There is a story about how the Kiowa people came about. It is said that Saynday, known to American Indians as Trickster, wandered alone on the sunless earth until he discovered the Kiowa living underground. He enabled the people, as ants, to crawl upward through a hollow cottonwood tree and pulled them through an owl hole upon the surface of the earth. There was woman who was very swollen because of pregnancy and she got stuck in the log. After that, no one could get through, and that is why the Kiowa are a small tribe in number. They looked all around and saw the world. It made

The culture area of the Kiowa was the last to develop in North America; it began around 1620 with the introduction of the horse into New Mexico by the Spanish. When the horse was first introduced to the Kiowa, they thought that the horses were "sacred dogs" brought to them from the gods. They learned later they were just horses but most Indian tribes still call horses sacred dogs. After gaining horses, laves, and guns from the Spanish, the Kiowa evolved into completely nomadic life ways of predation, pillage, and warfare. The Kiowa lived in large three-poled skin teepees and everything was adapted for speedy packing and quick movement. The camp habitation could be moved in 30 minuets. The tribe used horses and mules for trade with other northern plain tribes. The Kiowa people came close to developing their own written language, using pictographic signs painted on hides that were used as a type of calendar and as chronological records of events. Sign language is often attributed as an invention by the Kiowa for trade, and spread among the Plains Tribes.

In tribal government there was a head or civil chief who was an important topadok'i or camp leader chosen by all the topadok'is and the war chiefs from their councils. The last great head chief was Dohasan (Little Bluff), who died in 1866. The Kiowas were divided in their policy toward the whites. Lone Wolf led the hostiles while Kicking Bird led the peace party until 1875, when he was poisoned. Later Lone Wolf gave his name to his nephew who became head chief in 1896. Women had no voice in tribal government.

In religion the Kiowa were polytheistic and animistic. They had a general belief in supernatural agencies. Their great tribal ceremony was the Sun Dance or K'ado, which took place in early summer. The ritual characteristically, but not always, took place in a teepee around a crescent-shaped, earthen alter mound and a sacred fire. The all-night ceremony usually commenced about 8p.m. and was led by a peyote "chief". Services included prayer, singing, sacramental eating of peyote, and water rites. They concluded the ceremony with a communion breakfast on Sunday morning. In the Sun Dance the tribe came together for ten days or more. Ten medicine bundles were believed to protect the tribe and became central in the Kiowan Sun Dance. The sun was believed to be one of the many spirit forces. There were several objects of religious veneration. Sun Boy was the great supernatural and mythic hero. He gave them medicine in ten portions which was kept by the priests in priestly tipis. The medicine was called the Grandmother Bundles.

Peyotism or peyote religion was the basic religion of the Kiowa people. Peyotism first developed in about 1885 among the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Various forms of peyotist beliefs combine Indian and Christian elements in differing degrees. In general, peyotist doctrine consists of belief in one supreme God (the Great Spirit) who deals with men through various spirits. In many tribes peyote itself is personified as a peyote spirit, considered to be either God's equivalent for the Indians to his Jesus for the whites, or Jesus himself. Sometimes Jesus is regarded as an intercessor with God or as a guardian spirit who has turned to the Indians after being killed by the whites. Peyote is derived from the Nahuatl name of the peyotl for a cactus, the top of the cactus contains mescaline, an alkaloid drug that has hallucinogenic effects. The Kiowa people thought that eating peyote in the ritual context, enables the individual to commune with God and the spirits in contemplation and vision as so to receive from them spiritual power, guidance, reproof and healing.

The family depended upon a son to become a provider, and his success was more important than a girl's, but girls could bring wealth to the parents in horses or gifts when a man wished to make a bride price. Marriage was usually arranged by gifts of horses to the parents of the girl by the man o

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Approximate Word count = 2698
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)