The Wichita Indians: People of the Grass House


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The Wichita Indians shared the Great Plains, in the central United States, with a variety of animals, including millions of bison, elk, and birds. The Wichita built their homes of poles and prairie grass, which grew up to 12 feet tall. These unique, beehive-shaped grass houses were exclusive to the Wichita, housed extended families, and could last up to 14 years. Tools, fashioned from chert and bison bones, were used to construct homes and cultivate garden plots.




The Mythology of the Wichita


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Kitikiti'sh


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Hiking the Wichitas


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Life at the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita Agency


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Anadarko, Oklahoma, bills itself today as the “Indian Capital of the Nation,” but it was a drowsy frontier village when budding photographer Annette Ross Hume arrived in 1890. Home to a federal agency charged with serving the many American Indian tribes in the area, the town burgeoned when the U.S. government auctioned off building lots at the turn of the twentieth century. Hume faithfully documented its explosive growth and the American Indians she encountered. Her extraordinary photographs are collected here for the first time. In their introduction, authors Kristina L. Southwell and John R. Lovett provide an illuminating biography of Hume, focusing on her life in Anadarko and the development of her photographic skills. Born in 1858, in Perrysburg, Ohio, Hume moved to Oklahoma Territory with her husband after he accepted an appointment as physician for the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita Agency. She soon acquired a camera and began documenting daily life. Her portraits of everyday life are unforgettable — images of Indian mothers with babies in cradleboards, tribal elders (including Comanche chief Quanah Parker) conducting council meetings, families receiving their issue of beef from the government agent, and men and women engaging in the popular pastime of gambling. In 1927, historian Edward Everett Dale, on behalf of the University of Oklahoma, purchased Hume’s original glass plates for the university’s newly launched Western History Collections. The Annette Ross Hume collection has been a favorite of researchers for many years. Now this elegant volume makes Hume’s photographs more widely accessible, allowing a unique glimpse into a truly diverse American West.




The Caddos, the Wichitas, and the United States, 1846-1901


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Smith relates the political history of the two tribes, details life and agricultural work on the reservation, chronicles federal attempts to introduce an education system to the Indians, and traces the effect of hostile tribes and unscrupulous whites on the reservation experiment. Using primary documents, he traces the history of the Wichitas and Caddos through the Civil War, when they were forced to take refuge in Union-controlled Kansas, to the sharing of reservation land with their former enemies, the Kiowas and Comanches. He describes in detail the efforts of the two tribes to adapt to white ways, developing a life within the confines of the reservation experience that borrowed from Euro-American culture while retaining many of their own traditions.




American Encounters


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A collection of articles that describe the relationships and encounters between Native Americans and Europeans throughout American history.




The Alabama-Coushatta Indians


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Hook describes what is known of the various European intrusions into Creek (Muskhogean) culture and how these changed hte tribal life of the Alabamas and Coushattas, eventually leading them to the reservation they now share in Southeast Texas.




The Kansa Indians


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After their first contacts with whites in the seventeenth century, the Kansa Indians began migrating from the eastern United States to what is now eastern Kansas, by way of the Missouri Valley. Settling in villages mostly along the Kansas River, they led a semi-sedentary life, raising corn and a few vegetables and hunting buffalo in the spring and fall. It was an idyllic existence-until bad, and then worse, things began to happen. William E. Unrau tells how the Kansa Indians were reduced from a proud people with a strong cultural heritage to a remnant forced against their will to take up the whites' ways. He gives a balanced but hard-hitting account of an important and tragic chapter in American history.




The Texas Indians


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Author David La Vere offers a complete chronological and cultural history of Texas Indians from twelve thousand years ago to the present day. He presents a unique view of their cultural history before and after European arrival, examining Indian interactions-both peaceful and violent-with Europeans, Mexicans, Texans, and Americans.




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