Pawnee

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Pawnee

Name

The name Pawnee (pronounced PAW-nee or paw-NEE) probably comes from the Sioux term pa-rik-i, meaning a horn. The word refers to the distinctive hairstyle of the Pawnee warriors, who coated their hair with thick grease and paint so that it stood up and curved like a horn. Some groups of the Pawnee called themselves Ckirihki Kuruuriki, meaning “looks like wolves,” or Chahiksichahiks, meaning “men of men.”

Location

The Pawnee believe their ancestors came from the Southwest; some historians say they may have come from Mexico. Evidence suggests that the tribe had inhabited the Central Plains for at least five hundred years. The Pawnee once lived in what is now Kansas and Nebraska, concentrating in the valleys of the Loup, Platte, and Republican rivers. In the early twenty-first century the Pawnee reservation is located on 20,000 acres of land in north central Oklahoma, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Tulsa.

Population

At their height the Pawnee probably numbered about thirty-five thousand. In 1790 there were about ten thousand Pawnee. In 1900 there were about 650. In the 1990 U.S. Census, 3,387 people identified themselves as Pawnee. According to the 2000 census that number had decreased to 2,636; however, a total of 5,205 people claimed some Pawnee background. In 2007 tribal sources indicated a Pawnee enrollment of 3,190.

Language family

Caddoan.

Origins and group affiliations

The Pawnee and other Caddoan-speakers may be descendants of the prehistoric hunter-gatherers who roamed the Great Plains region of North America as many as 7,500 years ago. Some historians believe they came from Mexico but moved northward, and by 1600 they were in control of large parts of the western Plains. The Pawnee say they descended from the Kawarakis Pawnees, ancestors of the Chaui, Kitkehahki, and Pitahawirata Bands, who settled in southeastern Nebraska in approximately 900.

The Pawnee nation consisted of four related bands: the Chaui, or Grand Pawnee; the Kitkehahki; or Republican Pawnee; the Pitahawirata, or Tappage Pawnee; and the Skidi, or Wolf Pawnee. The Arikara were once considered part of the Pawnee, but they split from the main group many years ago and are now considered a separate group. The major enemies of the Pawnee were the Cheyenne and the Sioux tribes.

The Pawnee were a peaceful farming people who could be fierce when pushed to defend themselves. Because they stayed in one area, they made easy targets for other wandering Plains tribes. Still, other tribes regarded them as mysterious, and were awed by their poetic stories and rituals concerning the heavens and the Earth.

History

Pawnee in ancient times

For centuries the Pawnee way of life revolved around pursuing the Plains buffalo on foot, stampeding them over cliffs, trapping them in corrals, and killing and butchering them with chipped-stone tools. The Pawnee also farmed part-time, raising corn, squash, and beans in the fertile river valleys of the Great Plains.

Sometime around the early thirteenth century the Pawnee left the Great Plains, perhaps because of a change in the climate. While some scholars believe they settled in the Southwest, others believe they moved into the Southeast near the Mississippi River delta. But by the year 1300 the ancestors of today’s Pawnee returned to the Great Plains. They settled in the river valleys of modern Kansas and Nebraska between the Apache people to the west and the Sioux people to the east (see entries). From the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries Pawnee civilization flourished on the Great Plains.

Important Dates

1300: The Pawnee begin their migration to Nebraska.

1541: Francisco de Coronado meets the Pawnee on the Great Plains while looking for treasure.

1817: The Pawnee chief Petalésharo puts an end to the tradition of the Morning Star maiden sacrifice.

1833–72: The Pawnee sign four different agreements giving their land to the U.S. government.

1876: The U.S. government forces the Pawnee to abandon their land in Nebraska for a reservation in Oklahoma.

1960s–1970s: The federal government returns Pawnee reservation lands in Oklahoma to the tribe.

Horses arrive on the Plains

In 1541, about 250 years after the tribe returned to the Great Plains, Spanish explorer Francisco de Coronado (c. 1510–1554) encountered people he called Harahei north of the Arkansas River in what is now Kansas. These people were probably the Pawnee. Coronado, then in search of the riches, did not stay among them long.

Sometime before 1680 horses (originally brought from Spain) became a common sight on the Great Plains, and the Pawnee began to use them. Horses allowed the tribe to travel farther in search of buffalo. However, while tribes such as the Sioux and the Cheyenne (see entry) used the horse to move from place to place, the Pawnee remained primarily an agricultural people.

Tribe faces changes

Many changes occurred among the Pawnee in the nineteenth century. Their lands were overrun, first by eastern whites who had heard stories of free, fertile land in the West, then by miners heading to California after gold was discovered in 1848. The waves of migrant people, intent on crossing the Great Plains to find riches, frightened the buffalo on which the Pawnee relied for their survival. Sometimes starving Pawnee attacked white wagon trains and settlements to stay alive.

The whites brought European diseases to which the Pawnee had no immunity. A smallpox epidemic (outbreak of disease) in 1831 cut their numbers in half. In 1849 cholera, a deadly disease that spreads rapidly, reduced the tribe by half again. By 1857 widespread measles and tuberculosis had made the Pawnee dependent on aid from the U.S. government. That year the U.S. government placed the few remaining members of the tribe on a reservation on the Loup River near what is now Genoa, Nebraska. But on the reservation the Pawnee were vulnerable to raids from other Plains tribes, particularly the Sioux. In 1864 the U.S. government began a campaign to subdue the hostile Sioux, and the Pawnee volunteered to assist. Pawnee warriors fought bravely alongside the U.S. Army regulars.

On the reservation

On the reservation the Pawnee tried to live as before, hunting and farming in their communal style, whereby all the people shared in the work and divided equally the crops they produced. Federal agents, however, wanted them to farm as individuals. Agents also tried to convince the Pawnee to live in wooden houses and send their children to government schools where they were forbidden to speak their native language.

Then more disasters struck, both natural and manmade. A drought resulted in the dehydration and death of most of the buffalo and harmed the crops, and a plague of grasshoppers destroyed the crops that had survived. By this time, after all the disease and disorientation, the Pawnee were very weak. On August 5, 1873, a day when their men were away hunting, a large party of Sioux attacked Pawnee women and children. Between 75 and 115 innocent people died in what came to be called the Battle of Massacre Canyon.

In the face of continuing demands by white settlers for more Pawnee lands, in 1876 the U.S. government convinced the tribe to move from Nebraska to a reservation in Oklahoma. The federal government pushed the Pawnee off their Nebraska lands so quickly they did not even have time to harvest their crops. The people spent a terrible winter with little food to eat.

Rebirth of a nation

Government acts in 1887 and 1898 further reduced the land holdings of the remaining Pawnee, whose lives by now were full of sickness and misery. In 1893 white settlers again pressured the federal government for more land, so most of the Pawnee Reservation was purchased and settled by non-Native Americans.

By the early twentieth century the Pawnee seemed to all but disappear. Then in the early 1930s the U.S. government tried to right some past wrongs and help the Pawnee become a functioning tribe. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 restored some of their rights, but it was not until the mid-1960s that the federal government finally returned Pawnee reservation lands in Oklahoma to the tribe. In 1966 the Indian Claims Commission awarded the tribe $7 million for their original lands in Kansas and Nebraska that the United States had taken in the nineteenth century. During the 1970s the Pawnee regained more tribal lands.

In the early twenty-first century most Pawnee live in Pawnee, Oklahoma, the site of their tribal government. Although many have adapted to mainstream American life, they still hold celebrations of their Pawnee heritage throughout the year.

Religion

The Sun and stars

The religion of the Pawnee is inspired by the Sun and stars of the Great Plains sky, which they once used to guide them on their travels. Many of the stars and planets were worshipped as gods. The Pawnee believed that after death, human souls followed the Milky Way to heaven and lived out eternity with Tirawa, their Creator.

Pawnee priests served as messengers between the invisible spirit world and the everyday world. They watched the skies during planting and growing season, and if storms or other dangers threatened the crops, they performed rites to drive them away. They used stuffed birds and animals in religious ceremonies.

They also believed that the stars determined the best times for planting crops. In the spring they began a series of ceremonies to ensure a good harvest. At the summer solstice (June 21, when the sun is at its northernmost point) they offered a human sacrifice, and following the harvest they offered maize (corn) and other crops to the gods. Human sacrifices ended in the 1800s.

Sacred bundles and secret societies

Like many of the Plains tribes, the Pawnee had sacred bundles. (Sacred bundles are pouches that contained religious tools and symbols and were used in rituals and ceremonies.) A hereditary keeper cared for each sacred bundle. Their shrines were central to their Pawnee rituals (see “Sacred architecture”). Priests took charge of the ceremonies. The people believed that by pacifying the supernatural powers, they would have food, long life, and prosperity.

Several secret societies were connected with supernatural animals. These societies attracted game, healed diseases, and bestowed special powers. Some Pawnee also participated in the Ghost Dance movement during 1890s.

The Major Gods of the Pawnee

The most important Pawnee god is Tirawa, who represents the open sky. Tirawa created the universe to relieve his loneliness. He first created the four primary stars: the Evening Star in the West, with the Moon as her helper; the Morning Star in the East with the Sun as his helper; and the North and South Stars marking the other two directions. Tirawa also created stars for the skies of Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest and gave them the task of holding up the Earth.

The Evening Star and the Morning Star were responsible for the creation of the Earth and the ancestors of the Pawnee. The Evening Star created the Earth from a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. Then the Morning Star persuaded Evening Star to marry him, and they produced the first of the Pawnee. Their first-born child, a girl, was lowered to Earth on a whirlwind. Their second-born child, First Man, became Chief of Center Village and of all the Pawnee. First Man had to assemble and bring the important sacred bundles to the various Pawnee villages. Aided by Evening Star and Morning Star, the people developed their ceremonies, symbols, and songs. Bound by their shared gifts, the people then banded together to form a nation.

Language

The Pawnee spoke a language that was distantly related to the languages of the Wichita, the Caddo (see entries), and the Arikara, three other tribes whose language were in the Caddoan family of languages. Caddo was related to the languages of the Sioux and the Iroquois (see entry). Caddoan speakers all made use of Great Plains sign language for communicating outside their tribal group.

In modern times, the Chaui, Kitkehahki, and the Pitahawirata speak the South Band dialect (variety of a language), while the Skidi band have their own dialect. Both of these dialects comprise the Pawnee language.

In 1997 the tribe began the Pawnee Language Program. They created computer programs to teach vocabulary and grammar to all ages. With funding from a grant they also developed a Teacher Training Program and the Language Nest Model to teach Pawnee to young children. Language teachers spend two to four hours every day speaking Pawnee in the classrooms at the Hukasa Child Learning Center. The children receiving this training are infants to five-year-olds; their families can also participate in additional language instruction. In this way the tribe hopes to revitalize the Pawnee language and pass on their culture to the next generation.

Pawnee Words

asakis … “dog”
eerit … “see”
kiítsu’ … “water”
páh … “moon”
piíta … “man”
raruuku … “sing”
sakuru … “sun”
tsápaat … “woman”
árusa … “horse”
kuúruks … “bear”
katsiki … “fish”
rútki … “snake”

Government

In traditional times a Pawnee chief inherited his position from his father. Still, he had to prove he had the necessary knowledge and power to deserve the position. Pawnee leaders were respected for speaking in a quiet tone of voice, for leading in a wise, patient, and understanding manner, and for giving freely.

The tribe was organized by villages; each of which had its name, its shrine containing sacred objects, and its priests. It also had a hereditary chief and a council composed of the chiefs and leading men. Each chief had a herald who announced his orders.

Chiefs from the different villages made up a tribal council. Council meetings followed strict rules. Only certain people could speak, and attendance was limited to a few privileged men who watched the proceedings. The council made all major decisions for the tribe as a whole.

In modern times the tribe is governed by two eight-member governing bodies: the business council and the chiefs of the Nasharo Council. The bands chose their chiefs, while the entire tribe elects the president, vice-president, and secretary/treasurer of the business council.

Economy

The Pawnee relied on two different economies: the farming economy and the hunting economy based on the Plains buffalo. To produce the best crops, it was important to know when the spring planting should take place; this was the focus of the Ground-breaking Ceremony (see “Ground-Breaking Ceremony”).

The Pawnee way of life changed in the early 1700s with the introduction of guns and horses. The people came to rely on hunting to supply things that their crops could not give them, including meat and hides for clothing and shelter. They used all parts of the buffalo. Buffalo hair was braided into rope, horns were made into spoons and tools, and the animals’ shoulder blades were used as hoes.

As of 2007 the tribe gets most of its money from government grants and contracts, as well as from leasing tribal land for agricultural use and for oil and gas exploration. Additional revenue comes from their casino and trading post. The tribe also signed an agreement to build an ethanol (an alcohol-based fuel) plant. Individual Pawnee people make their living in many different occupations.

Daily life

Families

The oldest woman was the most important person in a family or in a household. Women raised the children, did the farming and the cooking, and made bowls, spoons, and other utensils. Men hunted, made war, fashioned weapons such as bows and arrows, went on twice-yearly buffalo hunts, and served as chiefs or healers. Since a Pawnee man could have more than one wife, he did not always live with his children, but it was his job to provide them with food and other necessities. A woman might have more than one husband, but all her children considered themselves brothers and sisters.

Older women of the tribe watched the children while middle-aged women worked. Young single women learned their duties by helping and observing. Pawnee society was matrilineal, so tribal heritage was passed down through the mothers. Men generally had one of the following functions: medicine man and priest, hunter, or warrior. Although men and women had distinct jobs, they shared decision-making.

Buildings

The Pawnee built two types of structures: earth lodges and tepees. They lived in earth lodges during the spring and fall while they were planting and harvesting their crops. They carried tepees with them on the buffalo hunt. Tepees were large, with eleven lodge poles, and could house up to eighteen people. They were made from buffalo hide and could be easily carried from place to place.

Earth lodges were made of dirt piled over a wooden framework of cottonwood and willow. They were well suited to the changing climate of the Great Plains, but they only lasted three to six years. They were also hard to build and maintain. It took the timber from four large trees and up to one hundred smaller trees or bushes to build one lodge.

Ten to twelve lodges made up a village, and each could shelter as many as ten related families. A lodge usually had a covered entryway, measuring about 12 feet (3.6 meters) high, 7 feet (2 meters) across, and 8 feet (2.5 meters) long. The entryway led to the main part of the circular dwelling, which was about 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter and about 15 feet (4.5 meters) high at the smoke hole in its center.

Sacred architecture

Both the earth lodge and the tepee were built according to Pawnee ideas of sacred architecture. They were miniature models of the universe, with the roof representing the sky overhead and the floor representing the earth underfoot. The four cedar logs holding up the roof stood for the four Pawnee clans, and a star shrine pointed to the West.

Each lodge or tepee had a sacred spot called the wi-haru, “the place of wonderful things.” The wi-haru represented Pawnee Paradise, where the corn was always ripe and the buffalo were always plentiful. It was always located along the western wall of the dwelling and included an altar with a buffalo skull and the family’s sacred bundle (see “Sacred bundles and secret societies”).

Clothing and adornment

The Pawnee made most of their clothing from buckskin. Women wore leather dresses or wrap skirts, adding leggings and overblouses in winter. Men wore leather breechcloths (garments with front and back flaps that hung from the waist), loose shirts, and leather leggings. They wore two belts. One held up their clothes; the other held necessities, such as a tomahawk, knife, pipe, and tobacco. Men carried buffalo robes to impress visitors with their power and status. The quality of a man’s hide shirt, with its decorations of quillwork, scalps, or skins, also showed his status.

Shirts and robes were decorated with moons, suns, or stars to represent the tribe’s special relationship with the heavens. Otter hide moccasins were usually left plain, although they might be decorated for special ceremonies, such as burials or warfare. Men sometimes wore turbans of hide or cloth. On special occasions, they wore war bonnets adorned with suns, moons, and stars. Both men and women pierced their ears and wore ornate beaded earrings.

Food

On their farmland in the fertile river valleys of Kansas and Nebraska, the Pawnee raised ten to fifteen different kinds of corn, eight kinds of beans, and seven kinds of pumpkins and squash, as well as watermelons, sunflowers, and tobacco. They also harvested a grain similar to modern wild rice. The village chief assigned plots of land to various families.

Excellent hunters, the Pawnee shot raccoon, skunk, quail, and prairie chickens with bows and arrows. When they caught buffalo, the Pawnee, who in later times were often near starvation, would gorge on hunks of the roasted or baked meat. The tribe used all parts of the buffalo, including the stomach lining, which made strong waterproof vessels and water pails.

Pawnee Ground Roast Pound Meat with Pecans

Author E. Barrie Kavasch spent time with the Pawnee of north-central Oklahoma. He noted that the Pawnee are known for their generosity and for the skill of their drummers and dancers. Their celebrations, accompanied by traditional Pawnee foods, draw large crowds. One Pawnee specialty, ground roast pound meat with pecans, is a favorite festival food. At one time the dish was prepared with buffalo. Today beef replaces buffalo.

1 (5-pound) lean rump roast
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup warm water
2 pounds shelled pecan halves
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place the roast, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, in a well-greased roasting pan and roast for 50 to 60 minutes until moderately well done. Remove roast and allow to stand and cool for 30 minutes.

Lower the oven to 325°. Cut cooked roast into large chunks, and feed, one by one, through a hand grinder. Coarsely grind the beef and spread it in another broad roasting pan. Place the first roasting pan [on a stove burner] over low heat and [add] the 1 cup of warm water, stirring and scraping all the meat residue from the pan sides and bottom to make a broth [a procedure called deglazing]. Simmer for about 10 minutes while stirring. Pour the broth over the ground meat in the second roasting pan, then sprinkle the meat mixture with the pecan halves. Season overall with sugar, salt, and pepper.

Place this pan in the 325° oven and roast for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring once to blend thoroughly. Serve hot and enjoy with other festival foods. This is especially delicious with hot corn and squash.

Serves 10.

Kavasch, E. Barrie. Enduring Harvests: Native American Foods and Festivals for Every Season. Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 1995, p. 76-7.

Education

Grandparents were the primary teachers of Pawnee children, instructing them in the tasks of tribal life. Grandmothers also took care of children’s daily needs and gave them toys and treats. Grandfathers joked with their grandchildren and sometimes took the boys outside on a winter morning, occasionally dumping them into the snow or into a stream to “toughen them up.” Uncles taught the boys to hunt, fight, and make tools. Girls learned from women how to take care of the lodge and work in the fields.

From childhood, tribal members were treated as independent, respected persons who were expected to be self-reliant. Children were taught to share their goods with others, a lesson that produced adults without the strong sense of personal possessions, unlike many modern societies.

In the early twenty-first century most Pawnee students attend area public schools. In 2005 the tribe opened the Hukasa Child Learning Center and Pawnee Nation College. A language program plays an important part in the curriculum at both schools (see “Language”), and college students can learn more about their culture through the American Indian Studies Program.

Healing practices

The Pawnee had two separate types of “medicine men”: holy men who maintained the tribal relationship with Tirawa, the Creator, and the other gods; and shaman (pronounced SHAH-mun or SHAY-mun) who maintained the tribal relationship with animals and the natural world. The shaman were organized into eight “doctor groups,” and each had its own unique healing ceremonies. Each group conducted at least two healing ceremonies every year and took part in “mesmerizing contests,” where they demonstrated their skills in hypnotizing people.

Only members of the doctor groups could practice the healing arts. Others who did so were considered witches and were treated with contempt. In modern times tribal members receive health care services through the U.S. Public Health Service Clinic.

Arts

Pawnee people enjoyed decorating their homes, tools, and clothing with colorful feathers, beads, and paint. Porcupine quills were a favorite material. Quills were dyed various colors, then woven or sewn into designs on clothing, hunting shields, and other objects. In later years crafters also used European glass beads. Paintings were done on a variety of surfaces, ranging from buffalo hides to the painter’s body. They often depicted important events or battles, as well as images of the land, sky, and stars.

>The Fast Runners

Native Americans often told tales to explain why animals had certain physical features. In this story the Pawnee explain why an antelope has a gall bladder (a small sac on the liver that stores bile for digesting food), while a deer does not. And why a deer has dew claws (short hoofs or claws on the back of the leg that do not touch the ground), but an antelope does not. Many versions of this story begin with two children examining the carcasses of the two animals and questioning their mother about the differences.

Once long ago, the antelope and the deer met on the prairie. At this time both of them had galls and both dew claws: They began to talk together, and each was telling the other what he could do. Each one told how fast he could run, and before long they were disputing as to which could run the faster. Neither would allow that the other could beat him, so they agreed that they would have a race to decide which was the swifter, and they bet their galls on the race. When they ran, the antelope proved the faster runner, and beat the deer and took his gall.
Then the deer said, ‘Yes, you have beaten me on the prairie, but that is not where I live. I only go out there sometimes to feed, or when I am travelling around. We ought to have another race in the timber. That is my home, and there I can run faster than you can.’
The antelope felt very big because he had beaten the deer in the race, and he thought wherever they might be, he could run faster than the deer. So he agreed to race in the timber, and on this race they bet their dew claws.
They ran through the thick timber, among the brush and over fallen logs, and this time the antelope ran slowly because he was not used to this kind of traveling, and the deer easily beat him, and took his dew claws.
Since then the deer has had no gall, and the antelope no dew claws.
McNeese, Tim. Illustrated Myths of Native America: The Southwest, Western Range, Pacific Northwest, and California. London: Blandford, 1999.

Customs

Much has been written about Pawnee practices because four Pawnee men—James Murie, Roaming Scout, He Arrives in the Lead, and Mark Evarts—cooperated with American anthropologists (people who study the cultures of various peoples) to record and preserve many Pawnee traditions.

War and hunting rituals

The main objective of most Pawnee attacks was to steal horses. When they did raid enemy villages, they approached quietly in the night and swept off with herds of horses. Sometimes they cut off scalps of the enemy as war trophies.

The Buffalo Dance was held to ensure that a hunt would result in a large kill. Painted dancers, carrying spears and wearing large buffalo masks, reenacted a hunt. Moving to the beat of a drum that represented the beating heart of the Pawnee hunter, a dancer circled the fire until a blunt arrow shot by another dancer hit him. Then the buffalo dancer collapsed and was dragged out of the circle. Non-dancing participants pretended to skin and butcher the dead “buffalo,” but in the end released him.

All Pawnee buffalo hunts were supervised by a society called the Hunt Police, who kept the people in order so the animals would not be frightened and stampede. The Hunt Police seized and beat anyone who disturbed the silence.

Puberty

At the onset of menstruation a girl moved into a separate lodge with her grandmother. Afterwards the grandmother bathed and clothed the girl, then purified her with cedar smoke. A Pawnee boy did not wear clothes until he reached puberty. At that time he moved in with his uncle’s wife, who taught him about sex. The uncle decided when the boy was ready for marriage and might even select the boy’s wife.

Courtship and marriage

Girls who had learned how to care for a home and family were considered ready to marry at about age fifteen. Boys often married when they were about eighteen. Marriages were often informal. If a family approved of a boy, he could move into the girl’s home. Although a man might have more than one wife, he usually married his wife’s sister.

Birth Customs

When his wife went into labor, a husband unbraided his hair and went to a lodge for four days. After the placenta (the cord that attaches to an infant’s navel, or bellybutton, and nourishes the fetus in the mother’s womb) was cut, it was placed in a special buckskin pouch.

Festivals and ceremonies

The Ground-Breaking Ceremony

Each year the time to plant was determined through a Pawnee ritual known as the Ground-Breaking Ceremony. This was the only Pawnee ritual in which women played a major role.

A woman who had a wintertime dream about planting reported it to the priests of the tribe. If they decided the dream was inspired by Tirawa, they pronounced the woman and her family the sponsors of the Ground-Breaking Ceremony.

Shortly after the first budding of the willows in spring, the woman performed a special dance to launch the annual planting. The tribe devoted the following day to ceremonies and rituals describing the process of planting and caring for the crops, especially corn. For the next six days the entire tribe worked to weed and plant the crops.

Morning Star Ceremony

The most famous Pawnee rite was the Morning Star ceremony, in which the Pawnee sacrificed a young girl to the Morning Star god to thank him for creating the tribe. The ceremony began when a warrior had a special dream about Morning Star. He then went before the priests of the tribe, who gave him permission to kidnap a young girl of about thirteen from another tribe—usually a Sioux band, according to tradition.

The warrior carried the girl back to his village, where she was tenderly cared for until the time for the ceremony came. The warrior placed her on a platform. As the Sun rose, a priest shot her through the heart with an arrow. Then every male in the tribe, even the youngest, shot the girl’s body with arrows. Pawnee chief Petalésharo (c. 1797–c. 1832) ended this practice in 1817. He interrupted a ceremony and freed the young woman before she could be sacrificed, giving her food and a horse so she could return to her own people.

Other festivals

Another popular ceremony was the Harvest Festival. It lasted for twenty nights and featured chanting, music, and performances by magicians and clowns. White people who witnessed the performance reported seeing fantastic sights like the sudden appearance of people dressed as bears and other animals who chased and mangled people to death. The “dead” people were then cured by shamans and arose unharmed.

Every year since 1946 the Pawnee nation has hosted the Pawnee Indian Veteran’s Homecoming around the Fourth of July, where all members of the tribe are welcome to return to their traditional homelands. Dressed in Native clothing, they play Pawnee games and do tribal dances.

Current tribal issues

Like other Native peoples, after years of poverty and the shattering of traditions by government policy, the Pawnee face such problems as alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, child neglect, and hunger. The tribe has developed some effective ways to deal with these social problems. These include health, substance abuse, and community services programs, as well as programs that deal with child welfare and the feeding of the elderly.

Dealing with the remains of deceased tribal members that are displayed at museums and in private collections is also an issue. The Pawnee Tribal Business Council has developed a process for bringing their ancestors’ bones back to the reservation. They see that the remains are buried appropriately.

Notable people

The self-taught Pawnee artist Charles W. Chapman (1944–) attracted attention during the mid-1980s for his dramatic portraits of Native Americans. For many years Chapman had been employed primarily as a horse breeder, rodeo rider, and construction worker. His artwork draws on his Pawnee heritage, usually depicting shamans, warriors, scouts, and hunters in their Native dress. He has won many awards for his art.

Other notable Pawnee include: attorney and Native American rights activist John E. Echohawk (1945–), who also serves as executive director of the Native American Rights Fund; attorney Walter R. Echo-Hawk (1948–), a tribal judge, scholar, writer, and activist; and chief Petalésharo (c. 1797–c. 1832), who was honored as a great warrior because he tried to make conditions better for all human beings, Native or white.

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Kallen, Stuart A. The Pawnee. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2001.

Lesser, Alexander. The Pawnee Ghost Dance Hand Game: Ghost Dance Revival and Ethnic Identity. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Linton, Ralph. Purification of the Sacred Bundles: A Ceremony of the Pawnee. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1923.

Hahn, Elizabeth. The Pawnee. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publications, Inc., 1992.

Myers, Arthur. The Pawnee. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

Spence, Lewis. Myths and Legends of the North American Indians. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 1997.

Kavanaugh, Thomas W. “Reading Historic Photographs: Photographers of the Pawnee.” Indiana University. (accessed on August 6, 2007).

“Pawnee.” Four Directions Institute. (accessed on August 6, 2007).

“Pawnee Indian Museum.” Kansas State Historical Society. (accessed on August 6, 2007).

Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. (accessed on August 6, 2007).

Gordon L. Pullar, Director, Department of Alaska Native and Rural Development College of Rural and Community Development, UAF, Anchorage, Alaska