Wichita Erotic

To most people, Wichita means a city in Kansas or a mountain range in Oklahoma. Both took their name from a people who farmed the Southern Plains long before either place existed. The Wichita are a confederation of related bands that speak Caddoan languages. Today they are federally recognized as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, with their headquarters near Anadarko, Oklahoma. Their own name, Kitikiti'sh, is usually translated as raccoon eyes. It refers to the tattooed lines men once wore around their eyes. French traders called them the Panis Piqués, the tattooed Pawnee, and facial tattoos were once a mark of Wichita identity for men and women alike.

The Wichita were a village people. They grew corn, beans, squash and tobacco in river bottoms and lived in tall domed houses made of grass thatch over a pole frame. For part of each year they left the villages to hunt bison. In 1541 Coronado's expedition reached central Kansas looking for gold. What it found were these grass house towns, which the Spanish called Quivira. Over the next two centuries, Osage raids and the pull of French trade drew the bands south toward the Red River. In 1759 a Spanish force marched on a fortified Taovaya town there to punish its people and was turned back. The nineteenth century was harder, bringing epidemics, lost land and exile in Kansas during the Civil War. Their refugee camps near the mouth of the Little Arkansas River stood on ground that later became the city of Wichita. After returning to Indian Territory, they shared a reservation with Caddo and Delaware neighbors until allotment broke it up at the start of the twentieth century.

Wichita belongs to the northern branch of the Caddoan family. That makes it closer to Pawnee and Arikara than to Caddo, even though Caddo is its nearer neighbor on the map. Kichai, the language of one affiliated band, has not been spoken for generations. The last fluent first-language speaker of Wichita died in 2016. The tribe keeps the language alive through recordings, dictionary work done with linguists, and classes for members. Christianity is part of everyday community life, and tribal dances and gatherings keep their own calendar. The most distinctive gathering is the yearly visit between the Wichita and the Pawnee. Hosting alternates between the two nations, and each visit renews a kinship they trace to their shared Caddoan roots.