Cutthroat Gap massacre

In 1833 — known among the Kiowa as "The Year the Stars Fell" — a band of Osage warriors attacked a Kiowa camp in what is now Oklahoma, killing approximately 150 people, most of them women, children, and the elderly. The camp, led by Chief A'date (also known as Islandman), was left largely unguarded because most of the Kiowa warriors had departed to raid a Ute camp or to hunt bison.

In the days before the attack, Kiowa bands from across the Plains had gathered near Rainy Mountain Creek to plan the annual Sun Dance ceremony. During this gathering, an Osage arrow was found on the ground, prompting the bands to scatter out of fear of their historic rival. Islandman's band moved southwest to seek better grazing land and camped west of a mountain, believing they were safe. Unknown to them, a band of Osage from Three Forks, who had been hunting bison in Kiowa territory, had followed the group with the intent of taking their horses. On the day of the attack, a boy grazing horses outside the camp spotted a hidden Osage warrior and raised the alarm, but the Osage attacked before the camp could organize a defense.

The Kiowa, surprised and outnumbered, fled the camp as the Osage killed the women, children, and elderly, decapitating some victims and burning the teepees. One elderly man escaped and alerted a nearby camp, prompting a relief effort. Accounts describe several acts of resistance during the attack, including a visiting Pawnee warrior who fought to allow others to escape, a father who carried his son in his teeth while fighting, a boy who placed himself between attackers and fleeing women and children, and a mother who fought off an Osage warrior while carrying an infant and holding her daughter's hand.

When Kiowa warriors returned, they found the mutilated remains of the victims, with severed heads placed in cooking pots. The Osage had also taken the Kiowa's sacred Tai-me medicine bundle, essential to the Sun Dance, along with two children, a boy named Thunder and a girl named White Weasel. The loss of the Tai-me meant the Kiowa could not hold the Sun Dance for two years, until negotiations with the Osage secured its return in exchange for a pony. Thunder died in captivity, but White Weasel was returned to the Kiowa during the first Dragoon Expedition of 1834, an event that helped improve relations between the two tribes.

In the aftermath, Islandman was removed as chief for having left the camp unguarded and was succeeded by Chief To-hau-san, who oversaw subsequent relations with the Osage and later resisted pacification efforts by the United States government. Cutthroat Gap, the site of the massacre, was reportedly never used again as a Kiowa camping ground.