Wichita people
tribal flag
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (2,564) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 United States (Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas) |
|
| Languages | |
| English, Caddo, Wichita | |
| Religion | |
|
Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religion |
|
| Related ethnic groups | |
|
Arikara, Caddo, Hidatsa, Kichai, Mandan, Pawnee, Tawakoni, Waco |
The Wichita people are a confederation of Midwestern Native Americans. Historically they spoke the Wichita language, a Caddoan language. They are indigenous to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Today the four Wichita tribes — the Waco, Taovaya, Tawakoni, and the Wichita proper — are federally recognized with the Kichai people as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (Wichita, Keechi, Waco and Tawakoni).
The Wichita tribe is headquartered in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area is in Caddo County, Oklahoma. The Wichitas are a self-governance tribe, who operate their own housing authority and issue tribal vehicle tags.
The current tribal administration is as follows.
The tribe owns a casino, a smoke shop, travel plaza, historical center, Dairy Freeze and Cross Timbers Restaurant, located in Anadarko. Their annual economic impact in 2010 was $4.5 million.
After the man and woman were made they dreamed that things were made for them, and when they woke they had the things of which they had dreamed... The woman was given an ear of corn... It was to be the food of the people that should exist in the future, to be used generation after generation. - Tawakoni Jim in The Mythology of the Wichita, 1904
The ancestors of the Wichita have lived in the eastern Great Plains from the Red River north to Nebraska for at least 2,000 years. Early Wichita people were hunters and gatherers who gradually adopted agriculture. Farming villages began to appear about 900 CE on terraces above the Washita and South Canadian Rivers in Oklahoma. These 10th century communities cultivated maize, beans, squash, marsh elder (Iva annua), and tobacco. They also hunted deer, rabbits, turkey, and, increasingly, bison, and caught fish and collected mussels in the rivers. These villagers lived in rectangular, thatched-roof houses. Archaeologists describe the Washita River Phase from 1250 to 1450, when local populations grew and villages of up to 20 houses were spaced every two or so miles along the rivers. These farmers may have had contact with the Panhandle culture villages in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, Farming villages along the Canadian River. The Panhandle villagers showed signs of adopting cultural characteristics of the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande Valley.
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Wikipedia