MooNET] KIOWA EARLY HABITAT 153 



time as he tapped upon the log until it came to the turn of a pregnant 

 woman, who stuck fast in the hole and thus blocked the way for those 

 behind her so that they were unable to follow, which accounts for the 

 small number of the Kiowa tribe. The same being gave them the 

 sun, made the division of day and night, exterminated a number of 

 malevolent monsters, and rendered the most ferocious animals harm- 

 less; he also taught them their simple hunting arts and tinally left 

 them to take his place among the stars. Other wonderful things were 

 done for them by a su|iernatural boy hero, whose father was the son of 

 the Sun and whose mother was an earthly woman. This boy afterward 

 transformed himself into two, and tinally gave himself to tlie Kiowa in 

 eucharistic form as a tribal "medicine," which they still retain. Unlike 

 the neighboring Cheyenne and Arapaho, who yet remember that they 

 once lived east of the Missouri and cultivated corn, the Kiowa have no 

 tradition of ever having been an agricultural people or anything but a 

 tribe of hunters.. 



Leaving the mythic or genesis period, the earliest historic tradition 

 of the Kiowa locates them in or beyond the mountains at the extreme 

 sources of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, in what is now western 

 Montana. They describe it as a region of great cold and deep snows, 

 and say that they had the Flathcads {A'dultorihi igihd'go, "com- 

 pressed 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 Gi'i'i JCop, 

 "Kiowa mountains.' Here, they say, while on a hunting expedition 

 on one occasion, a dispute occurred between two rival chiefs over the 

 possession of the udder of a female antelope, a delicacy particularly 

 prized by Indians. The dispute grew into an angry quarrel, with the 

 result that the chief who failed to secure the coveted portion left the 

 party and withdrew with his baud toward the northwest, while the rest 

 of the tribe moved to the southeast, crossed the Yellowstone (Tsosd 

 I"a, "pipe (!) stone river"), and continued onward until they met the 

 Crows {Ga(l-¥{iigo, "crow people"), with whom they had hitherto been 

 unacquainted. By permission of the Crows they took up their resi- 

 dence east of that tribe, with which they made their first alliance. Up 

 to this time they had no horses, but used only dogs and the travois. 

 For a while they continued to visit the mountains, but tinally drifted 

 out into the plains, where they first procured horses and became 

 acquainted with the Arapaho and Cheyenne, and later with the Dakota. 



Keim, writing in 1S7U, says that the Kiowa "claim that their primi- 

 tive country was in the far north," from which they were driven out by 

 wars, moving by the aid of dogs and dog sledges. "From the north 

 they reached a river, now the south fork of the Platte. Their residence 

 upon this river is within the recollection of the old men of the tribe. 

 Kot satisfied with the Platte country, they moved on across the Repub- 

 lican and Smoky Hill rivers until they reached the Arkansas. Thence 

 17 ETH -24: 



