Tanoan has long been recognized as a major family of
Pueblo languages, consisting of
Tiwa,
Tewa, and
Towa. The inclusion of
Kiowa into the family was at first controversial given the cultural differences between those groups. The once-nomadic
Kiowa people of the Plains are culturally quite distinct from the Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa pueblos, which obscured somewhat the linguistic connection between Tanoans and Kiowans. Linguists now accept that a Tanoan family without Kiowa would be
paraphyletic, as any ancestor of the Pueblo languages would be ancestral to Kiowa as well. Kiowa may be closer to Towa than Towa is to Tiwa–Tewa. In older texts,
Tanoan and
Kiowa–Tanoan were used interchangeably. Because of the cultural use of the name
Tanoan as signifying several peoples who share a culture, the more explicit term
Kiowa–Tanoan is now commonly used for the language family as a whole, with Tanoan being the branch that contains the languages now spoken in New Mexico and Arizona (i.e.
Arizona Tewa). The prehistory of the Kiowa people is little known. As a result, the history is obscure about the separation of the members of this language family into two groups ('Puebloan' and 'Plains') with radically distinct lifestyles. There is apparently no oral tradition of any ancient connection between the peoples. Scholars have not determined when the peoples were connected so that the common linguistic elements could have developed. The earliest traditions and historical notices of the Kiowa record them migrating from the north and west, to the territory now associated with the tribal nation. Today this area is within the modern states of
Texas and
Oklahoma, which they occupied from the late 18th century. ==Historical phonology==