MooxEY] ACQUIREMENT OF HORSES 161 



La Salle, in 1G82, states tliat the Gattacka( Kiowa Apache) and IManrhoat 

 (Kiowa?) had then plenty of horses, which he says they had probably 

 stolen from New Mexico (Marf/ry, 1). 



The notice in VillaseFior would indicate that they were able to mount 

 some of their warriors as early as 1748, as it is hardly probable that 

 they would have been able to attract attention by their inroads so far 

 south as the Sjianish settlements if their warriors had been obliged to 

 travel entirely on foot. With some tribes, however, notably the Pawnee, 

 it was a frequent practice for the warriors to go out on foot, returning, 

 if successful, mounted on the horses taken from their enemies. Horses 

 must also have been taken by the Kiowa from the Comanche, who 

 lived south of them in the territory adjoining the Spanish possessions, 

 and with whom the Kiowa were then at war. In the beginning of the 

 present century we find the Kiowa mentioned as possessing large herds 

 of horses, which they traded with the Arikara and Mandan for Euro- 

 pean goods. 



Horace Jones, intei'preter at Fort Sill, states that at a council held at 

 Fort Cobb in 1868, Ten-bears, an old Comanche chief, scored the Kiowa 

 for their constant raids into Mexico and Texas in spite of their prom- 

 ises to the government to cease such practices, saying to the assembled 

 Kiowa, " When we first knew you, you had nothing but dogs and sleds. 

 Now you have plenty of horses, and where did you get them if they were 

 not stolen from Mexico?" This must be interpreted, however, from a 

 ])oint of comparison of the Comanche, who have long been noted for 

 the number of their ponies. It was certainly a case of the pot calling 

 .the kettle black, as the principal business of both tribes for genera- 

 tions, until confined to a reservation, was that of raiding their southern 

 neighbors in order to obtain horses and captives. It is unnecessary to 

 dilate on the revolution made in the life of the Indian by the possession 

 of the horse. Without it he was a half-starved skulker in the timber, 

 creeping up on foot toward the unwary deer or building a brush corral 

 with infinite labor to suri-ound a herd of antelope, and seldom ventui-- 

 ing more than a few days' journey from home. With the horse he was 

 transformed into the daring buffalo hunter, able to procure in a single 

 day enough food to supply his tamily for a year, leaving him free then 

 to sweep the plains with his war parties along a range of a thousand 

 miles. 



INTERCOURSE AND WAR WITH THE COMANCHE 



While the Kiowa still occupied theBlack Hills their nearest neighbors 

 toward the south were the Comanche, whose language and traditions 

 show them to be a comparatively recent ottshoot from the Shoshoni of 

 Wyoming, and whose war parties formerly ranged from Platte river to 

 central Mexico. lu 172-1 Bourgmont describes them, under the name 

 of Padouca, as located between the headwaters of Platte and Kansas 

 rivers. Like the other prairie tribes, they drifted steadily southward. 



