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[North American French Pani, of Illinois origin, ultimately of Siouan origin.]
For more information on Pawnee, visit Britannica.com.
Archeological investigations in Nebraska have revealed that pottery, tool, and implement types found in the Lower Loup Phase beginning between the 1500s and 1600s indicate a distinct grouping of people. Similarities were discovered between Lower Loup artifact types and cultural patterns found in later eighteenth-century historic Pawnee sites. Information in European colonial and later American sources indicated that the Pawnees lived and hunted in a region now located in Nebraska and parts of Kansas. The Pawnees' first contact with non-Indians occurred in the seventeenth century, when the French traded with tribes along the Missouri River tributaries. Later the Spanish considered the Pawnees subjects of the Spanish crown. Next, in the early 1800s American explorers and treaty makers came. United States treaties resulted in tribal land cessions, placed the tribe on a Nebraska reservation, and reduced its traditional territory, until 1875, when the tribe faced forced removal to a reservation in Indian Territory. Estimates indicate a population of between 10,000 and 20,000 in the 1800s, dropping to less than 700 by 1906. The rapid decline resulted from intertribal warfare, disease, and hunger caused by improvident government policies.
The sacred was all-encompassing in Pawnee life. The seasonal round of subsistence activities, including crop growing, gathering, and biannual bison hunting, called for ceremonies in which hide-wrapped sacred bundles containing powerful objects were used ritually to secure success in each endeavor. Harvest and success in war and hunting called for particular tribal ceremonies. Important in Pawnee religion was the belief in Tirawahut, an abstraction described as all-powerful in the universe. Certain sky constellations, Mother Corn, the buffalo, and all things in nature had sacred connotations. A few sacred bundles belong to the Pawnees now, but their use and ceremonies are mostly forgotten. Today, tribal members may belong to local Christian churches or the Native American Church.
The Pawnee tribe historically was governed by a council composed of chiefs from each of the four bands, the Chaui, Pitahawirata, Kitkahahki, and Skidi, that once lived in separate locations and villages. After land cessions they were compelled to live together on reservations. Later in Oklahoma, after passage of the 1936 Oklahoma Welfare Act, a Business Council and the Nasharo (Chiefs) Council became governing bodies.
Important historical events include loss of tribal land resulting from forced cessions and the Allotment Act of 1896; use of Pawnee warriors as United States scouts in the 1860s and 1870s; forced removal to Indian Territory, away from sacred places and tribal graves; deaths of leading chiefs, ceremonial leaders, and tribal members that initiated loss of sovereignty and culture; the ongoing yearly visit between the Caddoan-speaking Wichitas and Pawnees, stemming from an ancient friendship; the leadership of Pawnees in the Native American Rights Fund and repatriation issues; and the selection of Kevin Gover as recent head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
United States legislation in the second half of the twentieth century benefited the Pawnees by providing for grants to educate doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals; health benefits; and greater tribal autonomy and decision making, including government-funded, tribal-managed programs. These programs include a tribal court, a tax commission, tribal law enforcement, repatriation of tribal remains and artifacts, substance abuse programs, after-school tutoring, cultural retention programs with language classes, and others that improve the conditions and status of the people. All these programs provide employment for tribal members. Others are employed locally or in other cities and states.
The tribe numbers approximately 2,500, most of whom live away from the old Oklahoma reservation area. Many return for the four-day Pawnee Homecoming sponsored by the Pawnee Veterans' Association. A few older ceremonies survive and other feasts and tribal dances bring the people together as Pawnees.
Bibliography
Blaine, Martha Royce. Pawnee Passage: 1870–1875. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
———. Some Things Are Not Forgotten: A Pawnee Family Remembers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Hyde, George E. Pawnee Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974.
Weltfish, Gene. The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.
In material culture the Pawnee resembled other Native Americans of the Plains area but they had an elaborate set of myths and rituals. Their supreme god was Tirawa (the sun), who with Mother Earth conceived Morning Star. Morning Star was the rising and dying god of vegetation. The Pawnee periodically sacrificed a young woman to Morning Star. This custom, one of the few examples of human sacrifice N of Mexico, was, however, ended by the great Pawnee chief Pitalesharo (b. c.1797).
The Pawnee were hostile to the Sioux and the Cheyenne, although friendly toward the Oto. They were fierce fighters, but they never warred against the United States, even when treated unjustly by the government. In fact, the Pawnee provided scouts for the U.S. army in the Indian wars as well as protecting the Union Pacific RR from the depredations of other Native Americans. Pawnee population was reduced by wars with the Sioux and by the smallpox and cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s. By a series of treaties begun early in the 19th cent. the Pawnee ceded all of their land in Nebraska and in 1876 moved to a reservation in Oklahoma, where they were granted the right to own their land individually. In 1990 there were over 3,300 Pawnee in the United States.
Bibliography
See R. Linton, The Sacrifice to the Morning Star by the Skidi Pawnee (1922); W. Wedel, An Introduction to Pawnee Archeology (1936); G. Weltfish, The Lost Universe (1965); G. E. Hyde, The Pawnee Indians (rev. ed. 1973).
| Pawnee |
|---|
 |
| Total population |
|
5,500 |
| Regions with significant populations |
| United States (Oklahoma) |
| Language(s) |
| Caddoan, Pawnee |
| Religion(s) |
| Christianity, other |
| Related ethnic groups |
| other Caddoan peoples |
The Pawnee (also Paneassa, Pari, Pariki) are a Native American tribe that historically lived along the Platte, Loup and Republican Rivers in present-day Nebraska. They refer to themselves as "Chaticks-si-Chaticks", meaning "Men of men".
In the 18th century, they were allied with the French and played an important role in halting Spanish expansion onto the Great Plains by defeating the Villasur expedition decisively in battle in 1720.
In the 19th century, epidemics of smallpox and cholera wiped out most of the Pawnee, reducing the population to approximately 600 by the year 1900; as of 2005, there are approximately 2,500 Pawnee.
Descended from Caddoan linguistic stock.
They were an agricultural people who grew maize, beans, pumpkins and squash. They ate it with fat bacon and pork greased with oil. With the coming of the horse culture to the Great Plains they did begin to take on some of the cultural attributes of their cousins, but the buffalo culture remained secondary to the maize culture.
The Pawnee Confederacy was divided into the following four bands:
The Chaui are generally recognized as being the leading band although each band was autonomous and, as was typical of many Indian tribes, each band saw to its own, although with outside pressures from the Spanish, French and Americans, as well as neighboring tribes saw the Pawnee drawing closer together.
The Pawnee lodges tended to be oval in shape; the frame was constructed of 10-15 posts set some ten feet apart which outlined the floor of the lodge. Lodge size varied based on the number of poles placed in the center of the structure. Most lodges had 4, 8 or 12 center poles. A common feature were the four painted poles which represented the four semi-cardinal directions and the four major star gods (not to be confused with the Creator.) The framework was then covered with willow branches, earth and sod which inhibited erosion. A hole was left in the center which served as a combined chimney and skylight. The lodge itself was semi subterranean and the floor was approximately three feet below ground level. A buffalo-skin door on a hinge could be closed at night and wedged shut.
There could be as many as 30-50 people living in each lodge. A village could consist of as many as 300-500 people and 10-15 households. Each lodge was divided in two (north and south), and each section had a head who oversaw the daily business; each section was further subdivided into three families. The membership of the lodge was actually quite flexible. The tribe went on buffalo hunts in summer and winter. Upon their return, the inhabitants of the lodges would often move into another lodge, although they generally remained within the village.
The Pawnee were a matrilineal people; ancestral descent was through the mother and a young couple would traditionally move into the bride's parents' lodge. Both women and men were active in political life, with both taking decision-making responsibilities.
Within the lodge the abovementioned sections were designated for the three classes of women.
Amongst the collection of lodges, the political designations for men were essentially between:
Women tended to be responsible for decisions about resource allocation, trade, and inter-lodge social negotiations. Men were responsible for decisions which pertained to hunting, war, and spiritual/health issues.
Women tended to remain within a single lodge, while men would typically move between lodges taking multiple sexual partners in serially-monogamous relationships.
The Pawnee placed great significance on Sacred Bundles, which formed the basis of many religious ceremonies maintaining the balance of nature and the relationship with the gods and spirits. The Pawnee were not however part of the Sun Dance cult although they did partake in the Ghost Dance movement of the 1890s.
Pawnee equated the stars with the gods and planted their crops according to the position of the stars. Like many tribal units they sacrificed maize and other crops.
The Skidi practiced human sacrifice (the "Morning Star ritual") until the 1840s.[1] Typically, a young girl was captured from another tribe, based on a dream by a Skidi elder. The girl was well treated for several days, and an elaborate scaffold was built for the sacrifice. The preparations took four days.
When the morning star was due to rise, the girl was placed on the scaffold, and at the moment the star appeared above the horizon, the girl's chest was cut open, after which her body was shot with arrows.
In her The Lost Universe (1965), Gene Weltfish makes note of a young Lakota captive who was tied to a tree and shot with arrows. She was thought to be the last human sacrifice performed by the Pawnee; Weltfish attributes this peculiarity to their Aztec kin to the south. However, this posited connection to Aztec sacrifice has been disputed [2]
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado visited the neighboring Wichita in 1541 where he encountered a Pawnee chief from Harahey, north of Kansas or Nebraska. Nothing much is mentioned of the Pawnee until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when successive incursions of Spanish, French and English settlers attempted to enlarge their possessions. The tribes however tended to make alliances as and when it suited them. An interesting point to note being that different Pawnee subtribes could make treaties with warring European powers without disrupting the underlying unity; the Pawnee were masters at unity within diversity.
Historian Marcel Trudel has documented close to 2,000 Pawnee (in French, Panis) slaves
who lived in Canada until the abolition of slavery at the end of the 18th century, making up
close to half of the known slaves in
A tribal delegation visited President Jefferson and in 1806 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Major G. C. Sibley, Major S. H. Long, amongst others began visiting the Pawnee villages. The Pawnee ceded territory to the American government in treaties in 1818, 1825, 1833, 1848, 1857, and 1892; in 1857, they settled on a reservation along the Loup River in present-day Nance County, Nebraska. Continual raids from Lakota from the north and west and encroachment from American settlers to the south and east lead to the abandonment of their Nebraska reservation. In 1875 they moved to Indian Territory, (Oklahoma), a large territory that had served as a 'dumping ground' for tribes displaced from the east and elsewhere. Many Pawnee men joined the United States Cavalry as scouts rather than face the ignominy of reservation life and the inevitable loss of their freedom and culture. In the 20th century, Christianity supplanted the older religion.
In 1780 the Pawnee are thought to have numbered around 10,000, but by the 19th century, epidemics of smallpox and cholera wiped out most of the Pawnee, reducing the population to approximately 600 by the year 1900; as of 2005, there are approximately 2,500 Pawnee.
The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 established the Pawnee Business Council, the Nasharo (Chiefs) Council, and a tribal constitution, bylaws, and charter. An out of court settlement in 1964 awarded the Pawnee Nation $7,316,096.55 for undervalued ceded land from the previous century. Bills such as the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 have gone some way to address the mistakes of the past and help the Pawnee Nation regain some of their pride and culture. Today the Pawnee are still celebrating their culture and meet twice a year for the inter-tribal gathering with their kinsmen the Wichita Indians and the four day Pawnee Homecoming for Pawnee veterans in July. Many Pawnee return to their traditional lands to visit relatives, craft shows and take part in powwows.
In Kevin Costner's movie "Dances with Wolves," the Pawnee are the main Indian antagonists to the Lakota/Sioux Indians befriended by the main character. In the words of one reviewer, the Pawnee "are identified as a blood seeking race . . ." [3] see now on how to love again
The Lost Universe by Gene Weltfish
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