The history of the Padouca Indians is one of the most compelling and debated narratives in the annals of Native American tribes. Accounts from early Western explorations firmly place the Padouca Indians across a vast swathe of the central plains, stretching from the Black Hills region of South Dakota south to the Arkansas River and extending close to the Spanish territories of New Mexico. This powerful and enigmatic tribe left a significant, yet often obscured, mark on the landscape and history of the American frontier.
Their presence was first definitively documented by Canadian explorer M. Du Tissenet in September 1719, during his visit to a Padouca village in Kansas, situated a fifteen-day march west of the Pawnee. Du Tissenet described them as a “brave and warlike tribe,” providing the earliest reliable insights into their society. Just a few years later, in 1724, French explorer Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont undertook an extensive journey across the Kansas Territory, reaching the Padouca villages located at the source of the Smoky Hill River. Bourgmont’s observations were crucial, noting that the Padouca lived in fixed villages with substantial houses and actively engaged in agriculture, planting crops.
The Shifting Identity: Padouca, Comanche, and Apache
Before 1740, the identification of the Padouca was often intertwined with other prominent Plains tribes. French explorers from the east sometimes broadly referred to both the Comanche and Plains Apache as Padouca, leading to considerable historical confusion. This interchangeable naming highlights the fluidity of tribal identities and territorial claims during this period, making the precise historical delineation of the Padouca Indians a complex task for later historians and anthropologists.
Insights from Du Pratz and De Bourgmont’s Journals
Valuable details about the ancient Padouca tribe’s customs were preserved in Du Pratz’s 1757 “History of Louisiana,” derived from M. De Bourgmont’s journal. This account offers a window into their distinct way of life:
- Vast Nation: The Padouca were described as a numerous nation, extending almost two hundred leagues, with villages in close proximity to the Spanish settlements of New Mexico.
- Metallurgy: They were acquainted with silver, suggesting they may have worked at mines or traded with groups who did.
- Stone Tools: Inhabitants distant from the Spanish relied on fire-stone for knives and hatchets, used for felling trees, flaying, and butchering game. They possessed very few European goods and had only a faint knowledge of them.
- First Contact with Firearms: The arrival of Bourgmont and his firearms initially terrified them, causing them to quake and bow their heads upon hearing the reports.
- Equestrian Warfare: The Padouca generally went to war on horseback, covering their horses with dressed leather to protect them from darts.
- Trained Dogs: For transporting baggage, they trained large dogs when horses were not available or reserved for hunting.
Interestingly, the Padouca living further from Spanish influence cultivated no grain, subsisting entirely on hunting. Yet, they were not a truly wandering nation, maintaining large, permanent villages with numerous cabins housing many families. These served as their permanent abodes, from which hunting expeditions would embark.
Elaborate Hunting Practices
Their hunting expeditions were meticulously organized. A hundred hunters, armed with bows and arrows, would set out on horseback, often accompanied by women and children, for journeys lasting two or three days to find buffalo herds. They would encamp near brooks with ample wood, securing their horses. The next day, hunters would pursue herds with the wind at their backs to prevent detection. They would chase the buffalo, typically in a crescent formation, until the animals were exhausted. Hunters would then dismount and kill only cows, rarely males, by piercing them at the shoulder. The carcasses were flayed, entrails removed, and the meat, along with the hides, was transported back to the village on horseback. The women and younger members prepared the meat in the traditional manner, while the men continued to hunt for a few more days. This cycle of sustained hunting from permanent villages led some less informed travelers to mistakenly believe they were a nomadic people.
The Enigmatic Disappearance
By the time Lewis and Clark passed through in 1804, they recorded that the Padouca still resided in fixed villages. However, confusion about their identity persisted. Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike, exploring Kansas and Colorado in 1806, noted that “Padouca” was the Pawnee name for the Comanche. Yet, the Pawnee themselves asserted that the Comanche did not cultivate crops or maintain permanent villages, directly contradicting Bourgmont’s earlier findings about the Padouca.
Later, in 1821, Jacob Fowler of the Glenn–Fowler expedition to Santa Fe encountered people among the Kiowa whom he identified as “Kiowa-Padduce” and “Padduca-people,” explicitly stating they were not Comanche. For over a century, the name Padouca appeared on early maps, sometimes labeling the Kansas River as the Padouca River, with villages marked at the sources of both the Kansas and Arkansas Rivers. However, the maps offered little insight into their relationships with other tribes.
The Padouca were described as an “unknown race and language” whose habits differed significantly from neighboring nations. Their villages were notable for their regular layout, with streets forming squares—a sophisticated urban planning uncommon among other tribes. Their neatly built houses and advanced living habits positioned them as more intelligent and peaceful than the more warlike eastern tribes. Little concrete history of the Padouca exists after the French encounters in the early 18th century.
The exact reasons for their eventual disappearance remain a matter of speculation. Theories range from their destruction by combined forces of eastern tribes and the Pawnee, to the devastating impact of disease. As a distinct nation, they faded from the historical record, though some scholars believe the roving bands of Kiowa and Kaskaia, whose language is distinct from Dakota and who long hunted in the former Padouca territories from their Black Hills haunts, might represent the last remnants of this once-great nation.
The Apache Hypothesis: George Bird Grinnell’s Conclusion
In 1920, the renowned American anthropologist and historian George Bird Grinnell offered a compelling perspective on the Padouca’s true identity. After extensive study, Grinnell concluded: “The evidence is not conclusive as to who the Padouca were, but it convinces me that the Padouca were not Comanche, and I am disposed to regard them as Apache.” This statement powerfully reinforces the long-standing debate and points towards the Apache as the most likely cultural and linguistic descendants or direct ancestors of the mysterious Padouca Indians, bringing some clarity to their elusive historical footprint.
