Pawnee People - History

History

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado visited the neighboring Wichita in 1541 where he encountered a Pawnee chief from Harahey in 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 tended to make alliances as and when it suited them. Different Pawnee subtribes could make treaties with warring European powers without disrupting the underlying unity; the Pawnee were masters at unity within diversity.

In the 18th century, they were allied with the French, with whom they traded. They played an important role in halting Spanish expansion onto the Great Plains by decisively defeating the Villasur expedition in battle in 1720.

Until the 1830s, the Pawnee in what became United States territory were relatively isolated from interaction with Europeans and escaped some of the losses due to introduction of Eurasian infectious diseases, such as measles, smallpox, and cholera, to which Native Americans had no immunity. In the 19th century, however, they were pressed by Siouan groups encroaching from the east, who also brought disease. Epidemics of smallpox and cholera, and endemic warfare with the Sioux and Cheyenne drastically reduced the numbers of Pawnee. From an estimated population of 12,000 in the 1830s, they were reduced to 3,400 by 1859, when they were forcibly constrained to a reservation in modern day, Nance County, Nebraska.

In 1874 they requested relocation to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), but the stress of the move, diseases and poor conditions in the Territory reduced their numbers even more. By 1900 the population as recorded by the US Census was only 633. Since then the tribe has begun to recover.

The historian Marcel Trudel documented that close to 2,000 Pawnee (Panis in French) slaves lived in Canada until the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1833. The Indian slaves comprised close to half of the known slaves in French Canada (also called Lower Canada). Traditionally Native American and First Nations tribes sold captives from warfare as slaves to other tribes and to European traders.

In French Canada, Indian slaves were generally called Panis (anglicized to Pawnee), as most had been captured from the Pawnee tribe. Pawnee became synonymous with "Indian slave" in general use in Canada. As early as 1670, a historical reference was recorded to a Panis in Montreal.

A Pawnee tribal delegation visited President Thomas Jefferson. In 1806 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Major G. C. Sibley, Major S. H. Long, amongt others, began visiting the Pawnee villages. Under pressure from Siouan tribes and European-American settlers, the Pawnee ceded territory to the United States government in treaties in 1818, 1825, 1833, 1848, 1857, and 1892. In 1857, they settled on the Pawnee Reservation along the Loup River in present-day Nance County, Nebraska, but managed to keep their regular pattern of life. They were subjected to continual raids by Lakota from the north and west. On one such raid, a Sioux war party of over 1,000 warriors ambushed a Pawnee hunting party of 350 men, women and children. The Pawnee had gained permission to leave the reservation and hunt buffalo. About 70 Pawnee were killed in this attack, which occurred in a canyon in present-day Hitchcock County. The site is known as Massacre Canyon. Because of the ongoing hostilities with the Sioux and encroachment from American settlers to the south and east, the Pawnee decided to leave their Nebraska reservation in the 1870s and settle on a new reservation in Indian Territory, located in what is today Oklahoma.

Therefore warriors enlisted as Pawnee Scouts in the latter half of the 19th century in the United States Army. Like other groups of Indian scouts, Pawnee warriors were recruited in large numbers to fight on the Northern and Southern Plains in various conflicts against hostile native Americans. Because the Pawnee people were old enemies of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and Kiowa tribes, instead of fighting against Westward expansion, they served with the army for fourteen years between 1864 and 1877, earning a reputation as being a well trained unit, especially in tracking and reconnaissance. The Pawnee Scouts took part with distinction in the Battle of the Tongue River during the Powder River Expedition (1865) against Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho and in the Battle of Summit Springs. They also fought in the Great Sioux War of 1876. On the Southern Plains they fought against their old enemies, the Comanches and Kiowa, in the Comanche Campaign.

In 1875 most members of the nation moved to Indian Territory, a large area reserved to receive 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. The warriors resisted the loss of their freedom and culture by adapting to reservations. On November 23, 1892, the Pawnee in Oklahoma signed an agreement with the Cherokee Commission to accept individual allotments.