MooxEY] THE WICHITA IN 1834 267 



six liimdred houses, and to the Wichita and Kiowa eight to ten thou- 

 sand ])opulatiou. It is very doubtful if the two tribes, with all their 

 afdliated bands, ever luimbered a total of twenty-flve hundred. The 

 Wichita village may have had, all told, seventy or eighty houses. When 

 the author examined the ground, in 1893, the circular depressions where 

 the houses had stood were still regular in shape and plainly visible. 

 According to Wichita information, the village was called Ki'tskukatu'k, 

 a name which seems to refer to its situation beside the mountain, and 

 was abandoned soon after 1834, when the tribe removed to a new loca- 

 tion, where Fort Sill is now located. From there they again removed 

 to Rush spring, about 25 miles farther east, where Marcy found them 

 in 1852. The mountains immediately about the site of the village 





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Fig. 68— Kj'tskiikStii'k, tlie Wichita \illage on North fork in 18J1 (alter Catliii) 



visited by the dragoons are still known to the Kiowa as Jh'g^'iaf 

 K'op, ''Wichita mountains," the name not being applied by them to 

 the more eastern portion of the range. 



The meeting with the Wichita threatened at the start to be hostile. 

 Having learned that they had in their possession a captive white boy, 

 Colonel Dodge demanded that he be surrendered. They repeatedly 

 denied having any knowledge of the boy or the circumstances attend- 

 ing his capture until, being convinced by the sight of their own chil- 

 dren brought back by the dragoons that the intentions of the white 

 visitors were friendly, they produced him. 



An order was immediately given for the Pawnee and Kiowa girls to be brouglit 

 forwaril. Thi-y were in a lew minutes bronglit into the council house, when they 

 were at once recognized by their friends and relatives, who embraced them with the 



