eitch, 1979, 220).
The Kiowa's own tribal history tells of their origin near the headwaters of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers in what is today western Montana. According to the legend, the Kiowa emerged from "a sunless world" when a supernatural being, Saynday, tapped a stick on a hollow cottonwood log and called forth the Kiowa. Saynday instructed these emerging people on how to hunt bison and antelope on the Great Plains. According to the tradition, some of the Kiowa intermarried with the Sarci Indians, who lived near the North Saskatchewan River in what is now Canada and spoke a language similar to that of the Apache Indians. These unions were the origin of the Kiowa-Apache band, which traveled with the Kiowa but which spoke a very different language (Wunder, 1989, 14, 17). Recent theories about the origin of the Kiowa have centered on their language as compared to other peoples in the Southwest and on the Plains. The Kiowa language has been found to be similar to the Tanoan languages of the Taos and Jemez Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, and this has caused some linguists and anthropologists to believe that the Kiowa originated on the southern and not the northern Plains, becoming a distinct people alo
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