Taovaya

The Taovaya were a Wichita people from Kansas who moved south in the eighteenth century. In the 1720s they began establishing villages on both sides of the Red River, in what are now Oklahoma and Texas.

A French-brokered peace with the Comanche in 1746 helped make their villages trading centers for horses, crops and French goods. In 1759 Taovaya and other Wichita warriors, supported by Comanche allies, defeated a Spanish attack on the Red River villages and captured two cannon.