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.
The Anko calendar records the fact that while the Kiowa were driving
away their issue of beef cattle some mischievous boys, shooting at the
cattle with their arrows, accidentally shot another boy in the shoulder,
but not fatally. In giving this explanation it was evident that Anko did
not want to mention the boy's name, probably because he was now dead.
[Illustration: FIG. 167--Winter 1879-80--Eye-triumph winter.]
WINTER 1879-80
_Tä´kágyä Sai_, "Eye-triumph winter." The name and story furnish a
curious illustration of Indian belief. Káäsä´nte, "Little-robe" (or
Little-hide), with two or three others, had gone to the North fork of
Red river to look for antelope. According to another story they went to
look for their old enemies, the Navaho, who, it seems, although now
removed to their former reservation in western New Mexico, still
occasionally penetrated thus far. Among them was a man named Pódodal (a
variety of bird), who claimed to understand the language of owls, a bird
believed by the Kiowa to be an embodied spirit. While resting one night
in camp this man warned Little-robe not to go to bed, but to round up
the ponies and keep watch over them, for an owl had told him that the
Navaho would try to steal them that night. During the night Pódodal
fired at something in the darkness, and on looking in the morning they
found the trail of a man, and blood drops, which they followed for a
long distance, but at last gave up the pursuit. That night the owl again
came and told Pódodal that the wounded Navaho was lying dead beyond the
point where they had turned back, and that he (the owl) would go and
fetch him.
On rising in the morning Pódodal saw some strange-looking object lying
on the ground in the lodge, and on examining it it proved to be the eye
of a dead Navaho. On the advice of Pódodal they then abandoned the hunt
and returned to the Kiowa camp, on a small branch of Apache creek
(_Sémät P'a_), an upper branch of Cache creek. They carried with them
the eye, hung at the end of a pole after the manner of a scalp, and
danced over it as over a scalp on arriving at the camp on the small
stream, since called _Tä´-kágyä P'a_, "Eye-triumph creek" from this
circumstance.
It should be added that there were some skeptics who laughed at the
whole story and declared that the eye was that of an antelope which
Pódodal had secretly shot.
On the Set-t'an calendar the event is indicated by a figure intended to
represent a scalp at the end of a pole, carried by a man wearing a
striped robe to indicate his name, Little-robe. On the Anko calendar
there is a representation of a scalp on a pole under the winter mark.
SUMMER 188O
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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