In 1854, lived on the south bank of the Platte River, their main village being a few miles east of where Fremont now stands. They numbered then between 4,000 and 5,000. They had been residents, of Nebraska for a century or more, and are spoken of by both Spanish and French explorers as being a warlike and powerful nation, and the most numerous of any west of the Missouri. They were first heard of through the Illinois, and the name is of that language. Marquette noted several bands on his map in 1673. They were hostile toward the Spaniards but have always been friendly toward the Americans. Their first stopping place on the west side of the Missouri River seems to have been at the confluence of the Republican, which place they soon abandoned, however, moving a considerable distance up the latter stream, where they established a large permanent village of earth-covered lodges, and cultivated corn, beans and melons, frequently going of to the buffalo lands to hunt and meet their enemies in warfare. They claimed the country south to the Kansas River and north to the Platte. Pike, in 1806, estimated the population of three villages at 6,223, with two thousand warriors. They were divided into four bands - Tswa (Grand Pawnee) [Chawi*], Tskithka Petower Kattahankies (Republican Pawnee) [Kitakahaki*], Tapage Pawnee [Tappage*] and Sker Pawnee, Mahas or Loups [Skidi*]. They were constantly at war with the Sioux and other tribes. From time to time they sacrificed prisoners to the sun to obtain good crops and success in warfare. Anyone was at liberty to offer up a prisoner that they had captured in warfare. The victim was clothed in the gayest apparel and fed and feasted on the best that could be had, and when sufficiently fattened for their purpose, a suitable day was appointed for the sacrifice, so that the whole nation might attend. The unfortunate victim was then bound to a cross in the presence of the assembled multitude, after which a solemn dance and other ceremonies were performed, and at their conclusion the warrior whose prisoner he had been, stepped forward and cleaved his head with a tomahawk, the other warriors filling his body with arrows. This barbarous custom, however, was finally stopped in 1820, through the influence of the missionaries.
The removal of the Delawares to lands between the Platte and Kansas Rivers led to a war with that tribe, who, in 1832, burned the great Pawnee village on the Republican River. They then removed to the Platte, in the present Butler County, where small-pox carried off large numbers of them. By treaty of October 9th, 1832, they sold lands south and agreed to remain north of that river and west of the Loup River. Provisions were then made for education and they were soon possessed of comfortable homes, good farms and schools, but all this was checked by the Sioux, who attacked them in their hunts, killing many, and finally invading their villages, burning them and killing men, women and children, and driving them south to the Kansas River. The Government regarded this as a violation of their treaty and stopped their annuities, their missionaries and farmers left them, cholera and smallpox swept off hundreds, and in three or four years they had lost one half of their number. Returning again to the Platte, they resided for any years at the junction of Salt Creek with that stream near where Ashland now stands.
By treaty of September 4th, 1857, they sold more of their lands and were soon afterward removed to their reservation in the valley of the Loup Fork River, containing 288,000 acres. In June, 1861, they numbered 3,414, and furnished the government a sufficient number of scouts for the Indian war of 1864, on the plains. This increased the hostility of the Sioux, who, after making peace with the government, turned again on the wretched Pawnees, slaughtering them without mercy, and effectually stopping their progress and improvements. By act of Congress June 10th, 1872, 118,424 acres were sold for their benefit, the grasshoppers having destroyed their crops. On October 8th, 1874, the Pawnees in general council agreed to remove to a reservation in the Indian Territory, where they were taken in the following year. They have a perpetual annuity of $30,000, with an appropriation for education, farming, etc., of $22,600 more. There is no grammer [sic] or vocabulary of their language.
The Pawnees were called by the French and Canadian traders "Les Loups," that animal being their totem, and the sign of the tribe being an imitation of the wolfs ears, the two fore fingers of the right hand being stuck up on the side of the head. They were in the last generation a large nation containing many clans, Minnikajus, the Sans Arc, the Loup Fork, and others. Their territory embraced both sides of the Platte River, especially the northern lands and they rendered these grounds terrible to the trapper trader and traveler. They were always well mounted. Old Mexico was then and partially is still their stable and a small band has driven off horses by hundreds. Of late years they have become powerless. The influenza acts as a plague among them, killing off 400 or 500 in a single season, and the nation now numbers little more than 300 braves, or rather warriors, the latter in correct parlance being inferior to the former as the former are subservient to the chief. A treaty concluded between them and the United States, in the winter of 1857, sent them to a reserve on the Loup Fork, where their villages were destroyed by the Sioux. They are Ishmaelites, whose hand is against every man. They have attempted, after the fashion of declining tribes, to strengthen themselves by alliances with their neighbors, but have always failed in consequence of their propensity to plunder, developing itself even before the powwow was concluded. They and the northern Dakotahs can never be trusted. Most Indian races, like the Bedouin Arabs, will show hospitality to the stranger who rides into their villages though no point of honor deters them from robbing him after he has left the lodge shade. The Pawnees, African like, will cut the throat of a sleeping guest. They are easily distinguished from their neighbors by the scalp lock protruding from a shaven head. After killing white men they have insulted the corpse in a manner familiar to those who served in the Affghan war. They have given up the practice of torturing prisoners saying that the Great Spirit, or rather as the expression should be translated, the Great Father no longer wills it. The tradition is that a few years ago a squaw of a hostile tribe was snatched from the stake by a white trader and the action was interpreted as a decree of heaven. It is probably a corruption of the well known story of the rescue of the Itean woman by Petalesharoo, the son of the "Knife Chief". Like the Southern and Western Indians generally, as is truly remarked by Captain Mayne Reid. They possess more of that cold continence and chivalrous delicacy than characterize the Red Men of the forest. They are too treacherous to be used as soldiers. Like most pedestrian Indians, their arms and bodies are light and thin and their legs are muscular and well developed. They are great in endurance. I have heard of a Pawnee who when thoroughly stampeded by his enemies loped from Fort Laramie to Kearney, 300 miles, making the distance as fast as the mail. This bad tribe is ever at war with their hereditary enemies the Sioux. They do not extend westward of Fort Kearney. The principal sub tribe is the Arickaree, or Ree called Pedani, by the Dakotah, who attacked and conquered them. Their large villages near the mouth of the Grand River were destroyed by the expedition sent in 1825-26 under Colonel Leavenworth, to chastise the attack upon the trading party of General Ashley.
* name suggested by Thomas Kavanagh, personal communication