Welcome to the Kiowa Tribe Archives of the state of Oklahoma!

Kiowa Tribe

Derived from the tribe's own name Ka-i-gwu, which means "principal people."

The Kiowa migrated southward from the mountains of what is now western Montana and later took over the Black Hills of South Dakota. After years of war with the Cheyenne and Dakota tribes 9who had pushed into the Black Hills from the north), they moved south into what is now western Kansas and eastern Colorado. they had become true Plains Indians, living by horse and buffalo.

 After a long period of war, they made permanent peace with the Comanche (about 1790). As allies, the two tribes ruled most of the lands between the Arkansas and Red Rivers, resisting white settlement. In 1865, they agreed to accept a shared reservation  (Kiowa-Comanche-Apache) in western Oklahoma, signing the Treaty of Medicine Lodge in 1867. After the Battle of Washita and the winter campaign of 1868-69 against the Plains Tribes, the Kiowa were forced onto their reservation by the military. In 1892, they agreed to accept individual allotments (although mnone were issued until 1901, when their reservation was opened to white homesteaders).

One of the great tribes of the Plains, reputed to be the most brave and courageous, yet most warlike. ( Today they are seen as one of the most progressive Indian groups in southwestern Oklahoma.) Noted for their pictograph calenders, which are paintings on skins that recorded seasons and tribal events. In the last century, five artists celebrated as the Kiowas Five elevated Indian painting to "easel art", in which the tribes's past comes alive.

  Kiowa Tribe Archivist
Position open

Gene Phillips -State Archivist

Linda Simpson - Archivist-Indian Nations/Indian Territory 

Help the Kiowa Tribe Archives grow, kindly submit your data.

If you have any cemetery records, bible records, deeds, applications for citizenship in the  Kiowa Tribe, land patents, probate records, allotment records, etc, that pertain to the Kiowa Tribe, please send them to me as an attachment in an e-mail to Interim File Manager. Please be sure to identify that it is for the  Kiowa Tribe. It also needs to be a plain text file, no HTML and no images. This ensures that everybody will be able to read it, no matter what kind of web browser. Here is a help file.

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