page_title: Etzanoa
section_title: Archaeological research
hierarchical_section_title: Etzanoa / Archaeological research
caption_attribution_description: English: A lithograph of a Wichita Village, probably in Oklahoma, between 1850-1875
context_page_description: Etzanoa is a historical Wichita city, located in present-day Arkansas City, Kansas, near the Arkansas River, that flourished between 1450 and 1700. Dubbed "the Great Settlement" by Spanish explorers, who visited the site, Etzanoa may have housed 20,000 Wichita people. The historical city is considered part of Quivira.
  Francisco Vásquez de Coronado visited central Kansas in 1541 and dubbed the Wichita settlements "Quivira". The Umana and Leyba expedition visited the Etzanoa site in 1594 and Juan de Oñate visited there in 1601. They recorded the inhabitants as being the Rayados. "Rayados" in Spanish means "striped." The Wichita people were noted for the straight lines they tattooed onto their faces and their bodies.
  In April 2017, the location of Etzanoa was finally discovered when a local teen found a cannonball linked to a battle near Arkansas City, Kansas that took place in the year 1601. Local researchers used this artifact as evidence which enabled them to pinpoint the location of Etzanoa.
context_section_description: Donald Blakeslee, an archaeologist at the Wichita State University, has led recent research on Etzanoa. In 2013, historians at the University of California, Berkeley, retranslated the early Spanish accounts of expeditions to Kansas. These clearer translations allowed Blakeslee to match written descriptions to archaeological sites. He located the 1601 Spanish battle site in Arkansas City.
  During road construction in the area in 1994, thousands of artifacts were unearthed. Residents of Arkansas City regularly unearthed artifacts, such as potsherds or flint points. Kansas State Archaeologist Robert Hoard is researching sites in Rice and McPherson Counties.
  Archaeologists have discovered more than a dozen large settlements along six miles of the Walnut River. These are called the Lower Walnut focus sites. The occupation of these sites has been dated from 1500 to 1720. A small number of artifacts of Spanish origin have been found at the site.
  It would appear that the Rayados abandoned the Walnut River site in the early eighteenth century. Perhaps they moved a few miles south to Kay County, Oklahoma, where two 18th-century archaeological sites, Deer Creek and Bryson Paddock, of the Wichita are known. They appear to have been much reduced in numbers by then, possibly as a result of European diseases, warfare, and the slave trade in Indians. The descendants of the Rayados were absorbed into the Wichita tribe.
caption: Sketch of 19th-century Wichita Indian village, with beehive-shaped grass houses surrounded by maize, that may be similar to those of Etzanoa
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