Calendar history of the Kiowa Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 129-444))Mooney, James
History
Calendar history of the Kiowa Indians. (1898 N 17 / 1895-1896 (pages 129-444))
Mooney, James
Kiowa Indians; Kiowa language -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
In the afternoon the visitors gave a Pawnee war dance, of which Battey
wisely remarks:
I shall not render myself ridiculous by attempting to describe that
which is indescribable.... Individuals occupied the intervals
between the dances by narrating their own former valorous exploits,
not even omitting that their victims were in some instances Kiowas,
concluding by throwing their war implements upon the ground with
such force, in case of tomahawk or hatchet, as to cause the metal
to ring. Then, with gesture of covering it up, they would go away,
leaving it to lie there; thus intimating that, though they had been
foolish and fought, they now rejoiced in the beams of peace and
hoped that the red men everywhere might live in peace one with
another; all of which was received by the Kiowas with the loud
response of "How! how! Yes! yes!" (_Battey, 20_).
SUMMER 1872
This summer there was no sun dance, and in consequence the medicine
lodge does not appear on either calendar.
[Illustration: FIG. 152--Summer 1872--Viejo shot.]
For this summer the Anko calendar has two connected human figures,
together with what he explains as a "mule's head" above the medicine
pole. Between the forks of the pole is another human head, where he
commenced to draw the first figure, but found that he had no room. The
joined human figures refer to a drunken fight between Sun-boy and
T'ené-zépte, "Bird-bow" (?), growing out of some whisky smuggled in by
Mexicans, in which Sun-boy shot his antagonist with an arrow. The mule's
head indicates a raid into Kansas, in which the Kiowa captured a large
number of mules. This may have been the same raid in which Bíako was
shot.
The Set-t'an calendar has a picture of a man wounded in the chest, with
a tree above his head to show that the event occurred in summer. This
has reference to a skirmish with the whites in which a Mexican captive
named Bíako (Viejo) was shot, but afterward recovered. He was one of
those selected for confinement in Florida a few years later, and is
still living and with the tribe. The fight took place in the course of a
raid into Kansas by a small party of Kiowa under T'ené-'taide,
"Bird-chief," which was undertaken against the protests of the other
chiefs, who desired to be at peace with the Americans. Near
Medicine-lodge creek, not far from the Kansas line, they were joined by
some of the Osage, and soon afterward met a party of white men in
wagons, whom they thought were surveyors; a skirmish ensued, resulting
in the wounding of the captive and one of the Osage.
WINTER 1872-73
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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