Wichita Girl, Kansas, United States

"They eat meat raw like the Querechos (the Apache) and Teyas. They are enemies of one another...These people of Quivira have the advantage over the others in their houses and in growing of maize".
The Quivirans apparently called their land Tancoa (which bears a resemblance to the later sub-tribe called Tawakoni) and a neighboring province on the Smoky Hill River was called Tabas (which bears a resemblance to the sub tribe of Taovayas).
Sixty years after Coronado’s expedition the founder of New Mexico Juan de Onate visited a large village of Wichita. Onate journeyed east from New Mexico, crossing the Great Plains and encountering two large settlements of people he called Escanjaques (possibly Wichita) and Rayados, certainly Wichita. The Rayado village was probably on the Walnut River near Arkansas City, Kansas. Onate described the village of containing “more than twelve hundred houses” which would indicate a population of about 12,000. His description of the village was similar to that of Coronado. The homesteads were dispersed; the houses round, thatched with grass and surrounded by large granaries to store the corn, beans, and squash they grew in their fields. Onate’s Rayados were certainly Wichita, probably the sub-tribe later known as the Guichitas.
What the Coronado and Onate expeditions showed was that the Wichita people were both numerous and widespread. They were not, however, a single tribe at this time but rather a group of several related tribes speaking a common language. The dispersed nature of their villages probably indicated that they were not seriously threatened by attack by enemies, although that would change as they would soon be squeezed between the Apache on the West and the powerful Osage on the East. European diseases would also probably be responsible for a large decline in the Wichita population in the 17th century.