page_title: Wichita people
section_title: Post-contact history
hierarchical_section_title: Wichita people / History / Post-contact history
caption_attribution_description: Tatum, Wichita
context_page_description: The Wichita people or Kitikiti'sh are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. Historically they spoke the Wichita language and Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. They are indigenous to Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.
  Today, Wichita tribes, which include the Kichai people, Yscani, Waco, Taovaya, Tawakoni, and the Wichita proper, are federally recognized as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
context_section_description: In 1541 Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado journeyed east from the Rio Grande Valley in search of a rich land called Quivira. In Texas, probably in the Blanco River Canyon near Lubbock, Coronado met people he called Teyas who might have been related to the Wichita and the earlier Plains villagers. The Teyas, if in fact they were Wichita, were probably the ancestors of the Iscani and Waco, although they might also have been the Kichai, who spoke a different language but later joined the Wichita tribe. Turning north, he found Quivira and the people later known as the Wichita near the town of Lyons, Kansas. He was disappointed in his search for gold as the Quivirans appear to have been prosperous farmers and good hunters but had no gold or silver. There were about 25 villages of up to 200 houses each in Quivira. Coronado said: "They were large people of very good build", and he was impressed with the land, which was "fat and black." Though Coronado was impressed with Wichita society, he often treated the Wichita poorly in his expedition. Even after Wichita migration, some settlements were thought to have remained in northern Quivira in 1680.
  It was also noted: "They eat meat raw/jerky like the Querechos [the Apache] and Teyas. They are enemies of one another...These people of Quivira have the advantage over the others in their houses and in growing of maize".
  The Quivirans apparently called their land Tancoa (which bears a resemblance to the later sub-tribe called Tawakoni) and a neighboring province on the Smoky Hill River was called Tabas (which bears a resemblance to the sub-tribe of Taovayas). Settlements existed here until the Wichita were driven away in the 18th century.
  Sixty years after Coronado's expedition the founder of New Mexico Juan de Oñate visited Etzanoa, the Wichita city. Oñate journeyed east from New Mexico, crossing the Great Plains and encountering two large settlements of people he called Escanjaques (possibly Yscani) and Rayados, most certainly Wichita. The Rayado city was probably on the Walnut River near Arkansas City, Kansas. Oñate described the city as containing "more than twelve hundred houses" which would indicate a population of about 12,000. His description of the Etzanoa was similar to that of Coronado's description of Quivira. The homesteads were dispersed; the houses round, thatched with grass and surrounded by large granaries to store the corn, beans, and squash they grew in their fields. Oñate's Rayados were certainly Wichita, probably the sub-tribe later known as the Guichitas.
  What the Coronado and Oñate expeditions showed was that the Wichita people of the 16th century were numerous and widespread. They were not, however, a single tribe at this time but rather a group of several related tribes speaking a common language. The dispersed nature of their villages probably indicated that they were not seriously threatened by attack by enemies, although that would change as they would soon be squeezed between the Apache on the West and the powerful Osage on the East. European diseases would also probably be responsible for a large decline in the Wichita population in the 17th century.
  In 1719, French explorers visited two groups of Wichita. Bernard de la Harpe found a large village near present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma and Claude Charles Du Tisne found two villages near Neodesha, Kansas. Regarding religion, La Harpe noticed that the Wichita people "had little of it". He did, however, gain knowledge on the presence of a Great Spirit that the Wichita worshipped. Coronado's Quivira was abandoned early in the 18th century, probably due to Apache attacks. The Rayados of Oñate were probably still living in about the same Walnut River location. Archaeologists have located a Wichita village at the Deer Creek Site dating from the 1750s on the Arkansas River east of Newkirk, Oklahoma. By 1757, however, it appears that all the Wichita had migrated south to the Red River.
  The most prominent of the Wichita sub-tribes were the Taovayas. In the 1720s they had moved south from Kansas to the Red Rive
caption: Tatum, a Wichita woman, 1898
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3726", "Image ImageLength": "4656", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Sinar AG", "Image Model": "Sinarback 54 FW, Sinar m", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:13 10:07:16", "Image Artist": "Boston Public Library", "Image ExifOffset": "348", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "486", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5082", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1201", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1500"}