MooNEY] NORTHERN ORIGIN OF THE KIOWA 155 



other of the well-kuowu prairie tribes, in that the buckskiu covering 

 is attached directly to a solid board back, which is elaborately carved 

 and painted in the style characteristic of the tribes of the Colninbia 

 and the nortliwest coast. On asking the old woman who made it, 

 where she had obtained the idea, she replied that it was the kind the 

 Kiowa used to make a very long time ago. On sliowing it afterward to 

 Dr Washington Matthews, the distinguished ethnologist and anatomist, 

 he exjiressed the ojiiniou that such a cradle would produce a flattened 

 skull. It is now in the National ^Museum at Washington. 



EARLY ALLIAlSrCE WITH THE CROWS 



The leading facts in the traditional history of the Kiowa are those of 

 their early residence at the extreme head of the Missouri and their 

 subsequent removal to the east and alliance with the Crows. It is 

 impossible to assign any definite date to this early migration from the 

 mountain country, but it was probably about or before 1700. It was 

 subsequent to the separation of the Crows from the Hidatsa, an event 

 which probably took place before the end of the seventeenth century 

 {Matthews, 2; Clark, 3), and it must have been long before the dis- 

 covery of the Black Hills by the Dakota, which, according to a calen- 

 dar of that people, occurred in 1775 (Malleri/, 2). The present tui-me 

 or sun-dance "medicine" of the Kiowa was obtained from the Crows 

 while the two tribes were neighbors in the north, at a date probably 

 very near 1765. It is probable that scarcity of game or severity of 

 climate had much to do with their original removal from the head of 

 the Missouri, but it is worthy of note that in all their wanderings the 

 Kiowa have never, for any long period, entirely abandoned the moun- 

 tains. After making friends with the Crows, they established them- 

 selves in the Black Hills until driven out by the invading Dakota and 

 Cheyenne, and now for seventy years or more they have had their main 

 headquarters in the Wichita mountains. 



The northern Arapaho, now living on a reservation in Wyoming, 

 have distinct recollection of this former northern residence of the 

 Kiowa, with whom in the old times they were on terms of intimate 

 friendship. While visiting them in 1892 they informed the author tbat 

 when they first knew the Kiowa that tribe lived about the Three forks 

 of the Missouri, near where are now Gallatin and Virginia City, Mon- 

 taTia. This information, obtained from old men without the use of 

 leading questions, and with the aid of good maps, tallies exactly with 

 the earliest tradition of the Kiowa tribe. They say further that the 

 Kiowa moved down from the mountains and eastward along the Yel- 

 lowstone in company with the Crows, and then turned southeastward 

 to about the i^resent neighborhood of Fort Eobinson, Nebraska, where 

 they parted with the Crows and continued southward. "Plenty-poles," 

 then nearly ninety years of age, first met the Kiowa when he was a 



