Small village groups also began to appear on the Southern Plains in about AD 800 or 900. Living in permanent houses and practicing both agriculture and hunting and gathering (focusing on bison), they possessed a rich inventory of tools and weapons befitting a sedentary life. Set near the floodplains of major streams, and growing maize, beans, and squash, their homes assumed various forms: some had stone-slab foundations, while others were wattle-and-daub structures. Thousands of these villages are scattered across the Southern Plains, differentiated by their architecture, pottery, and other possessions. It is believed that most or all of them developed from indigenous Woodland groups, with the architecture of the western groups borrowed from Puebloan groups to the southwest, and the more easterly ones borrowing from the eastern woodlands. Many of the groups are believed to be related to historic Caddoan groups who lived further to the east and north.
Upper Canark Complex villages, scattered across the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and adjoining regions, were characterized by houses having stone-slab foundations, some of them having several rooms. The best-known subunit of that complex is the Antelope Creek Phase, centered in the Texas panhandle. Isolated homesteads, small hamlets, and large unfortified villages denote peaceful times, though their westernmost villages in southeastern Colorado are built in defensive settings.
A number of other village complexes are known in central Oklahoma and northern Texas, several of which are assigned to the Redbed Variant. Dating to about AD 800 or 900-1450, their hamlets or small villages of rectangular or oval wattle-and-daub homes were confined to the valleys of major rivers. Like their earlier western neighbors, they depended heavily on bison, though the abundance of this animal appears to have fluctuated through time. Some of these groups are surely related to the historic Wichita Indians.
The Wichitas emerge into history as the descendants of the Great Bend Aspect of south-central Kansas. Dating between AD 1450 and 1700, their large villages were built on terraces or hillsides near streams. Circular or oval homes were built on the surface or in shallow pits; they are believed to represent the kind of pole and grass-thatched structures described by Francisco de Coronado and Juan de Ofiate in the 1500s. Fragments of chain mail and other metal goods from some Great Bend sites identify them as the Wichita villages known to the Spaniards as Quivira.
World History
