NEW YORKPUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES1916
Before summarizing the results of the investigation of Plains Indiansocieties undertaken by the Department of Anthropology for a number ofyears, it appeared desirable to secure data from the Kiowa respecting certaintheoretical points that had developed from a study of other tribes. ThoughMr. Mooney's printed Kiowa material seemed to decide these questionsimplicitly, it seemed best to take a view of the subject in the field from theparticular vantage ground afforded by the systematic survey of the regionpresented in this volume. For this purpose I made a side trip to Anadarko,Oklahoma, in June, 1915. There I had the good fortune of enlisting theservices of Mr. Andres Martinez, a Mexican who had been captured by theApache while a boy, sold to the Kiowa two years later, and who had lived alarge portion of his life as a Kiowa among Kiowa, marrying native women,entering some of the men's societies, and so forth. Mr. Martinez becamemy main informant and acted as my interpreter in questioning two full-bloodIndians on doubtful points. He also corrected several errors in hispublished biography,[1] which he explained were due to his inadequateknowledge of English at the time of its composition.
It is obvious that several days' work, however intensive, cannot exhaustsuch a topic as the military and related organizations of a Plains tribe:all I attempted was to shed some light on the problems treated in this seriesof papers.
February, 1916.