Ka'igwu

The Ka'igwu, or Principal People, are better known as Kiowa, the Comanche form of their name. Their Kiowa-Tanoan language links them to the Tanoan Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande, oral tradition placing their origins near the Yellowstone, where dogs pulled their travois before horses. Around 1650 they reached the Black Hills, lived in friendship with the Crow, and numbered about three thousand in ten bands.

Sioux pressure drove the Cheyenne and Arapaho into their hills; the Ka'igwu moved south with a small Plains Apache band, both speaking Plains Sign Talk.

In 1790 war leader Guikate offered peace to a Comanche party near Las Vegas, New Mexico, founding an alliance that made Kiowa and Comanche masters of the southern plains. In 1833 Osage raiders attacked an exposed camp near Head Mountain, killed many families and seized the Sun Dance's sacred Tai-me; it was restored in 1835 when Dohasan rose to lead the tribe.