Southern Plains villagers facts for kids
The Southern Plains villagers were groups of Native American people. They lived on the Great Plains in parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and southeastern Colorado. They lived there from about AD 800 to AD 1500.
These people were also called Plains Villagers. They grew crops like maize (corn) and hunted animals such as bison. They also gathered wild plants for food. They usually lived in small villages with a few homes. These villages were often near rivers like the Washita and South Canadian Rivers. Thousands of these old village sites have been found.
The Southern Plains villagers are thought to be the ancestors of the historic Wichita and other Caddoan-speaking peoples. Some of them were still living in the 1500s when Spanish explorers first arrived. The Wichita people met Europeans for the first time in 1541. This happened when Francisco Coronado visited them in Kansas.
Life for the Southern Plains villagers was sometimes hard. They grew crops, but droughts and changing weather could make farming difficult. However, when there were many bison, it helped them a lot.
The villagers, especially those living further west, learned from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. These Pueblo people lived in the Rio Grande River Valley of New Mexico and were also farmers. The Southern Plains villagers traded with them. They traded bison meat, animal hides, and stones for tools. In return, they received corn, pottery, and Osage orange wood for making bows. They also traded with Caddoan groups to their east.
Archaeologists have found many different groups within the Southern Plains villagers. They name these groups based on the tools and pottery found. Examples include the Paoli, Washita River, Custer, and Turkey Creek groups in Oklahoma. The Henrietta and Wylie Creek groups were in north-central Texas. The Antelope Creek Phase and others were in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. The Apishapa phase was in southeastern Colorado. Finally, the Bluff Creek, Wilmore, and Pratt groups were in south-central Kansas. The later Wichita villages in Kansas are known as the Great Bend aspect.
How They Began
Archaeologists believe the Southern Plains villagers were mostly people who spoke Caddoan languages. These were the ancestors of the Wichita, Kichai, and possibly the Pawnee tribes. Some of the oldest village sites show that people lived there for thousands of years. This suggests that the culture grew from people who were already living in the area. It wasn't just new people moving in. However, it's possible that other language groups also lived in the region.
Around the early centuries AD, three big changes helped people on the Southern Great Plains settle down. Before this, they were mostly hunter-gatherers, moving around to find food.
- First, the bow and arrow replaced spears and the atlatl. The bow and arrow was a much better tool for hunting.
- Second, people started using pottery. This was great for storing food and cooking.
- Third, they began growing maize (corn) as a main food source.
These new ideas probably didn't start in the Southern Plains. Instead, knowledge of them slowly spread into the area. With these new ways of life, the population likely grew. It became possible, and perhaps necessary, for people to settle down and farm.
What They Were Like
Some of the earliest signs of Southern Plains villagers are from the Paoli phase. This group lived near the town of Paoli and along the Washita and South Canadian River Valleys. The Paoli phase lasted from about AD 900 to 1250. After that, it changed into the Washita River phase, which lasted from 1250 to 1450. Paoli villages grew from even older hunter-gatherer camps.
The Paoli and Washita River people lived in small villages. These villages had up to ten houses with thatched roofs. They were usually built on high ground overlooking rivers. Villages were often very close to each other, showing that many people lived there. The Washita phase is different from Paoli because of changes in arrowheads, pottery, and how houses were built.
These villagers grew corn and native plants like marsh elder. They also hunted deer, rabbits, fish, and mussels. They gathered wild edible plants such as goosefoot, amaranth, sunflower, little barley, maygrass, dropseed, and erect knotweed. Around 1200, they started growing beans and squash too. As they grew more corn, beans, and squash (known as the "Three Sisters" of Native American farming), they used less of the older native crops. In earlier sites, there aren't many Bison bones. But around 1300, bison became a much more important food source. This suggests that bison herds grew larger in the areas where the Paoli and Washita people lived.
The Custer (800–1250) and Turkey Creek phases (1250–1450) were west of the Paoli and Washita groups. They also lived along the Washita and South Canadian Rivers. The Custer and Turkey Creek people made stone tools from the Alibates quarries in the Texas Panhandle. There is no clear proof that they grew squash and beans, only corn. They might have relied more on gathering wild foods than on farming. This makes sense because western Oklahoma is drier than the eastern areas. During the later Turkey Creek phase, they started to rely more on bison for food.
The Henrietta focus or Henrietta complex stretched from the Red River valley in Oklahoma and Texas down to the Clear Fork of the Brazos River near Graham, Texas. This group lived from about AD 1100 to 1500. The best-known site is Harrell, near Graham. This is also the southernmost major site where Southern Plains villagers lived. South of Harrell, the Native Americans in Texas were mostly hunter-gatherers who didn't farm. The Harrell site has a large cemetery, showing that people lived there for thousands of years. The Wylie focus is north of Dallas. It shows a mix of farming people from the Caddo in East Texas and the Great Plains groups to the west. It dates from AD 1000 or even earlier.
The Upper Canark variant includes the Antelope Creek Phase, Panhandle phase, Optima focus, and the Buried City and Zimms complexes. All these groups lived in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. The Zimms complex also reached into western Oklahoma. The Canark variant existed from about 1100 to 1500. It is known for its houses built with stone-slab foundations. These houses could be for one family or many. The Canark people might have learned this building style from the Pueblo people in New Mexico. Some think they might have even spoken a similar language. However, most experts believe they spoke a Caddoan language, like the Southern Plains villagers to their east.
The Canark people grew corn, beans, squash, and probably sunflowers. They also hunted (mostly bison) and gathered wild plants. Their area often had droughts, making farming difficult without irrigation. Most of their rain came in a few big thunderstorms, causing floods. So, the Antelope Creek people likely used special dryland farming methods, similar to the Ancestral Pueblo peoples.
The Apishapa Phase in southeastern Colorado lasted from 900 to 1400. It is known for its stone slab buildings, often built in easy-to-defend spots on high flat areas called mesas. The Apishapa culture likely grew from an earlier group called the Graneros phase. They seem to have been mostly hunter-gatherers. But archaeologists have found some signs of corn farming. Farming was probably not very important because of the dry climate and the rocky canyons where many Apishapa homes were found. It's not certain if the many rock carvings in the area were made by the Apishapa people.
The Bluff Creek, Pratt, and Wilmore groups lived in south-central Kansas. They were near and along the rivers that flow into the Arkansas River. Bluff Creek is the oldest, from about 1000 to 1500. Pratt and Wilmore might have developed from Bluff Creek, lasting from about 1400 to 1500. These Kansas sites are similar to the Southern Plains Villagers' sites further south in Oklahoma. Along the Arkansas River in northern Oklahoma is the Uncas site. This site is quite different in its houses and pottery. It might show that a different group of people moved into the area.
Later Years
Around 1400, during the Wheeler phase, some Southern Plains villagers changed. Instead of living in small, scattered villages, they moved into larger farming settlements. This happened especially with the Little River focus and Lower Walnut focus peoples in south-central Kansas and north-central Oklahoma. These larger groups of farmers are sometimes called Coalesced Villagers. At the same time, other villagers started to rely less on farming and more on hunting bison.
Scientists have a few ideas why many Southern Plains villagers started hunting bison more.
- First, new groups of people called Southern Athabascans (the Apaches) moved into the Southern Plains. They might have pushed the villagers out.
- Second, the number of bison on the Southern Great Plains changed. There might have been more bison around AD 1400. This would have made hunting a better way to get food. Hunting meant they had to move around more and couldn't stay in one place as much.
- Third, a long drought or a change to drier weather might have made farming too hard on the southern plains.
These ideas could all be true at the same time.
When Coronado traveled through Texas and Oklahoma in 1541, he found only bison-hunting nomads, not farming villages. The Querecho people he met near what is now Amarillo, Texas were almost certainly Apaches. The Teyas he found east of Lubbock, Texas might also have been Apaches, or perhaps they were the Caddoan descendants of the Southern Plains villagers. Coronado also found corn-growing Wichita Indians in a land he called Quivira in what is now Rice County, Kansas.
In 1601, Juan de Oñate found the farming people he called Rayados (his name for the Wichitas). They were living in a large city called Etzanoa in what is now Arkansas City, Kansas. Both the Quivirans and Rayados lived more than 200 miles east of where the Southern Plains villagers had farmed centuries earlier. These new areas had much better climates for farming. Archaeologists call these early Wichita settlements in Kansas the Great Bend aspect.
