154 CALENDAR HISTOllY OF THE KIOWA [eth.ann.17 



tbey moved upon tbe headwaters of the Cimarron. Here they perma- 

 nently located their council lire, and after much fighting secured con- 

 trol of all the country south of Arkansas river and north of the Wichita 

 mountains and headwaters of Red river" (Keim, 1). 



There can be no doubt as to the correctness of the main points of this 

 tradition, which is corroborated by the testimony of the northern Arap- 

 alio and other tribes of that region. While to the ordinary reader the 

 result of the (juarrel may seem out of all due proportion to the cause, 

 it will not appear so to anyone familiar with Indian life and thought. 

 The savage is intellectually a child, and from the point of view of 

 civilized man his history is shaped by trivial things, as will be suflB- 

 ciently apparent from a study of the calendars. It is said that a war 

 between the Delaware and Shawano originated in a dispute between two 

 children concerning a grasshopper. The Crows themselves, accord- 

 ing to their own story, separated from their kinsmen the Hidatsa or 

 Minitari on the Missouri for a reason precisely like that of the Kiowa 

 tradition — a cprarrel between two chiefs over the proper division of a 

 buffalo {Matthews, 1; Clnrlt, 2.) A similar story is related to account 

 for the origin of one of the bands of the Dakota. Among wandering 

 hunters disputes in regard to the ijossession or divisicm of game have 

 always been the most potent causes of separations and tribal wars. 



In regard to the dissatisfied band that went to the north, the Kiowa 

 have a fixed belief that their lost kindred, whom they call Azu'tanhop 

 ("those who went away dissatisfied on account of the udder"), are still 

 in existence beyond the mountains somewhere to the nortli or north- 

 west of their old home, where they still speak the old Kiowa language. 

 They assert as positively that they have no relatiyes in any other 

 quarter, east, west, or south. Several stories are current in the tribe 

 in support of this belief. One woman, now about 80 years of age, 

 when a child was taken by her father with others on a visit to their old 

 friends, tbe Crows, and says that while there they met a white trader 

 from the north, who addressed them in the Kiowa tongue, which he 

 said he learned from a tribe living farther north, which spoke the 

 Kiowa language. Again, they say that when the Nez Perces [A'dal- 

 katoigo, "people witli hair cut round across the forehead"), who had 

 been brought down as prisoners to Indian Territory, visited them in 

 1883, they told the Kiowa that they knew a people who lived in the 

 "white mountains" west of the old home of the Nez Perces in Idaho, 

 and who spoke a language similar to Kiowa. Whatever weight we 

 may attach to these stories, they at least offer a suggestion concerning 

 the direction in which the linguistic affinity of the Kiowa is to be 

 sought. 



Bearing on the subject of the early habitat of the tribe, it may fur- 

 ther be stated that, while making a collection among the Kiowa a few 

 years ago, the author obtained from them a small cradle which is 

 essentially different from any now in use among the Kiowa or any 



