Lost City of Etzanoa

 

photo by Elia Pellegrini

The Wichita Indians were a tribe from about two to twenty-five hundred years ago near the Arkansas River. Referring to themselves as Quicasquiris or Quirasquiris, they were believed to migrated from Louisiana or Mississippi around three thousand years ago. The Caddoan language family lived in “beehive” or grass-thatched lodges. 

These homes range from fifteen to thirty feet in diameter and twelve to twenty feet high. To create the frame, there are fourteen to sixteen cedar posts and small cedar and willow poles. Four small poles protruding symbolized the four world quarters or gods (Brooks, 2011). The homes are then covered in grass to insulate and repel weather.

Source: plainshumanities.unl.edu

Like many Native American tribes, the Wichita religion encompasses the earth and the sky as gods and goddesses. Every animate and inanimate object possesses a spirit from an ancestor. Kinnikasus, the Man Never Known on Earth, is the cosmos of the universe. Male gods oversee the heavens. The goddesses rule the moon and the earth. The Wichita is recognized for establishing the calumet ceremony, the North American Indian peace pipe.

 The Wichita and their descendants were thought of as being warlike and hunters, however, were they warlike, or were they forced into war? Communities were first thought to be in a smaller statue of thirty to a few hundred people. Indications from written archives of a Spanish soldier described visiting a village in Kansas possessing two thousand homes holding around twenty thousand Plains Indians named Etzanoa, The Great Settlement, located at the banks of the Walnut River just beyond Arkansas City. Donald Blakeslee discovered this city in June 2015. The city is five miles long, making it one of the largest prehistoric Native American towns in the United States (Blakeslee, 2020). Much more significant than previously thought.

Drawn by a Wichita Indian in 1602 captured by the Spanish

Source: archaeologicalconservancy.org

The land is a perfect area for cultivation because of the pure water, surrounding trees, farmland, and abundance of bison nearby. This civilization was an active community that not only thrived but also spoke many languages and were great traders of bison products from leather to jerky. Blakeslee and his crew uncovered Spanish artifacts such as bullets, cannonballs, a water shrine, as well as, Etzanoan potsherds, arrow points made of flint and various stones, and burn pits. Methods used for excavation were instruments like Maptomatry were successful in finding clusters of buried features, including fireplaces. Thermal imaging from the air discovered a giant feature that has yet to be excavated.

Source: kansas.com

 

Between 1450 and 1700 AD, the descendants of Wichita Indians inhabited Etzanoa for almost three hundred years. In 1601, the Spanish visited Etzanoa led by Onate, governor of New Mexico, in the pursuit of a fabled “city of gold” (Malakoff 2016). Slave trade became abundant because of the lack of mineral deposits. Tribal rivals like the Apache traded with the Spanish for horses and metal weapons. 

Credit: Donald Blakeslee

archaeologicalconservancy.org

In 1699, the French initiated the slave trade to barter weapons. Due to disease and warfare, populations decreased. By the 1700s, Wichita was documented to be around ten thousand. In the late eighteenth century, the population dwindled to four thousand. Robert L. Brooks (2011) from the University of Oklahoma stated that in the 1890s, only one hundred fifty-three remained. In 1872, the Wichita was moved to a 743,000-acre reservation residing in Caddo County, Oklahoma. In 1901, the reservation of portioned and sold off leaving only 1260-acres of land that was to be shared with the Caddo and Delaware tribes (Brooks, 2011).

References


Tanner, B. (2019, February 20). Mysterious 'Lost City' of Etzanoa in south-central Kansas now open to tours. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.kansas.com/news/state/article208617349.html


The Battlefield. (2019, January 02). Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://etzanoa.com/the-battlefield/


The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2020, April 23). Wichita. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wichita-people


Malakoff, D. (2016, March 16). Searching For Etzanoa. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.archaeologicalconservancy.org/searching-for-etzanoa/


Brooks, R. (2011). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.na.127


Truth Be Told Radio (Director). (2020, June 12). Ancient Native American City Discovered "Etzanoa"? Dr. Donald Blakelee [Video file]. Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hx8cjTtqaQ