Pawnee

• CATEGORY: Tribe
• CULTURE AREA: Plains
• LANGUAGE GROUP: Caddoan
• PRIMARY LOCATION: Oklahoma
• POPULATION SIZE: 3,200 (2025, Pawnee Nation)

Early accounts indicate that the Skidi Pawnee first came into what would become known as Nebraska from the south as early as 1600. Their previous home was a “place where sugarcane grew,” possibly in the lower Mississippi Valley. It was not until the eighteenth century that other Pawnee entered the Nebraska region to join the Skidi. The Pawnee's northernmost extension was into South Dakota.

By about the 1760s, a situation that would dominate Pawnee existence for a full century began: warfare with Siouan over hunting in many of the same areas. Many experts believe that had it not been for their continual struggles against the Sioux, the Pawnee would not have had a single name describing them as “one.” Their tradition usually emphasizes separate exploits by key groups: the Skidi, Chaui, Kitkehahki, and Pitahawirata. Common cultural elements, however, mark the Pawnee. Well-known religious symbols included the star deities—the Morning and Evening Stars—whose daughter was betrothed to the son of Sun and Moon, called “Closed Man.” This couple was instructed by four gods whose special knowledge (in lodge building and ceremonies) was passed on to all Pawnee.

In 1749–50, French traders arranged a peace between the main Indigenous Americans in the Plains, allowing them to penetrate Pawnee territory. Wider trade relations increased Pawnee access to guns, at least until the French and Indian War (between the English and French) ended with France’s defeat in 1763. Thereafter, the Pawnee lost their dominance in Kansas and reconcentrated farther north along the Platte River in Nebraska. After the late 1760s, three tribes (the Chaui, the Kitkehahki, and the Pitahawirata) began attacking their Skidi predecessors in this area. By the time the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark followed the Platte River (in 1804), they found that the Skidi had become increasingly subordinate to the Chaui.

Inevitably, the entire area inhabited by the Pawnee and Sioux attracted the attention of American military outposts (specifically at Fort Atkinson, near Omaha). In 1825, the Pawnee signed a fateful treaty promising safety for settlers along the Santa Fe Trail in return for (undefined) “benefits and acts of kindness” from the US government. When what were assumed to be Pawnee raids continued, chances of more forceful intervention by Washington policymakers mounted.

Escalation grew from the government’s post-1830 decision to relocate eastern Indigenous American groups into the vast open areas west of the Missouri. Before long, newly relocated groups such as the Delaware (Lenni Lenape) and Shawnee clashed with the Pawnee over hunting grounds. Warfare was “settled” only temporarily by the signing, in 1833, of a treaty giving up Pawnee claims to territories south of the Platte. By the 1833 treaty, the Pawnee received a paltry payment ($1,600) and were promised a twelve-year annuity of goods and cash plus “advantages” (such as agricultural instruction and the construction of mill sites) for agreeing to settle in the North Platte Loup Fork area. Soon afterward, missionaries and traders arrived in the area to settle Fort William (later Fort Laramie). American officials intended to bring Oglala Sioux elements from the Black Hills into this “neutral” zone—a move that inevitably heightened hostilities with the Pawnee along the North Platte.

After this turning point, Pawnee prospects for an independent existence declined steadily. Increasingly, they found that they could not survive without the government annuity promised (but not always given) in 1833. Worse still, the Pawnee suffered defeats dealt to them by the Great Sioux between 1842 and 1846 and were driven to refuges south of the Platte. There, they became so destitute that they sold the best land they occupied for the construction of Fort Kearney.

It was not until four years after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that a special Pawnee treaty was ratified by Congress. This treaty determined that the Pawnee were to return north to resettle Loup Fork as a Pawnee Indian reservation with government aid. As late as 1865, President Abraham Lincoln’s Pawnee Agent, Benjamin Lushbaugh, tried to obtain congressional money to help resolve pressures affecting Pawnee security. A so-called great peace treaty of 1868, however, apparently only helped their Sioux enemies to obtain guns and press toward Loup Fork.

Rather than continue to commit Indian Agency funds to help the Pawnee on Loup Fork, policymakers decided to move them again—this time to undeveloped Indigenous American territory farther west. By 1874, the movement to a new reservation had begun. The area reserved was west of the Arkansas River in what became Oklahoma. Although some 2,000 Pawnee members were relocated in the 1870s, by the 1890s, there were only about 800 left. In the meantime, their agency had been combined with that of the Ponca and Oto.

The sad state of Pawnee marginality was to continue until, under the Roosevelt Administration in 1932, special attention was given to their case. In the June 1936 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, they were allowed to elect their own tribal council. It was not until 1957, however, that the Pawnee gained effective rights to use lands on their reservation as they saw fit. Receipt of federal partial payment for lands taken away from them nearly a century earlier came in 1964. Four years later, actual ownership of their reservation lands was turned over. From the middle of the 1970s, the Pawnee began to register gains, partially as a result of the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975 and partly because of the dynamic leadership of Council Chairman Thomas Chapman.

In the twenty-first century, the Pawnee Nation is a federally recognized Indigenous American nation with headquarters in Pawnee, Oklahoma. In the mid-2020s, they counted 3,200 enrolled members. The Pawnee actively preserve their cultural heritage through various events and powwows. They operate multiple businesses, including two casinos, to support their economy. The nation provides essential services to its members, including housing, education, and welfare programs, funded in part by casino revenues.

Bibliography

“Culture - Pawnee History.” Pawnee Nation, pawneenation.org/pawnee-history. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.

Dorsey, George A. The Pawnee: Mythology. University of the Pacific Press, 2003.

Hyde, George E. The Pawnee Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, 2010.

Johansen, Bruce E., and Barry Pritzker. Encyclopedia of American Indian History. ABC-CLIO, 2008.

Parks, Douglas R. "Pawnee." The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=PA022. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.

Pugh, David. "Scenes of Exclusion: Historical Transformation and Material Limitations to Pawnee Gender Representation." Journal of Material Culture, vol. 18, no. 1, 2013, pp. 53-67, doi.org/10.1177/1359183512473559. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.

Weltfish, Gene. The Lost Universe. Basic, 1965.