Kiowa Culture

ne of the common features found in the literature about Native American folklores is that it exhibits a big and rapid influence by the dominant culture which results in the discontinuity between old and new, mostly the latter selected over the former. This book’s chapters except for the prologue and epilogue each chapter is consisted of three voices: folktale narrative, historical, and modern personal feelings. The author seems to model via this format how in Kiowa people’s conscience the time and space work and how they view the discord between the enriched past and nihilistic present for them, as seen in the different tones. This book explains how the mixing of culture during their history has molded Kiowa’s contrasting views towards the
(6, 17) The Kiowa society was rather an accepting and absorbing culture also as seen in the remark a Comanche makes “you had nothing but sleds dogs,” which marks that Kiowa adopted horses for convenience over dogs which represent the relatively harder days for Kiowa’s survival. Horses for Kiowas meant a new introduction which facilitated them to grip the control over a massive region and prosperity until the white settlement drove them out. This centuries-old history still binds itself to Kiowa people in the form of
When the author’s grandmother had to commit a “deicide” after the last Sun Dance which the U.S. government banned to accept the Christian God we can see how distinct the before and then in what Kiowa people would have been forced to believe in stopping practicing Sun Dance in 1988. (37) The result follows, she remembers the dance but does not practice, and the protagonist cannot even speak the original Kiowa language to fully understand her prayers. (10-11) Compared to the mental fixation for compelling them to conform to the white culture also aimed to track down on the Kiowa people and kill the horses on a massive scale which Kiowa people have put value so much to. (67) Not only white separated Kiowa had separated from past privilege and control over the area but also everything including horse and even communication within, represented by the ban of 1988 against Sun Dance. However, the author rather brings a different viewpoint from the mainstream the white culture though yet when uses a white anthropologists’ account which seems to construe that the author admits the white culture did not only destroy Kiowa’s but in a certain way chipped in an another piece into Kiowa culture. The slaughter of the horses meant the slaughter of the Kiowa indigenous culture and only in words and fables