Wichita Girl, Kansas, United States

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.
In 1719, French explorers visited two groups of Wichita. Bernard de la Harpe found a large village near present day Tulsa, Oklahoma and Claude Charles Du Tisne found two villages near Neodesha, Kansas. By this time, the Wichita were threatened by Apache and had moved east and south. Coronado’s Quivira was abandoned early in the 18th century. The Rayados of Onate were probably still living in about the same location. Archaeologists have located a Wichita village at the Deer Creek Site dating from the 1750s on the Arkansas River east of Newkirk, Oklahoma. By 1757, however, it appears that all the Wichita had migrated south to the Red River. The most prominent of the Wichita sub-tribes were the Taovayas. In the 1720s they had moved south from Kansas to the Red River establishing a large village on the north side of the River in Jefferson County, Oklahoma and on the south side at Spanish Fort, Texas. They adopted many traits of the Plains Indians and were noted for raiding, trading, and (reputedly) cannibalism. They had a close alliance with the French and in 1746 a French brokered alliance with the Comanche revived the fortunes of the Wichita.