The Kiowa Language

The Kiowa are a southern plains people who originated in the mountains of western Montana. They migrated to the southwest and arrived at the Arkansas and Red Rivers by the beginning of the last century. They numbered about 2,000 at that time, and by the late 1970s there were about 3,500 Kiowa, primarily in southwestern Oklahoma. "Kiowa" means "principal people" and was derived from Gaigwu or Kaigwu, the name the people call themselves. The Kiowa language was still spoken in the 1970s and has long been a problem for linguists trying to classify it. It is believed to be related to the Tanoan family. The Kiowa had seven divisions or bands, including the Kiowa Apache, and the latter spoke an Athapaska

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and jemez Pueblo Indians had originally belonged to a single tribe in the northern Plains. At some point in the distant past the tribe divided, with one part moving west of the Rocky Mountains into the Great Basin around Utah and Nevada where they in time became speakers of a language known as Uto-Aztecan. Another part stayed on the northern Plains and came to speak a language of the Kiowa-Tanoan family, and around the year 1000 this group separated further into the Tanoan and the Kiowan linguistic groups. The Kiowa speakers moved to the Black Hills (Wunder, 1989, 18-19). The decision to classify an Indian population as part of a tribe is in part a linguistic decision. The term may be used in a political sense, but linguistic and political groups need not coincide. There are cases where Indian populations were politically two tribes while being linguistically one. The degree of divergence found between two related populations tells how long ago the separation took place, but even this is not certain as changes in climate or other abrupt shifts can accelerate the rate of divergence (Lowie, 1954, 8-9). The Kiowa still maintain certain of their traditional cultural elements while others have fallen into disuse. Momaday (19
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1732
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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