acquisition of the horse.  Presumably they didn't walk to Belize... and I suspect they didn't walk to Texas, either.  Much has been written about how the acquisition of the horse upturned Plains Indian culture in just about every conceivable way.  Mooney expressed it rather picturesquely:

"It is unnecessary to dilate on the revolution made in the life of the Indian by the possession of the horse.  Without it he was a half-starved skulker in the timber, creeping up on foot toward the unwary deer or building a brush corral with infinite labor to surround a herd of antelope, and seldom venturing more than a few days' journey from home.  With the horse he was transformed into the daring buffalo hunter, able to procure in a single day enough food to supply his family for a year, leaving him free then to sweep the plains with his war parties along a range of a thousand miles." (Mooney 1898:161)

I know of no references to the Quiohuan from before 1687 (see below).  That seems rather early, to me, for a tribe of southern Montana to have already acquired and mastered horsecraft.  It's not impossible—the Rocky Mountain Shoshone and Flatheads had horses by about 1700 (Hämäläinen 2003)—but I find it unlikely.  The Kiowa told James Mooney that they didn't acquire horses until after they moved east of the Crow and settled in the Black Hills, which Mooney estimated was after 1700.  And, without the use of horses, I think it's also unlikely that the Kiowas could have performed long-distance raids as far south as Texas back in the 1680's.  It's also worth pointing out that the first definite reference to the Kiowa in the New Mexico records postdates the last reference to the Quiohuan by nearly a decade.

Argument #3:  It is true the Quiohuan were not in east-central Texas in 1687-1719, nor even in Oklahoma, but then again no one ever claimed they were.  This argument also has merit.  Older maps appear to show the "Quiohouhahan" etc. somewhere in Texas or maybe Oklahoma (or maaaybe Arkansas), but the geometry of those maps is very confused.  For example, they also tend to show the source of the Rio Grande as just a short distance due west of Minnesota.  I don't know what Delisle's sources of information were for the upper course of the Red River, Trinity River, etc... he may have just been guessing, for all I know.

A better way to interpret the early maps is as just saying the Quiohuan were some undefined distance inland.  And the contemporary documents which mention the Quiohuan may have only been reporting rumors of a tribe located much farther into the interior than the authors themselves ever ventured... maybe even as far as MT/WY/SD?  Is that possible?

Maybe.  But I don't think it's probable.  This is probably a good time to discuss the documents themselves.

*   *   *

The first time I'm aware of when "Quiohuan" (etc.) appears in writing is in the journal of Henri Joutel in 1687.  Joutel was among the Caddo at the time, staying in a Kadohadacho ("Cadodaquis") village in what is now the extreme northeast corner of Texas:

"Now the chief often named the nations for me, their enemies as well as their allies, and he named some I had heard formerly from La Salle, and this pleased me.  I took the names of these nations and wrote them down so I could recall them.

These tribes are their enemies:

Cannaha, Nasitti, Houaneiha, Catouinayos, Souanetto, Quiouaha, Taneaho, Canoatinno, Cantey, Caitsodammo, Caiasban, Tahiannihouq, Natsshostanno, Cannahios, Hianogouy, Hiantatsi, Nadaho, Nadeicha, Chaye, Nadatcho, Nardichia, Nacoho, Cadaquis, Nacassa, Tchanhe, Datcho, Aquis, Nahacassi

These tribes are their allies:

Cenis, Nassoni, Natsohos, Cadodaquis, Natchittas, Nadaco, Nacodissy, Haychis, Sacahaye, Nondaco, Cahaynohoua, Tanico, Cappa, Catcho, Daquio, Daquinatinno, Nadamin, Nouista, Douesdonqua, Dotchetonne, Tanquinno, Cassia, Neihahat, Annaho, Enoqua, Choumay" (Joutel 1998[1684-7]:246)¹

The second time is from a letter written in Spanish by Fray Francisco Casañas in 1691.  Casañas had spent about a year preaching the gospel among the Hasinai and Kadohadacho:

"The enemies of the Province of the Áseney [Hasinai] are the following: Anao, Tanico, Quibaga, Canze, Áyx, Nauydix, Nabiti, Nondacau, Quitxix, Zauanito, Tanquaay, Canabatinu, Quiguaya*, Diujuan, Sadammo." (Casañas 1927[1691])

(* - In one of the printed editions, this name is spelled "Quiguayua".)

Then by 1716 (at least), the name begins to appear on French maps of North America.  The mapmaker, Guillaume Delisle, had access to the journal of Henri Joutel (Foster 1998:26), so his maps might not be an independent witness.  However, as far as I know Delisle could not have learned about the Yojuane ("Ionhouannez") from Joutel or anyone else I'm aware of, so he may have had other sources of information.

The next appearance is in 1717, in the "Declaration" of Louis Juchereau de St. Denis.  St. Denis was a French trader and explorer who had spent time among the Natchitoches and the Hasinai.  The document (written in Spanish, and by a third party, which is why St. Denis is referred to as "he") reads:

"To the east of the Tejas [Hasinai] is the Natchitoches nation on the Colorado [=Red] River, which empties into the Mississippi.  Those which are to the north, northwest, and west of the Asinais are the nation Yojuan, the Tancahoe, the Quihuugan, the Guanetjaa, the Nodacao, the Quitzais, Saccahe, Nauittij, Canohatinoo, Conux, Tahoangaraa, Cahineo, and there are others whose names he does not remember.  He [St. Denis] knows of them from what he has heard the Tejas say and by reports which they themselves have heard.  These nations do not have villages nor fixed abodes because of fear of the Apaches." (St. Denis 1923[1717])

The next is from 1719, from the journal of Bénard de La Harpe's exploration of the Arkansas River.  La Harpe had sent his aide, a M. Du Rivage, on a reconnoitering expedition up the Red River:

"...he reported to me that at seventy leagues by land to the westward and from the west a quarter northwest, he had encountered part of the nomadic tribes, which are Quidehais, Naouydiches, Joyvan, Huanchané, Huané, Tancaoye, by whom he had been very well received. [...] These nations are allied with that of the Quiohuan, situated at two leagues from the Red River, on the left, in going up to the environs of the place where M. Du Rivage had found these nomadic nations." (La Harpe 1958[1718-20])

Daniel Prikryl (2001) locates Du Rivage's encounter in the area around Lake Texoma, Texas.

The next time the name appears is in an anonymous document entitled Mémoire sur les Natchitoches (in Margry V6:228).  The text is undated, but according to Gunnerson & Gunnerson (1971) was written shortly after 1718:

"The nations which are near [the Red River], or which are established on its course, from its mouth to the places known to us, are the Aouayeilles, the Innatchas, the Quiouahans, the Touacanna or Paniouassas; these are near the River of the Otouys." (in Margry 1886 (Vol 6):228) [via Google Translate]

The last time the name appears is in a work by Baudry des Lozières: Voyage a la Louisiane, et sur le Continent de l'Amérique Septentrionale, written from 1794 to 1798.  This one can probably be discounted; I explain why in footnote 2.

Those are all the examples I could find of the Quiohuan being named in the historical documents.  There may be more examples—real-life historians who work with physical manuscripts might be able to find some—but for right now, that's all I got.

These documents all name the Quiohuan as either enemies or neighbors of the Caddo, or as allies or neighbors of the Wichita.  The Caddo and Wichita often fought each other, so the politics are consistent, one anomaly being the "Naouydiches" (etc.) who are called by a Caddo name (Nawidish - "Salt Place") even by Du Rivage's informants who, presumably, spoke Wichita.  Among the other tribes named that can be identified, most are either Caddo groups or groups reasonably close to the Caddo, such as Natchezan or Wichitan tribes.  The most distant outliers (again: that can be identified) are the Kansa (eastern Kansas) and the Tonkawa (northern Oklahoma, at most).

Any tribe from the north of Kansas—much less the plains west of the Black Hills—would be a very distant, oddball outlier on these lists.  That makes it unlikely that the "Quiohuan" were a tribe situated that far north, who were only known about second-hand.  In combination with the La Harpe account and the anonymous Mémoire³—which locate them in north-central Texas and northwest Louisiana—it also makes it unlikely that the Quiohuan were a northern tribe who only made seasonal raiding appearances in the south.  That eliminates Arguments #2 and #3.  Since almost all the other tribes named in the primary sources are southern tribes, it's reasonable to assume that the Quiohuan were a southern tribe as well.  Which means that they were not Kiowa.

However, that's not even my main reason for doubting the Quiohuan=Kiowa hypothesis.  My main reason is the simple observation that "Kiowa" and "Quiohuan" don't even look like they are the same name... not after you take English's unusual vowel spelling into account.  The name "Kiowa" is pronounced in English more or less like [kaiowa] or [kaiawa].⁴  The various times that the Kiowa are mentioned in Spanish colonial documents from New Mexico:

Cahiaguas, Cahiguas, Caihuas, Cargua [supposedly a misprint for *Caigua], Cayouas, Caigua, Caygua, Cahihua, Caiua, Cayba, Caiba, Cayga

[source: Mooney (1898) and Brugge (1965)]

...all seem to represent a similar pronunciation: something like [kaiwa].⁵  The English and Spanish forms are relatively straightforward renditions of the name as found in various Native American languages:

Káhiwaʔ (Caddo), Káhiwaʔa (Wichita), Kahíwa (Kitsai), Káʔiwa (Pawnee), KaʔíwA (Arikara), Kaiwa~Kaiwɨ (Comanche), Kkáðowa (Osage), Kkáʔiwa (Kansa and Ponca), "Gaiwa" (Omaha), Kaíwa (Oto), Kaiwah (Shoshone), Gáiwa (Towa)

(other languages use names that are completely unrelated)

[source: Handbook of North American Indians Volume 13(2)]

These are all pretty consistent—usually [kaiwa], [kahiwa], or [kaʔiwa]—making the question of which language English and Spanish borrowed the name from irrelevant.

Now, on the other hand, the various spellings of Quiohuan:

in French:

Quiouaha, Quiohouhahan, Quiohouan, Quichuan [for *Quiohuan], Quiohuan, Quiouahans

in Spanish:

Quiguaya [or maybe *Quiguayua], Quihuugan

...all look like attempts at spelling something like [kiwa] or [kiowa] (or possibly [kiwaą] or [kiowaą]).  I think this is a different name.  There appear to be two separate names here: one, a kai- name, definitely referring to the Kiowa each time it appears; and another, a kio- name, which only ever refers to a tribe in/near east Texas... in what would be an unusual place and time to find the Kiowas.  The visual similarity between the names "Quiohuan" and "Kiowa" is the only reason anyone believes in a Kiowa-Quiohuan connection in the first place (and not in, say, a Kiowa-Canohatino connection).  But if the two names are not in fact the same, then that leaves no more reason to believe that the Quiohuan were the Kiowa.

Is it wise to be this literal in interpreting colonial-era spellings of Indian names phonetically?  Individually: no.  Europeans were barely consistent in spelling their own languages in the 17th-19th centuries, let alone the languages of North America with their glottal stops and lateral fricatives and so on.  Individually: it's more likely that a European, upon hearing a word in an Indian language, would inadvertently distort it in some way (either by mishearing it, misremembering it, or just being sloppy in writing it down).

But we're not dealing with an individual attestation of a name—we're dealing with about twenty.  It's one thing to say that the name was distorted... it's another to say that the name was distorted multiple times in exactly the same way each time.  Furthermore, the difference in orthography corresponds exactly to the difference in geography: all of the kio- names come from the region around east Texas, and all of the kai- names come from outside it.  Mathematically, it's highly unlikely this would happen by chance.  There are only three ways one could wave away this anomaly.

One way is to say that the name [≈kaiwa] wasn't distorted numerous times into [≈kiowa]—rather, it only happened once.  Like a genetic mutation that only has to happen one time and then gets inherited by all of the organism's descendants, maybe there was one initial French writer (Joutel in this case) who rendered the name as "Quiouaha", and then all later writers were just copying him.  On its own merits, this explanation seems unlikely.  Delisle and Beaurain were copying other documents, yes, but I see no reason to conclude that La Harpe, Casañas, and St. Denis were all copying Joutel (or each other)—they seem to all be separate and independent witnesses.

Another possible explanation is that the various spellings of "Quiohuan" are all based on an intermediate Indian language, one in which the original [≈kaiwa] had become [≈kiowa].  Like the previous explanation, this removes the statistical unlikelihood of numerous identical mutations by positing only one mutation instead.  Unfortunately, however, it's an appeal to nonexistent evidence: no such intermediary form is attested in any Indian language that could have been the source of the kio- spellings.  Joutel explicitly says he heard the name from a (Caddo-speaking) Kadohadacho chief, and it's hard to believe any of the other authors got their versions via any language other than Caddo or Wichita.  But the name for the Kiowa in the Caddo and Wichita languages is Káhiwaʔ and Káhiwaʔa, respectively.  Not **Kihowaʔ or whatever you might want for this explanation to work.

Another way to wave away the anomaly, is to say that the "Quio-" spelling or the kio- pronunciation is just a French idiosyncrasy that arises for some reason.  This explanation can be easily dismissed on both sides.  For one, "Quiguaya" and "Quihuugan" both look to be kio- names, yet they both come from Spanish documents.  For another, the first time that the Kiowa are unambiguously named (i.e. in their historically attested location) in a French document, that document uses a kai- spelling: the document in question is by Perrin du Lac in 1802, the location is western South Dakota, and the spelling is "Cayoavvas" (Mayhall 1971:23).  This proves that Frenchmen were entirely capable of accurately writing [≈kaiwa] if they wanted to.  The fact that both they and the Spaniards only wrote [≈kiowa] when referring to a tribe in/near eastern Texas, and never wrote it anywhere else... means that the tribe in/near eastern Texas was not the Kiowa.  The Quiohuan were not the Kiowa.

I'm pretty sure I am not being circular in my argument.  I didn't pre-select all of the kio- names because they were kio- names and then say: Hey! Look! They're all kio- names!  The chronological and geographical separation of the Quiohuan from the Kiowa is real.  So is the consistent way in which one group is called by kio- names, and the other by kai- names.  There is no overlap, and no exception to the pattern, and it cannot be explained away as happenstance.  The evidence points to the existence of two different, unrelated Native American tribes: the Kiowa and the Quiohuan.

Locations associated with the Kiowa and Quiohuan.  K1: Kiowa homeland (pre-1700).  K2: Montana plains (1700-1775).  K3: Black Hills (pre-1775).  K4: Location of Cheyenne, who shared territory with the "Cayoavvas" according to Perrin du Lac (1802).  K5: North Fork of the Platte River, location of the "Kiawas" according to William Clark (1804).  K6: Arkansas River, location of Kiowa-Comanche truce (1806).  Q1: Kadohadacho village visited by Joutel (1687).  Q2: Hasinai villages visited by Casañas and St. Denis (1691-1717).  Q3: Natchitoches village visited by St. Denis, also the location of the "Quiouahans" according to the anonymous Mémoire (1717-1718).  Q4: Location of the "Quiohuan" reported by M. du Rivage (1719).  C: New Mexico, where Spanish documents record the presence of "Caiguas" (1727 and after).  P: Possible location of the "Pioya" or "Piwassa" encountered by La Vérendrye (1742).

I know of only one putative counterexample to the pattern that the Kiowa are never unambiguously called by a kio- name.  I say "putative" because in fact it is not actually a counterexample, as I will explain:

In 1742, François de La Vérendrye departed from the Mandan villages in North Dakota and headed southwest, trying to find any Indian group who might direct him to the Pacific Ocean.  He never reached the Pacific, and had to turn back after coming near to an unidentified mountain range which people have since speculated may have been the Black Hills, the Bighorn Mountains, or the Wind River Range.  All three possibilites would place La Vérendrye's itinerary in or near Kiowa territory.

La Vérendrye's account mentions several Indian groups that his expedition encountered, some of which may have been tribes, others bands within a single tribe.  The tribes or bands are identified using names that are descriptive but not very helpful: the Bow People, the Beautiful Men, the Little Cherry People, etc.  However, one group is named phonetically rather than in translation: the Pioya.  It has been said that these "Pioya" were the Kiowa, and that the name results from somebody miscopying an earlier manuscript in which the name was spelled "Kioya".

Unfortunately, this theory is rendered unlikely by the existence of a summary of La Vérendrye's expedition written by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in 1757.  Bougainville apparently, somehow, had more information on the Indian tribes encountered by the expedition than La Vérendrye gives in his own account (perhaps he had an inside source), and he gives for each tribe their Cree or Ojibwe appellation in addition to the French.  This makes it easier for modern linguists to identify them.

As for the Pioya, Bougainville calls them the "Piwassa" and says that this name means "Grands-Parleur" or Great Talkers (Parks 2001).  Unfortunately this still doesn't tell us who the Pioya were, since apparently neither Pioya nor Piwassa are recognizable words in any Native American language.  But if the two versions of the name are at all related, then it means that "Pioya" is probably close to the original form—in other words, it is not a misprint for "Kioya".  Also of note: the name "Kiowa" does not mean "Great Talkers"—supposedly, it means "Elks".

That doesn't prove that the Pioya were not the Kiowa, of course.  But it does prove that at least the name "Pioya" has nothing to do with the name "Kiowa".  And that means that what I said before still stands: that the Kiowa are never anywhere referred to using a kio- name.

So in summary, I do not think that the Quiohuan were the same people as the Kiowa.  I do not know who the Quiohuan were—some tribe of eastern Texas or southern Oklahoma or maybe western Louisiana or Arkansas... often enemies of the Caddo, especially the Hasinai—but they were not the Kiowa.  Maybe they were a small tribe who (like so many in the 18th century) merged with others to form a new corporate tribal entity, losing their previous identity in the process.  Maybe the name "Quiohuan" is synonymous with some other Native American group that usually goes by a different name.  Maybe they were all killed...

... Or maybe they were the Kiowa.  Shit, I dunno.

( Postscript:  One group who I have not mentioned is the "Marhout" or "Manrhout", a tribe who according to La Salle lived south of the Wichitas in 1682-3 (Wedel 1973; Hickerson 1996).  La Salle mentions the Manrhout alongside another tribe called the "Gatacka", a name that usually refers to the Kiowa-Apaches (from Pawnee Katahkaaʾ), and it is for this reason people often say that the Manrhout were the Kiowas.   The reason I haven't mentioned them before now is because I see no good reason to think that the Manrhout were the Kiowas, or anyone else in particular.  The name "Manrhout" is not attested anywhere else except in sources based on La Salle.  Furthermore, the word katahkaaʾ in Pawnee refers not only to the Kiowa-Apaches but also to "any tribe west of the Pawnees" (Parks & Pratt 2008), so it's not as useful as some would have you think. )

Notes

1.  Joutel also mentions a "Quouan" tribe earlier in his account.  I don't know if that is related—I haven't seen anyone else mention them when discussing the Kiowa or Quiohuan.

2.  The name "Les quiohohouans" appears in Voyage a la Louisiane, et sur le Continent de l'Amérique Septentrionale by Baudry des Lozières (written 1794-8), evidently the last time any variant of the name Quiohuan appears in a historical document.  The name appears on a list of apparently all the Indian tribes of Spanish Louisiana that B. de Lozières was aware of.  Other than that, nothing is said about them.  Since the list also includes the names of several other obscure tribes which were probably gone by 1794, I assume that Lozières was copying numerous older sources, and that this is also where he heard about the "Quiohohouans".

3.  The Mémoire seems a little odd to me (maybe blame Google Translate).  Sometimes its "Rivière Rouge" seems to be referring to the Red River, sometimes to the Arkansas River.  The "Innatchas" are the Natchez, the "Aouayeilles" are the Avoyel (a Natchezan tribe), and the "Touacanna or Paniouassas" are the Tawakoni Wichitas.  The "River of the Otouys" probably refers to the Osotouy, a Quapaw group who lived near the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers, and not to the Otoes who lived way further north.

4.  I'm only considering the modern, standard pronunciation of English "Kiowa".  English spelling is such a trainwreck that any attempt to interpret the intended pronunciations of historical English spellings would just muddy the data.

5.  Not to go into the niceties of Spanish phonology in the main body text...  Historically the phoneme /w/ in Native languages was often rendered <u>, <hu>, or <gu> by Spanish writers.  Spanish itself has no such phoneme, so for monolingual speakers this would probably be more like [kaiɣua] or [kaixua], which are close enough.  Meanwhile, modern Spanish has apparently borrowed "Kiowa" from English in both spelling and pronunciation, at least going off of Spanish Wikipedia and this video.

Sources (primary):

[anonymous], Mémoire sur les Natchitoches [undated, probably written shortly after 1718].  Published in: Pierre Margry (ed.), Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans l'Ouest et dans le Sud de l'Amérique Septentrionale, Vol 6:228.1886.

Louis-Narcisse Baudry des Lozières, Voyage a la Louisiane, et sur le Continent de l'Amérique Septentrionale, fait dans les années 1794 à 1798. 1802.

Jean Chevalier de Beaurain, Journal Historique de l'Établissement des Français a la Louisiane. 1831.  (Allegedly a rewrite of La Harpe, Relation du Voyage.)

Francisco Casañas de Jesús María, Letter and Report of Fray Francisco Casañas de Jesus Maria to the Viceroy of Mexico, Dated August 15, 1691 [1691].  Spanish text in: John Swanton, Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians. 1942.  English translation in: Descriptions of the Tejas or Asinai Indians, 1691-1722, tr. Mattie Austin Hatcher. 1927.

William Clark, "Fort Mandan Miscellany" [1804-5].  Accessible online.

Jean-Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe, Relation du Voyage de Bénard de La Harpe [1718-20].  French text in: Pierre Margry ed., Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans l'Ouest et dans le Sud de l'Amérique Septentrionale, Vol 6:243. 1886.  English translation in: Account of the Journey of Bénard de la Harpe: Discovery Made by Him of Several Nations Situated in the West, tr. Ralph A. Smith. 1958.

François de La Vérendrye, Journal of the Voyage Made by Chevalier de la Verendrye, with One of His Brothers, in Search of the Western Sea Addressed to the Marquis de Beauharnois [1742-3], tr. Anne H. Blegen. 1925.

Henri Joutel, The La Salle Expedition to Texas: The Journal of Henri Joutel 1684-1687 [1684-7], tr. Johanna S. Warren, ed. & commentary William C. Foster. 1998.

Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, St. Denis's Declaration Concerning Texas in 1717 [1717], tr. Charmion Clair Shelby. 1923.

Sources (secondary):

David M. Brugge, Some Plains Indians in the Church Records of New Mexico. 1965.

William C. Foster, Introduction and commentary in The La Salle Expedition to Texas: The Journal of Henri Joutel 1684-1687. 1988.

Sally T. Greiser, "Late Prehistoric Cultures on the Montana Plains", in Karl H. Schlesier ed. Plains Indians: A.D. 500-1500: The Archaeological Past of Historic Groups. 1994.

James H. Gunnerson & Dolores A. Gunnerson, "Apachean Culture: A Study in Unity and Diversity", in Keith H. Basso & Morris E. Opler ed. Apachean Culture History and Ethnology. 1971.

Pekka Hämäläinen, The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures. 2003.

Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr., "Brazos River”, in the Handbook of Texas Online, published online: 2010.

Nancy P. Hickerson, "Ethnogenesis in the South Plains: Jumano to Kiowa?", in Johnathan D. Hill ed. History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992. 1996.

Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795. 1975.

—, An Earlier Chapter of Kiowa History. 1985.

Jerrold E. Levy, "Kiowa". In Handbook of North American Indians Vol 13(2). 2001.

Robert H. Lowie, Alleged Kiowa-Crow Affinities. 1953.

Mildred P. Mayhall, The Kiowas. 1971.

William C. Meadows, New Data on Kiowa Protohistoric Origins. 2016.

James Mooney, Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898.

John H. Moore, Margot P. Liberty, A. Terry Straus, "Cheyenne". In Handbook of North American Indians Vol 13(2). 2001.

William W. Newcomb, Jr., Historic Indians of Central Texas. 1993.

Morris E. Opler, "The Apachean Culture Pattern and Its Origins". In Handbook of North American Indians Vol 10. 1982.

Scott G. Ortman, Winds from the North: Tewa Origins and Historical Anthropology. 2012.

Scott G. Ortman & Lynda D. McNeil, The Kiowa Odyssey: historical relationships among Pueblo, Fremont, and Northwest Plains peoples. 2017.

Douglas R. Parks, "Enigmatic Groups". In Handbook of North American Indians Vol 13(2). 2001.

Douglas R. Parks & Lula Nora Pratt, A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee. 2008.

Daniel J. Prikryl, Fiction and Fact about the Titskanwatits, or Tonkawa, of East Central Texas. 2001.

David Leedom Shaul, A Prehistory of Western North America. 2014.

Mildred Mott Wedel, The Identity of La Salle's Pana Slave. 1973.

The Kiowa and the Quiohuan (Part 1 of 2)

[This is part 1 of a 2-part series of posts about the identity of the Quiohuan Indians.  Click here for part 2.]

In a previous post on this blog, I examined the question of who the aboriginal inhabitants of Central Texas were at the beginning of the frontier era (or approximately 1600 A.D.).  In it I came to the conclusion that, in the absence of better sources, the best I can do is rely on the account of Alonso de Posada, who reported that in the mid-1600's a tribe lived in western Central Texas (henceforth "WCT") whom he called the Cuitoa.  I then updated my work-in-progress map as follows:

Texas ca. 1600

That still leaves two gaps: one mostly covering the Edwards Plateau, and the other covering eastern Central Texas (henceforth "ECT").  Regarding ECT, I further concluded the Tonkawa—who lived in ECT in later centuries—can be ruled out, as in 1600 they lived much farther to the north.  As a note on that point: I have since learned new information which has forced me to change my conclusions a bit.  It now seems that the Tonkawa were not in central Kansas, as I wrote, but were actually in northern Oklahoma.  Either way, they were not in Central Texas.

However, the question remains: who were the peoples of ECT in 1600?  That question will... not be answered in this post, nor in Part 2.  The purpose of this post, rather, is to discuss which tribe was not in ECT in 1600.  (Spoilers: it's the Kiowa.)

The literary sources for ECT are various and confusing for a layman like myself—especially when they're in untranslated French, a language that I can't read.  They also tend to be late (ca. 1680's onward), at least when compared to the Spanish documents that describe WCT.  So instead of discussing those documents right now, just for the moment let's look at some early maps of North America and see what they have to say.  Here is one from 1703 (I've outlined the ECT area in red):

Here's another from 1718 (which is a more nicely-drawn version of an earlier map from 1716):

These maps were both created by the famous cartographer Guillaume Delisle, patron saint of North American mapmakers.  I happen also have another of his maps in hardcopy, this one from 1722, and I might as well show it as well:

It's difficult to interpret these maps, created as they were long ago, from very limited data, with contradictions regarding the locations of rivers and of Indian tribes, all of which are given under obsolete names.  However, the first two maps contain a similar cluster of names for the tribes dwelling somewhere along (or above or north/northeast of) the "Rivière Maligne" and west (or above) the "Rivière des Cenis".  The Cenis is the modern Trinity River, and the Maligne may be either the Brazos or the Colorado (cf. Hendrickson 2010, Foster 1998:33).  In no particular order, the names of these tribes are:

Canoatinno/Kanoatino[s], Chouman[s], Cannesi, Quichesse, Canoüaouana/Kanouhanan, Quiohouhahan/Quiohouan, Iouhouhouane/Ionhouannez

I will have much more to say about these names in the future (some are easier to deal with than others), but for now I only want to focus on one: Quiohouhahan/Quiohouan.  Variants of this name appear in several French documents from the colonial period (e.g. "Quiouaha" in the journal of Henri Joutel), and it appears to be the same as the "Quiguaya" mentioned in a Spanish document from 1691 (Casañas 1941[1691], Joutel 1998[1684-7]:246).

It is also the same as another name I've discussed previously on this blog: "Quichuan", a tribe who Sieur du Rivage, Benard de la Harpe's aid, located just south of the Red River in 1719.  "Quichuan" is how this name is spelled in Ralph Smith's English translation of La Harpe's journal, and in the French version found in volume 6 of Pierre Margry's Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans l'Ouest et dans le Sud de l'Amérique Septentrionale.  However, in another account of La Harpe's voyage—allegedly edited (or written?) by Jean Chevalier de Beaurain and published in 1831—the name is spelled like "Quiohuan".

Interestingly, I was also able to find another Guillaume Delisle map—this time from 1717—which uses the <c> spelling, so the confusion over how to spell this name is quite old:

This I think proves that the the names "Quichuan" and "Quiohouan"(etc.) are supposed to be the same.  It also shows that there was confusion over whether to spell it with <c> or <o> already by the early 1700's.  The weight of evidence now seems to strongly come down in favor of the <o> spelling.  In a previous post, I speculated that La Harpe's "Quichuan" might be the same as the Cuitoa and/or the Quitaca: it now seems that I was wrong.

Now, having just said that I was previously wrong about the identity of the Quiohuan, I am going to stick my neck out and risk being wrong again, because I've decided that I disagree with the scholarly consensus on this.  Almost every author who I have seen mention the Quiohuan has identified them as the Kiowa.  At first glance, this identification seems pretty obvious.  For one, the two names are already almost identical, modulo French spelling.  For another, the recorded location of the Quiohuan (somewhere in northish-centralish Texas roundabout the vicinity of the Red River) is reasonably close to the Kiowas' territory later, in the 1800's:

Based on map in Handbook of North American Indians.  Note that the Kiowa territory as shown here severely overlapped with that of their allies the Comanche.

If this theory is true, then that would make the Kiowa one of the tribes in ECT during the late-1600's and perhaps earlier, meaning that I could write "Kiowa" into that blank space on that map of mine.  However, I believe that the identification of the Quiohuan as the Kiowa is wrong.  Explaining why I think it's wrong, why the experts think it's right regardless, and why I still think they're wrong double-regardless, will be the topic of Part 2.  Before I get to that, however, I need to lay out some preliminaries—I need to discuss the origins of the Kiowa.

A good way to figure out a people's origin is to look at their language.  The language that the Kiowas speak belongs to the Kiowa-Tanoan language family, meaning that it (/they) shares a common ancestry with the Tanoan languages (/peoples) of the Pueblo region, in northern New Mexico.

The Pueblo Region ca. 1600 (from John (1975)).  I've color-coded the settlements by language group: cyan=Tanoan, scarlet=Keresan, purple=Zuni, orange=Hopi (Uto-Aztecan), and yellow=Unknown.

According to an analysis of the names for various flora and fauna as reconstructed in the Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan language, the common ancestors of the Kiowas and Tanoans lived reasonably close to the Pueblo region: meaning that the Kiowas are the ones who moved out and the Tanoans are the ones who (mostly) stayed put.  One might conclude, therefore, that the Kiowas reached their historic location via a quick jaunt to the east:

This, as it turns out, is not the case.  According to tribal tradition, as documented by James Mooney in 1898, the ancestral Kiowa homeland lay far to the north, in the mountain valleys of southwestern Montana near the headwaters of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, whence they subsequently moved eastward and into the Black Hills.  Further testimony from the Arapaho, Crow, and Lakota tribes confirms that the Kiowas formerly occupied the region between the Yellowstone River and the Black Hills.  Mooney estimated this residence as lasting roughly from just-before-1700 to just-after-1775.

So, the trajectory of the Kiowas' from the Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan homeland actually looks like this:

So how did they get way up there, and how do we know it?  In order to be any more specific, I have to talk about archaeology, which is something I never like doing because I don't really understand archaeology [and because no 2 authors can ever agree on dates...].  But I'll do my best.  My chief sources of information here are the works of Scott G. Ortman (2012 & 2017).

With that said, here is—as far as I can manage—a brief history of the Kiowa to 1806:

*   *   *

If there ever was a "Golden Age" of Native American civilization north of Mexico, I suppose it would be from ≈1000 to ≈1300 A.D.  It was during this period that, almost simultaneously, you have both the Anasazi cliff-dwelling cultures in the Southwest and the moundbuilding cultures of Cahokia-and-environs in the eastern woodland.  Both of these cultures are prominent enough that they get mentioned pretty often in mainstream publications—you've probably heard of them.  To some extent this Golden Age existed on the Plains as well, since this is also when you get the (Panian-speaking) Central Plains Village culture in Nebraska-Kansas.

Archaeological cultures of the Southwest during the Golden Age. (I forgot the source for this.)

This Golden Age came to an end during the 14th century: ca. 1300 for the Anasazi, and a little later for the Moundbuilders (note that this is over a century before Columbus was born).  I don't think people entirely know what caused the collapse.  For Cahokia, I've seen it said that they succumbed to political instabilities inherent to the paramount chiefdom-style of government.  The collapse of the Anasazi has been blamed on foreign invasion, drought, overexploitation of natural resources, and political turmoil—one expert I contacted compared their situation to that of modern-day Syria.

By the way, I can't mention the Anasazi without mentioning that they were something of a meme back in the 1990's.  For some reason, and I don't know why, people kept wanting to find something supernatural involved in their disappearance.  There was an episode of The X-Files about the Anasazi, as well as an episode of In Search Of hosted by Leonard Nimoy.  I also remember an episode of The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest where it was implied that the Anasazi had been abducted by aliens.

It's generally assumed that the Anasazi were the ancestors of the modern day Pueblo peoples: the Tanoans, Keresans, Hopi, and Zuñi... though there may have been other groups as well that have since vanished to history (it's been suggested that the Piro were one such group, but cooler heads seem to think that they were Tanoan).  These ancestral Puebloans were once more spread out, but after the Anasazi collapse they concentrated into the Pueblo region.

As I said, the Kiowa are related to the Tanoans, and an analysis of the reconstructed Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan lexicon points to the Pueblo region as their ancestral homeland—actually a bit to the north of the Pueblo region proper, in the zone between the San Juan and Colorado Rivers (Ortman 2012).  But the Kiowa were never in the Pueblo region in historic times, meaning that when the Tanoans moved south following the Anasazi collapse, the Kiowa did not accompany them.  So where were they, and where did they go?

According to Scott Ortman, the ancestors of the Kiowa were not among of the classic-period Anasazi people.  Rather, they were in the Fremont region in Utah, north of the Anasazi (see map).  Ortman's argument has to do with dates, so let's talk dates.  Here is a rough chronology of archaeological phases in the Anasazi region, at least according to some sources:

Basketmaker II:   ≈ 1 – 500 A.D.

Basketmaker III:   ≈ 500 – 700 A.D.

Pueblo I:   ≈ 700 – 900 A.D.

Pueblo II:   ≈ 900 – 1100 A.D.

Pueblo III:   ≈ 1100 – 1300 A.D.

Pueblo IV:   ≈ 1300 – 1540 A.D.

[Prior to Basketmaker II is the Archaic period.  There apparently isn't a "Basketmaker I".]

At what point in this sequence did the Kiowa first separate from the Tanoans?  Estimates using glottochronology usually date the Kiowa↔Tanoan split to several millennia ago: Davis estimated the it at ≈2250 B.C.; Hale and Harris revised this to ≈1000 B.C. (qtd. in Shaul 2014:104).  But glottochronology is messy, and these numbers apparently seem off according to the experts.  For example, Davis estimated that nearly 2,000 years separated the Kiowa↔Tanoan split from the first internal split of Tanoan (Towa↔Tiwa-Tewa), but Hale, Harris, and Laurel Watkins all write that the Kiowa language does not seem that much more different from the Tanoan languages, than the Tanoan languages are from each other, for the Kiowa departure to have predated the internal Tanoan split by very much time, if at all.

Scott Ortman, more-or-less throwing glottochronology out the window, recalculated the timeline of the Kiowa-Tanoan family using the apparently more reliable Wörter-und-Sachen method ("Words-and-Things").  He describes the method thus:

"The principle behind this method is that when one can reconstruct a word for a cultural item in a protolanguage, one can also assume that the associated item was known to the speakers of that language.  If it is also possible to date the initial appearance of the item using archaeological evidence, one can argue that the protolanguage diversified after the introduction of that item.  Terms for cultigens and material culture are most useful for this type of analysis, and together provide one of the strongest and most direct links between archeology and language." (2012:162)

So, for example, Proto-Tanoan can be reconstructed as having words for the bow-and-arrow and various appurtenances of advanced maize agriculture, but Proto-Kiowa-Tanoan can only be reconstructed as having words for simpler maize agriculture, with no bow-and-arrow.  I believe this same method has also been used to estimate when Proto-Indo-European was spoken, based on the various vocabulary for chariot technology that can and can't be reconstructed in PIE.

Using this method, Ortman calculates that the Proto-Kiowa-Tanoans were a people of the Eastern Basketmaker II phase, and the Proto-Tanoans were of the Eastern Basketmaker III phase.  He dates the transition between Basketmaker II and III to around 450 A.D.:

The Kiowa-Tanoan language family, with forking dates estimated using the Wörter-und-Sachen method.  Based on Ortman (2012).

So the ancestors of the Kiowas broke off from their Tanoan kinsmen at some point before 450.  This is coincident with several lines of evidence that show a migration of Eastern Basketmaker II people from the Anasazi region into the Fremont during the first half-millennium A.D.:

"Many lines of evidence support this association.  First, Eastern Basketmaker II sites pre-date and overlap spatially with Fremont sites, and archaeologists have noted that several elements of Fremont culture, including cultigens, pit houses, and pottery spread into the Fremont area from the Pueblo area (Simms 2008).  In addition, mtDNA haplogroup frequencies suggest ancient Fremont populations and present-day Jemez people derive from the same maternal lineage (Carlyle et al. 2000).  Importantly, the Towa language spoken at Jemez Pueblo is also the language most closely related to Kiowa.  Third, Fremont coiled basketry [...] also exhibits continuities with both Late Archaic and Eastern Basketmaker II coiled basketry. [...] Finally, continuities between Eastern Basketmaker II and Eastern Fremont rock art suggests that the latter is dscended from the former, at least in part." (Ortman 2017)

Putting it all together, Ortman says that the ancestors of the Kiowa moved north from the Pueblo region into the Green River drainage, Uinta Basin, and Great Salt Lake areas of the Fremont region sometime between 250 and 450 A.D.

The Fremont culture collapsed along with the Anasazi in 1300 A.D., and the Tanoans (as well as the Keresans, who according to David Shaul controlled the prize locations of Pueblo Bonito and Cliff Palace) moved south into the historic Pueblo region, while the Proto-Kiowas moved north into the vicinity of Yellowstone Park.  It is around this time that a style of rock art called "Castle Gardens" appears in the Wind River and Bighorn basins—rock art which, again according to Ortman, is highly reminiscent both of Fremont rock art and of historical Kiowa art and regalia.  And that completes the circle, as that is the region which James Mooney's informants identified as the original Kiowa homeland.

It's noteworthy that it was the Yellowstone Park region which the Kiowa remembered as their homeland, and not, say, the Great Basin or Colorado Plateau.  Some have said that it was during their residence of southwest Montana that the Kiowa experienced their process of national ethnogenesis: when "the ancestors of the Kiowa" (who may have been several different groups) became "the Kiowa" themselves.

On the other hand, maybe it isn't that surprising that they didn't remember Fremont.  The Kiowa of Mooney's day were separated from their ancestors' flight from Utah by nearly 6 centuries.  Many people have said (and I tend to agree) that this far exceeds the time-depth to which oral tradition can be looked on as trustworthy.  In other words, they forgot.

...except maybe they didn't all forget.  In the 1990's, William Meadows recorded an oral family history as relayed by Parker P. McKenzie, a Kiowa linguist and former colleague of John P. Harrington's, who was then nearly a hundred years old (Meadows 2016).  This account was "codified" by McKenzie's great great great great great great great grandmother, who was likely born sometime in the mid- to late-1600's, and had been passed down through the maternal line.  According to Meadows and McKenzie's exegesis, the story describes a northbound exodus from the Colorado Plateau, to the Great Basin ("where people used jā́ugàu [tɔ́:gɔ̀]¹, or wooden rabbit hunting sticks"), through the "Ute Mountains" (the central Colorado Rockies), and across an enormous canyon which was either the Snake River or Green River Canyon.

This itinerary puts them in the mountain valleys of southwest Montana: the traditional Kiowa urheimat.  I'm usually pretty down on the reliability of oral histories this old, but the McKenzie narrative seems pretty plausible.

At this point the story is picked up by James Mooney in his much-cited Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, published in 1898.  Mooney had access to informants several generations elder to Parker McKenzie—folks who'd lived in the "Buffalo Days"—and he dealt mostly with the time period after 1700, so I consider him to be trustworthy:

"...the earliest historic tradition of the Kiowa locates them in or beyond the mountains at the extreme sources of the Yellowstone and the Missouri [River], in what is now western Montana.  They describe it as a region of great cold and deep snows, and say that they had the Flatheads (Á´daltoñ-ká-igihä´go [Ɔ́l-tʰǫ́-kʰɔ̀y-k'ì-hà:-gɔ̀]¹, 'compressed head people') near them, and that on the other side of the mountains was a large stream flowing westward, evidently an upper branch of the Columbia.  These mountains they still call Gâ´i K'op [Kɔ́yk'òpʰ]¹, 'Kiowa mountains.'" (Mooney 1898:153)

At some point which Mooney dated to 1700 or slightly before, the Kiowas left their mountain refuge and moved onto the plains, making allies with the Crow along the way.  They drifted eastward, crossing the Yellowstone River (or following "along" the Yellowstone, according to the Arapaho), and ultimately settled in the Black Hills of South Dakota, with the Crow as their neighbors to the west.  The Kiowa may have cohabitated the Crow territory at this time, since according to Mooney:

"The northern Cheyenne informed [George Bird] Grinnell that on first coming into their present country they had found the region between the Yellowstone and Cheyenne rivers, including the Black Hills, in possession of the Kiowa and Comanche (?), whom they drove out and forced to the south." (Mooney 1898:157)

"?" is right, as it would be strange to find the Comanche that far north in the 18th century (or ever).  Grinnell's informants probably meant to refer to the Shoshone tribe, close kinsmen of the Comanche, who terrorized the Northern Plains throughout the 1700's.  The other northern tribes called the Shoshone "Snakes" and were not overly fond of them.  According to the Handbook of North American Indians, "Snake People" (Séʔsenovotsétaneoʔo) was also the Cheyennes' name for the Comanche, so the confusion is understandable.

It occurs to me, by the way, that the Shoshone may also have been the ones responsible for the Kiowa leaving the mountains in ≈1700.  The Shoshone formerly resided (and many still do) in the Great Basin, and in crossing onto the Northern Plains it is likely they would have had to pass through the Kiowas' home in Montana, possibly driving them out.  The Comanche in the south first emerged from the mountains in the first decade of the 1700's, empowered by horses newly acquired.  It's likely that the Shoshones in the north did about the same thing at about the same time (or a bit later, depending on when they got horses in the north).

That, at least, is the conventional view.  Nowadays, archaeologists like to push that date further back.  Sally Greiser (1994) says the Shoshone may have been on the Plains as early as the 1400's.  She still says that the Shoshone may have been the ones to drive out the Kiowas—if so, that would mean Mooney was off in his chronological assessment by 200 years.  Although it's worth saying that according to Mooney the Kiowas had been on good terms with the Shoshone "so far as they can recollect".  But I digress.

As Mooney continues: the Kiowa were forced out of the Black Hills and driven south by the combined forces of the Sioux and Cheyenne.  A Lakota winter count records that the Sioux first arrived in the Black Hills in 1775.  Lewis and Clark found the Black Hills to be held by the Cheyenne in 1805.  They had been told by the Mandan the previous winter that the Kiowa were living on the North Fork of the Platte River, south of the Black Hills.  According to Mooney:

"This agrees with statements of old men of the Dakota confederacy, who informed the writer that within their early recollection that tribe [the Kiowa] had lived between the North Platte and the Niobrara, having been expelled from the Black Hills by the Dakota of the preceding generation." (Mooney 1898:166)²

So the Kiowa were driven out of the Black Hills sometime between 1775 and 1804.  They reported to Mooney that while they lived in the Black Hills, they had the Comanche as their neighbors to the south.  Fleeing south from the combined Cheyenne and Lakota advance, the Kiowas were forced to press upon the Comanches' northern frontier, which they did: pushing from the North Platte river to the South Platte, to the Republican and Smoky Hill, and to the Arkansas.  It was while the Kiowas and Comanches were on opposite side of the Arkansas River that the two tribes finally agreed to a peace and a permanent alliance.  Thereafter, the Kiowas and Comanches shared much of their territory in common.  Mooney dated this ceasefire to 1790.  Elizabeth A. H. John (1985) later revised that estimate to 1806.

Movements of the Kiowa and pre-Kiowa. Dates are given roughly as termini post quos.

At some point during all of this, the Kiowas formed a close association with a group of Apacheans known as the "Kiowa-Apache".  No one knows for sure just when where and why this alliance was established.  A group of northern Apaches ("Apaches del Norte") reportedly told a Spanish official in 1801 that their people had been cut off from the rest of the Apaches when the Comanche stormed the Plains—according to Elizabeth A. H. John, these Apaches del Norte were the Kiowa-Apache, and their association with the Kiowas therefore began no earlier than the 18th century.  William E. Bittle (cited in Opler 1983) calculated based on lexicostatistics that the Kiowa-Apache language separated from the other Apachean dialects in the 16th century.  Scott Ortman (2017) believes that the Kiowa-Apache became entangled with the Kiowa way back during the Fremont era.  I'm agnostic on the issue, for now.

[continued in part 2]

Notes:

1.  Whenever James Mooney or William Meadows cites a word in the Kiowa language, I provide a standard phonemic transcription in square brackets.  Mooney's citations use the old-fashioned pre-Swadesh orthography which is difficult to interpret, and Williams' citations use the McKenzie orthography of Kiowa which is, in my opinion, unnecessarily eccentric and not very useful.

2.  Terminological Note:  Nowadays the term "Dakota" properly refers only to the Santee Sioux of Minnesota and thereabouts.  In Mooney's day, however, "Dakota" was often used synonymously with "Sioux": encompassing the totality of the Santee, Teton, and Yankton-Yanktonai divisions.  Mooney's Sioux consultants were most likely from the Teton group, and in modern parlance would be referred to as Lakota.

[bibliography in Part 2]