10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 87 



be said to know any Kitsai, and these habitually talk in Wichita 

 and use no English at all. Of these the man can control Kitsai in 

 its simple forms well; one woman who speaks Kitsai and Wichita is 

 not linguistically gifted in either, and is rather subnormal in intelli- 

 gence; while one woman, Kai Kai, is thoroughly bilingual in Wichita 

 and Kitsai, with a genuine talent for clear thought in language, and 

 it is from her that a knowledge of Kitsai has been obtained and 

 preserved. It may be said that only while she lives is Kitsai still 

 existent; and she is now past 83. 



So far as the Kitsai are known to other Caddoans as a group 

 distinct from the Wichita-speaking peoples, they are known by 

 phonetic variants of their own name.' The Wichita speak of the 

 language as ki'tse's, while their own pronunciation is kitsias; their 

 full name tikitsias. The Pawnees call them krtsas. Their own 

 name is said by Kai Kai to mean "going in wet sand"; while the 

 Pawnees translate their version of it as "water turtle." 



The Kitsai designate the various groups of the Wichita by the 

 regular Wichita band names, and the Pawnees as awahi, the same 

 name as that used by the Wichita for the Pawnee. 



WICHITA 



The Wichita language is spoken by eight of the nine bands of the 

 Wichita tribe, all bands save the tikitses or Kitsai. Today it con- 

 sists of one dialect only, and there is no evidence in the speech as 

 used by different W'ichitas of former subdivision or divergence. 

 But by tradition, and some casually remembered words and expres- 

 sions, it seems probable that at least two of the Wichita bands 

 spoke Wichita that was dialectically divergent to a minor degree. 



Information obtained and cross-checked with a number of infor- 

 mants yielded the following list of former Wichita bands. It is 

 probably as complete and accurate a list as can be secured at this 

 late date: toka'ne, tsi"s, tiwa', tta", kiriktri"s, akwi'ts, tawakgru'^', 

 weku' (and tikitse"s). James Mooney^ lists nine bands, some of 

 which are immediately identifiable with those above: thus kttikttish 

 (ktnktrish) for ktrikiri's; akwesh for akwi"ts; tawakoni (tawakarehu) 

 for tawakaru"'; and waco for weku'. "kirishkitsu", although it is 

 evidently intended for a Wichita-speaking group, may be an old 

 Wichita name for the tikitse's: in which case it is kik'i"skitsu, mean- 

 ing "water turtles", and forming an analogy to the meaning which 



' Unless "kirishkitsu", as mentioned below is the old Wichita name for the 

 Kitsai. 



- Handbook, pt. 2, p. 947. 



