Wichita

Largest city in Kansas, USA, on the Arkansas River, 338 km/210 mi southwest of Kansas City; population (2000) 344,300. It is the distribution and processing centre of a wheat-growing and oil-producing region. Industries include oil-refining, flour-milling, food preparation, and the manufacture of aircraft and motor vehicles. Founded in 1868 as a trading post on a American Indian Witchita village site, it developed as a stopover on the Chisholm cattle-driving trail. With the arrival of the railroad in 1872, the city became a major cattle-shipping point. Oil was discovered in 1915, and aircraft manufacture began in 1920.

Features The city is the seat of Friends University (1898) and the Municipal University of Wichita (1895). Cultural sites include the Wichita–Sedgwick County Historical Museums, the Indian Center and Museum, and the Wichita Art Museum. Old Cowtown is a reconstruction of Wichita in the 1870s. Keeper of the Plains, a 13 m/44 ft-high statue at the confluence of the Little and Big Arkansas Rivers, was designed by a Kiowa–Comanche artist, Blackbear Bosin, in the 1970s.

Wichita

Member of an American Indian people who lived along the Arkansas River, Kansas, before migrating to Oklahoma following their defeat by Spain in 1662. Their language is a Caddoan dialect. They called themselves Kitikiti'sh, ‘raccoon eyelids’, referring to the custom of tattooing around the eyes. Originally skilled farmers, they traded their surplus with the Plains Indians for buffalo, but copied their buffalo-hunting and raiding lifestyle after acquiring horses around 1700. With their Comanche allies, they traded buffalo hides with the French for tools and crops. Pushed into Texas by the Osage, they were eventually removed to Oklahoma where their descendants now live.

Traditionally the Wichita cultivated maize (corn), pumpkins, melons, and tobacco in the summer months. They lived in dome-shaped houses covered with grass thatch, and decorated their skin with tattoos and paint. Men tattooed their eyelids, while women often had tattooed lines on their chins, and tattooed patterns on their breasts. When buffalo hunting, they used tepees.

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, in 1641, was the first European to contact the Wichita. In 1662 the Spanish attacked and conquered the Wichita, and the surviving Wichita moved from Kansas into Oklahoma. Attacks by the Osage pushed the Wichita into Texas along the Red River. They were placed on a reservation in Texas in 1854, and then removed to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1859. During the Civil War they fled to Kansas, before returning to Oklahoma. A series of treaties with the USA ended with the Wichita ceding most of their land by 1872, but they retain a small portion of land in Oklahoma.