Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians is James Mooney’s classic study of the pictographic calendars by which the Kiowa people of the southern Plains recorded their history. A distinguished ethnologist of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Mooney interprets the winter counts and summer marks, reconstructing Kiowa history, customs, and worldview.
The work is a model of careful ethnographic and historical scholarship, combining native testimony, the calendar records themselves, and documentary sources. It preserves a remarkable indigenous system of historical reckoning and offers deep insight into Kiowa culture. For students of Native American history, Plains anthropology, and indigenous systems of record-keeping, Mooney’s study remains a foundational and frequently cited source in the ethnographic literature.