During the Christmas of 1987 my Grandmother, Helen Kauahquo, gave me a Kiowa tobacco bag, and she wrote a story to go along with the bag. The story was in her words. I read, "I made you a Kiowa tobacco bag like my Grandpa Maunkee used to have and carry around with him." My Grandmother had made the bag and placed some Kiowa beadwork down the middle of the bag and also along the two edges to close the bag. With the tobacco bag she gave me a handwritten story that she said was the pipe story on her mother's side of the family. Today, my Grandmother is 89 years old, and this is the story that she passed on to me with the tobacco bag:

Grandma. When she was four or five years old, her Grandpa Maunkee took care of her and her brother for many years after their father had died. Her Grandpa Maunkee had a tobacco bag in which her carried his tobacco pipe, a long narrow stick to clean his pipe and his tobacco. Some Kiowa men had bags made out of animal hides (like the buffalo) with beautiful beadwork. Other men made their bags with canvas and some with simple plain cloth.

She recalled that she helped pick sumac leaves for Grandpa Maunkee to mix with his tobacco. Sumac leaves were abundantly available among the trees and thick underbrush that grew along Elk Creek. The Elk Creek area is located in Southwest Oklahoma and has a traditional place for Kiowa camps back when the Kiowa were living in teepee and roaming over the Southern plains area. When they came to Oklahoma their range ran from southwest Oklahoma through Texas and down into Mexico. My Grandmother's homestead is still there on Kiowa land, and my mother lives across the road from her where the old campgrounds used to be. Bands of Kiowa Tribes camped along the Elk Creek to take advantage of the plant and animal life that thrived along a winding source of water. The sumac leaves enhanced the taste and aroma of the tobacco smoke.

Grandma. At night the men folk would sit in a circle on the ground and tell stories of the Kiowa tribe. They would sit outside in the warm summer nights and in the teepee during the cold winter nights. They would smoke their pipes and pray for the Tribe and all the family members that existed then and all Kiowas that would be living seventy or eighty years in the future. She concluded that men would sit, smoke their pipes, tell stories and pray every night.

That was the story my Grandmother gave me as a gift for Christmas of 1987. It was good that the men were not only thinking about themselves and their families, but also all the Kiowa families. In that respect, they were praying for me and here I am eighty years later in the future.