Tanoan

Tanoan, more fully Kiowa–Tanoan, is the language family of the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico and the Kiowa of the southern plains. Its Pueblo branches are Tiwa, Tewa and Towa; the related Kiowa's ancestors once lived near the northern Rockies.

Reconstructed vocabulary points to a homeland of hunter-gatherers on the Colorado Plateau, where the speakers gradually took up maize agriculture from the Basketmaker II culture of 50–450.

Proto-Tiwa-Tewa split between 725 and 920, after which the Tiwa moved toward the Rio Grande between 920 and 980. The Towa reached the Rio Puerco valley around 1200 and the Tewa came south from Mesa Verde around 1275, settling the apartment-like pueblo towns that Spanish explorers later encountered.