Washita

The Washita River crosses the southern Plains of Oklahoma on its way to the Red River. Its fertile terraces supported villages of ancestral Wichita people, who planted maize, beans and squash and supplemented their harvests by hunting and fishing. By the fourteenth century settlements stood at close intervals along the river, their houses built of posts, woven branches, grass and earth. Around the middle of the fifteenth century some communities consolidated or moved north toward other Wichita groups.