Volume 9 , Issue 50

Indians of Oklahoma

We found this little bit of history of the Indians of Oklahoma in A Standard History of Oklahoma, Volume 1, by Thoburn. They stated that there was evidence to prove that certain parts of Oklahoma were inhabited by people of the Indian race long before the discovery of America by Columbus.

There were the Earth-House People, Cave & Ledge People, Mound Builders, Other Prehistoric Peoples, surviving indigenous tribes, Caddoan, Stouan, Shoshonean, and Kiowas & Plains Apaches Tribes.

The prehistoric stock was the most numerous. There were ruins and remains which gave evidence of its activities which during a period of many generations' duration inhabited the region now embraced by over twenty counties in the Eastern and Southeastern parts of the state, as well as the entire State of Arkansas and parts of several other adjacent states.

Earth-House People
The evidence shows these people indicate that they were sedentary and agricultural in their habits and were well advanced in the scale of civilization. They excelled in the art of making pottery. They dwelt in strongly built, timber-framed, dome-shaped houses, which were covered with sod or turf. When these mound houses collapsed a new mound house was built within a convenient distance. The collapsed mound house naturally fell in the form of a low, circular mound. These mounds still remain to this day in numbers so vast as to cast serious doubts in the minds of many as to the possibility of their being of human origin.

Cave & Ledge People
This tribe of people made their homes or abodes under the shelter of projecting rock ledges and in the open mouths of caves. These people lived in a more restricted area in the Northeastern part of the state. The cultural development of the Cave and Ledge people was not equal to that of the Earth-House people. They were not nearly so numerous, and it was probable that they lived almost exclusively by hunting and fishing.

Mound Builders
In the Valleys of the Red, Arkansas, Grand, Illinois and other Oklahoma Rivers there were large mounds similar to those found in the Valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and it seems not improbable that they were built by the same race of prehistoric people. The mounds were in various forms, some being conical, some pyramidal, both being truncated more often than complete.

Caddoan Tribes
The Caddo Tribe, which represents a consolidation of several closely related sub-tribes or bands, originally inhabited the Valleys of the Sabine and Red Rivers, in Texas and Louisiana, and extending northward into the Southeastern confines of Oklahoma. Above this tribe, along the Valley of the Red River was the Keechi Tribe, though its range extended southward to the Valley of the Trinity River in Texas. Still farther West in the vicinity of the Wichita Mountains and in the Valley of the Upper Red River and those of its principal tributaries lived the Wichita and kindred tribes the Waco and Towakony. The people of these tribes were always more or less sedentary in their habits, living in fixed villages and depending upon the cultivation of the soil for a large part of their sustenance.

Siouan Tribes
The Osage and Quapaw tribes were closely related. Their language being the same with slight variations. They were a part of the Great Sioux of Dakota stock. Their ancestors migrated from the East and it is believed that they arrived in the Trans-Mississippi country over 700 years ago. The Osages lived in Missouri, Eastern Kansas, Northern Arkansas, and Northeastern Oklahoma. The Quapaws lived South of the Osages, along the Valley of the Arkansas and in the Eastern part of Oklahoma. The Osages retained a distinct tradition to the effect that their ancestors had driven out and dispossessed the Caddoan tribes when they came into the Arkansas Valley. Both Osages and Quapaws sold their lands in Oklahoma to the Government over hundred years ago.

Shoshonean Tribes
The Comanches were an off-shoot of the Shoshones of Wyoming and Idaho, with whom they maintained fraternal relations. They were supposed to have drifted out on the Great Plains about the time of the first Spanish Explorations and they were known to have occupied or overrun the region between the Arkansas River and the Lower Rio Grande for at least two centuries past. They were a type of nomadic Indian of the Plains, in that they lived entirely by the chase and roamed over a vast region in search of game and in making war. A small area in the Valley of the Upper Cimarron, in the Western part of Cimarron County was included in the habitat of the Utes, who were mountaineers. The country bordering upon the Valley of the Cimarron in that part of its course is semi-mountainous, thus making it possible for the Utes to penetrate farther into the buffalo range in that vicinity than elsewhere along the Eastern base of the Rocky Mountains.

Kiowas & Plains Apaches
The Kiowas were from the Rocky Mountains, and were living in the region at the source of the Missouri River at the beginning of the historic period. They had drifted out on the Great Plains in the vicinity of the Black Hills of South Dakota. About the time of the American Revolution, the Kiowas were driven South of the Platte River by the Cheyennes, who in turn were giving way before the pressure of superior numbers on the part of the Sioux. Within a few years the Kiowas began to range South of the Arkansas River, where they came into conflict with the Comanches. About 1795, they made peace with the Comanches and entered into an alliance with them which has been maintained ever since, the two tribes acting in unison in all matters of common interest, such as the making of war and entering into treaties.

With the Kiowas came a small band of Indians of Athapasean stock, who, because they spoke a language somewhat similar to that of the Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona, were called Apaches, though it is evident that they have been separated from any other tribe of that stock for hundreds of years. The last of the Utes left the Cimarron Valley about the time that the big buffalo herds disappeared from that region, removing thence to join the main body of their tribe in Southwestern Colorado.
  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---