Wichita (redirected from Witchita)

Wichita, indigenous people of North America

Wichita (wĭch`ĭtô), Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Caddoan branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They formerly occupied central Kansas and ranged into Oklahoma and Texas. The Wichita were the people of Quivira, which Francisco Coronado visited in 1541. Juan de Padilla, left by the expedition to undertake the Christianization of the Native Americans, was the earliest missionary among the Plains Indians. Padilla, however, was killed by Native Americans three years later. In 1662 the Wichita were defeated by Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa. By 1765, forced southward by hostile northern and eastern tribes, they had a village on the north fork of the Red River in Oklahoma. Following a severe smallpox epidemic, they abandoned the village, moving to the present site of Fort Sill; later they moved again, and in the Civil War they fled for a time to Kansas; the site became Wichita, Kans. In 1872 they ceded all their lands to the United States. Later they were settled on a reservation, now dissolved, in W Oklahoma. In 1990 there were over 1,200 Wichita in the United States. Culturally the Wichita were similar to their Plains relatives the Pawnee. The French called the Wichita Panis piqués, or Pawnee Picts, because they practiced tattooing. Distinctive to the Wichita was the conical grass house, which resembled a haystack. They practiced a dance for agricultural fertility, and in the late 19th cent. they adopted the Ghost Dance.

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Wichita, city, United States

Wichita (wĭch`ĭtô), city (1990 pop. 304,011), seat of Sedgwick co., S central Kans., at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers; inc. 1870. It is the chief commercial and industrial center of S Kansas and the largest city in the state. It has railroad shops, flour mills, meatpacking plants, grain elevators, oil refineries, and a huge aircraft industry. Other manufactures include machinery, electrical products, and computer equipment.

Wichita is located on the site of a village (1863–65) inhabited by Wichita Native Americans who had been driven out of Oklahoma and Texas for their Union sympathies during the Civil War. A trading post was established there in 1864 and the city was founded in 1868 by settlers serving the Chisholm Trail. In 1872 the railroad was extended to Wichita and the city boomed as a cow town. After 1880 it became the trade center of an agricultural and livestock region. Oil was discovered just E of Wichita in 1915.

The city has many civic and cultural facilities, including art museums, a symphony orchestra, a modernistic convention and cultural complex (Century II), and a large speech-and-hearing rehabilitation center. It has fine parks, a zoo, a "cow-town" restoration, and two large stadiums. It is the seat of Wichita State Univ., Friends Univ., Kansas Newman College, and Berean Christian College. Nearby is McConnell Air Force Base.

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Wichita

City (pop., 2000: 344,284), south-central Kansas, U.S. On the Arkansas River, the city was founded in 1864 as a trading post on the site of a Wichita Indian village; it developed with the Texas cattle trade along the Chisholm Trail and the rapid spread of agricultural settlement along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Co. In the 1870s it was a major cattle-shipping centre. It developed as a centre of the aircraft industry in the 1920s. Aircraft construction continues; other economic activities include oil refining, grain processing and storage, and livestock marketing.

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Wichita

a city in S Kansas, on the Arkansas River: the largest city in the state; two universities. Pop.: 354 617 (2003 est.)