KIOWA: THE DEATH OF A LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION

The Kiowa are one of many groups of Native Americans who

find their language and culture disappearing. As the English

language becomes more important in their daily lives, the young

people fail to learn their native language. The Kiowa language

may soon disappear entirely, unless conscious efforts are made

to preserve it. The forces that cause a language to become

extinct include a reduction in the population, a stronger

linguistic influence that overpowers the old language, and the

failure of the young to learn the language. The language is an

important part of the culture, so the culture cannot survive

without the language. Many of the Kiowa legends survive today,

but people hear them and read them in English. The translation

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into the language of the European invaders changes the nature of

the stories. Instead of a living history, Kiowa legend becomes

a curious collection of old tales from a dead or dying culture.

The Kiowa people survive today, but they are not truly Kiowa

unless they have their own culture, separate from the English-

speaking culture that surrounds them.

Experts can learn much about a people by studying their

language and comparing it to other languages. For example, in

one Kiowa legend, they were once part of a large tribe that

lived in the north. They separated from the larger tribe and

moved to the south. Some older Kiowas think that the larger

tribe may have been the Crows, but the Crows speak a very

different language from Kiowa (Marriott, 1945, viii). In fact,

the Crows speak a Siouan language (Lowie, 1963, 5). Some Kiowa

people see a similarity between their language and the language

of Taos. In fact, some experts speak of the Kiowa-Tanoan family

languages. It is difficult to classify the Kiowa language.

However, most of the evidence seems to point to a mixture of

Kiowa and the language of Taos fairly recently. The Kiowas did

live in the north, and they came to live in the Plains when the

Sioux Indians drove them out of the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Their history as a people is reflected in many of the words in

the Kiowa language.

The Kiowa Indians originally had two names for themselves.

"Kwu'da" means "pulling out," and "Tepda" means "coming out."

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The people believe that they originally came from inside a

hollow cottonwood log, near the headwaters of the Yellowstone

and Missouri rivers, in western Montana. The name "Kiowa"

probably came from the Comanche name, "Kaigwa," which means "two

halves differ." The Comanche probably used this word for the

Kiowa because they cut their hair short on one side and grew it

long on the other side. To the Kiowa people, the name "Kiowa"

eventually came to mean "the principal people" (Wunder, 1989,

14). They believe that they originally came from the northern

Plains.

A scientific study of their language, on the other hand,

seems to indicate that the Kiowa people originated in the

southern Plains. Their language is similar to the languages of

the Taos and Jemez Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. However, most

scholars do not accept this theory, and the Kiowans themselves

insist that they came from the northern Plains. A third theory

proposes that the Kiowans and the Taos and Jemez Pueblo Indians

originally belonged to one large tribe. They split up into two

groups, and the southern group became speakers of Uzo-Aztecan,

while the northern group became speakers of Kiowa-Tanoan.

Later, the Tanoan speakers split away from the speakers of

Kiowan (Wunder, 1989, 18-19).

BACKGROUND

The Kiowa Indians are a tribe of the great central Plains

of North America. They were among the earliest inhabitants of

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the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Black Hills are regarded

as a sacred place by all the Indians of the Plains. In the

early 17th century, the Kiowa people came to the Black Hills

from their original homes in southwestern Montana and southern

Saskatchewan, Canada (Dolan, 1994, 9). A group known as the

Kiowa Apache travels with the Kiowa and shares some of their

religious festivals. Experts do no know exactly when the Kiowa

Apache joined up with the Kiowa, but they claim that they have

always been together (Mayhall, 1962, 283). However, they do not

speak the same language. The Kiowa speak the Kiowa family of

languages, but the Kiowa Apache speak the Athabaskan family of

languages (Lowie, 1963, 5). For the purposes of this paper,

therefore, the Kiowa Apache are not considered members of the

Kiowa family, even though they share a common history and

culture.

The Kiowa depended on the great herds buffalo for their

livelihood. After the Europeans introduced horses to North

America, the Kiowa became expert horsemen. They traded their

buffalo products for corn and other goods from other tribes.

The Kiowa had some allies, such as the Crow Indians. But in the

late 1700s, the great Sioux Nation drove them out of the black

hills (Dolan, 1994, 26). The Kiowa fled to the south, settling

in New Mexico, where they formed a strong alliance with the

Comanche. Soon this alliance controlled all of the southern

Plains (Dolan, 1994, 29-43). A smallpox epidemic spread across

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the Plains in 1801, affecting many tribes, and killing about

half the Kiowa population (Wunder, 1989, 44). Another smallpox

epidemic in 1871 killed about 2,000 Kiowa, and they had only 300

warriors still living (Wunder, 1989, 40). In the late 1800s,

after years of fighting, the United States cavalry put the Kiowa

onto a reservation in Oklahoma and Texas (Dolan, 1994 52-54).

By the 1970s, about 3,500 Kiowa people were alive, and most of

them lived in southwestern Oklahoma. Some of them still spoke

the Kiowa language, but they did not speak the old ceremonial

dialect (Leitch, 1979, 220).

Some of the Kiowa legends tell about their encounters with

white men. For example, "He Wouldn't Listen" tells the story of

a skirmish between the Kiowa and the U.S. Tenth Cavalry in 1874,

which ended the Indian "wars" in the southwest Plains (Nye,

1962, 184). About half the Kiowa tribe participated in the

battle, but neither side suffered very many casualties. The

Kiowa looted Shirley's store, and then they ran away to the

Staked Plains. later, they were caught, and the leaders were

put in jail.

In the 20th century, white missionaries tried to convert

the Indians to Christianity. They wanted to assimilate the

Indians into the white culture, but the Christian religion did

little to relieve the stresses of a tribal people in a hostile

world. Instead, many Indians turned to the Native American

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Church (Wunder, 1989, 80). The white people tried to teach the

Kiowa the English language and culture. They discouraged them

from speaking their own language. They taught Kiowa boys to be

farmers, and they taught Kiowa girls to be housewives and

secretaries (Dolan, 1994, 59-62). Despite these efforts, the

Kiowa language and culture have survived.

The 20th century Kiowa poet, N. Scott Momaday, expressed

the feelings of the Kiowa people about the survival of their

culture when he said, "Behold! I am alive! I am alive!"

(Wunder, 1989, 13).

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

At this time, no dictionaries of the Kiowa language are in

print. A grammar of the language is available. It was compiled

by Laurel J. Watkins, one of the leading scholars of the Kiowa

language, and it is in print (Watkins, 1991). A recent article

by Watkins discusses the typological characteristics and

functions of switch-reference in the Kiowa language. These

properties of the language are examined intrasententially, and

Watkins finds that the system comes close to fitting the

canonical pattern of clause-final markers that index similar or

different referents across clause boundaries (Watkins, 1993). A

third work on the Kiowa language is a book by Mattina and

Montler (1991), covering a number of Indian languages in their

study of linguistics and ethnography of Native Americans.

In the 19th century, vocabulary lists were collected for

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the purpose of classifying all the American Indian languages.

The grammars and lexicons of different native languages were

compared, and European scholars tried to determine the origins

of the native languages, as well as their relationships to each

other. The first published information on a Plains language was

a vocabulary of 24 Shoshone words, collected from an Indian

agent in 1819 by Thomas Say, a member of the Stephen Long

expedition. This vocabulary was published in 1823. In 1836,

Albert Gallatin used this list to establish the Shoshone family

of languages. Pimentel's (1874-1875) study placed the Kiowa

language into the Comanche-Shoshone branch, which also includes

Numic, Takic, and Hopi (Fowler, 1986, 27-28). Interestingly,

both the Shoshone and the Kiowa people have been called "snake

people" by other tribes, and by Europeans, although they did not

and do not call themselves snakes. In Plains Indian sign

language, the Shoshone are indicated by a snake sign: "the

right hand is moved forward in a sinuous motion with the index

finger (or the first and second fingers) extended to the front"

(Shimkin, 1986, 334).

Just before European contact, over 1,000 Native American

languages and dialects were spoken on the American continents.

As a result of the federal government's language policy toward

Native Americans, many of those languages have died out. The

attempt to turn the Indians into English-speaking, God-fearing

farmers wiped out their language and culture in the 1800s

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(Molesky, no date, 36-37). In the 20th century, the Indians

themselves have allowed their languages to die. Even though

federal policy has changed, and they are now trying to help

preserve the native languages, it is already too late for many

of the languages that were once spoken by native people.

Some Native American tribes have managed to preserve their

languages. However, the speakers of the native language tend to

be older members of the population. The younger the individual,

the less likely he or she is to speak the native language

(Bauman, 1980, vii). When young people fail to learn their

native language, the language faces extinction. The Indian

languages support their cultures in ways that the English

language cannot do so. For example, the grammar of the language

changes, depending on the person speaking and the person who is

spoken to.

The Navajo language is flourishing, with more than 100,000

speakers. Most of the children learn only Navajo at home. They

learn English later, when they go to school. English has been

spoken at home only recently. Some of the oldest members of the

tribe are monolingual, speaking only Navajo. Some of the

youngest children are also monolingual (Bauman, 1980, 6). Many

Native American languages are not flourishing. Some are

enduring, some are declining, some are obsolescent, and some are

extinct.

Language is regarded as an important symbol of ethnicity.

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For example, the Irish are trying to revive the Gaelic language

as a symbol of their separate identity from the English. The

Basques of France and Spain have preserved their language for

hundreds of years, and they ignore the national boundaries that

separate them. Loyalty to the language is a way of asserting

one's ethnic identity (Koenig, 1980, 1).

A language disappears when people no longer speak it. The

death of a language springs from social and psychological

causes, such as when people lose respect for their language

(Denison, 1977, 22). Since English is more highly valued in

American society, the people tend to lose respect for their

native languages. For example, the Lakota Sioux of South Dakota

speak English most of the time, although they generally do not

speak standard English. They speak a dialect known as

"reservation English" or "res English." Most of the Indian

schools teach the Lakota their native language in the early

years, but by the time they reach high school, most children are

taught exclusively in English (Flanigan, 1983, 84-85). They

need English skills to get jobs, to go to college, and to

survive in the world outside the reservation.

CONCLUSION

The Kiowa language might die out, if the young people do

not learn to speak it. In the past, the U.s. government tried

to stop Indians from speaking their own language, so they could

assimilate into the white culture. Today, there is a movement

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to preserve native languages, but it could be too late. The

young peopel no longer have respect for their native language.

They use English on the job, in school, and at home.

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 REFERENCES

Bauman, J.J. (1980). A Guide to Issues in Indian Language

Retention. Center for Applied Linguistics.

Denison, N. (1977). "Language Death or Language Suicide?"

Linguistics. No. 185, Jan., 13-22.

Dolan, T. (1994). The Kiowa Indians. New York: Chelsea House

Publishers.

Flanigan, B.O. (1983). Bilingual Education for Native

Americans: The Argument from Studies of Variational

English. Athens: Ohio University, March.

Fowler, D.D. (1986). "History of Research." W.L. D'Azevedo,

Editor, Great Basin, Handbook of North American Indians,

Volume II, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 15-30.

Koenig, E.L. ( 1980). "Ethnicity: The Key Variable in a Case

Study of Language Maintenance and Language Shift."

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Leitch, B. (1979). A Concise Dictionary of the Indian Tribes of

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The Natural History Press.

Marriott, A. (1945). The Ten Grandmothers. Norman, OK:

University of Oklahoma Press.

Mattina, A. and T. Montler (1991). American Indian Linguistics

and Ethnography in Honor of Laurence C. Thompson.

University of Montana.

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Mayhall, M.P. (1962). The Kiowas. Norman, OK: University of

Oklahoma Press.

Molesky, J. (no date). "Understanding the American Mosaic: A

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Nye, W.S. (1962). Bad Medicine & Good: Tales of the Kiowas.

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Shimkin, D.B. (1986). "Eastern Shoshone." W.L. D'Azevedo,

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Volume II, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 308-335.

Watkins, L.J. (1991). A Grammar of Kiowa. No place: R.R.

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-reference." International Journal of American

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Wunder, J.R. (1989). The Kiowa. New York: Chelsea House.

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