The Way to Rainy Mountain

The Kiowas are an Indigenous North American tribe of the Great Plains. They are part of the Kiowa-Tanoan language family, implying a shared origin with the Tewa and Towa peoples, though—in contrast to these Puebloan nations—the Kiowas were nomadic. The Kiowas recall their origins as being in present-day eastern Montana before migrating out onto the plains, first near the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota, and later onto the central plains. After they acquired the horse, the Kiowas were buffalo hunters and warriors.

Pushed south by the Northern Plains tribes, the Kiowas allied with the Comanches on the southern Great Plains by 1860. However, their lifestyle came under acute pressure as a result of American westward expansion (11). In 1867, the Kiowas signed the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, which guaranteed them hunting territory south of the Arkansas River. Despite this treaty, General George Armstrong Custer captured the Kiowa leaders Satanta and Lone Wolf (Mammedaty’s grandfather Guipahgo) at Rainy Mountain Creek, Oklahoma when they approached him to negotiate. Custer then used the hostages to coerce the rest of the Kiowas to submit to imprisonment on a reservation or see their leaders hanged (243-48). Kiowa hunting and raiding activities continued intermittently until 1875, when the last war parties under Lone Wolf surrendered at Fort Sill.