The Taovaya tribe of the Wichita people were Native Americans originally from Kansas, who moved south into Oklahoma and Texas in the 18th century.

[2] In 1541, Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led an expedition across the Great Plains in search of a rich land called Quivira.

What he found were ancestral Wichita, a numerous farming and buffalo hunting people in central Kansas who possessed none of the wealth he sought.

[4] From about 1630 to 1710, the Taovaya might have lived near present-day Marion, Kansas, where archaeological sites belonging to the Great Bend aspect have been discovered.

[5] In 1719, French explorer Claude Charles Du Tisne found two likely Taovaya villages of people he called "Paniouassa" near the present-day Neodesha, Kansas.

That same year another French explorer Bernard de la Harpe visited a village, probably a few miles south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which the inhabitants were from several Wichita tribes including the "Toayas" or Taovayas.

The village at Spanish Fort was "a lively emporium where Comanches brought Apache slaves, horses and mules to trade for French packs of powder, balls, knives, and textiles and for Taovayas-grown maize, melons, pumpkins, squash, and tobacco.

In 1758, the Comanche, Taovaya, and other Wichita destroyed the San Sabá de la Santa Cruz mission of the Spanish.

In December 1764 Eyasiquiche, one of the prominent leaders among the Taovaya, led an attack against Spaniards and Apaches near Mission San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz.

The Taovayan Valley, a geographic region encompassing the area between the Wichita Mountains and the Red River of the South, is named after the tribe.