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PAWNEE Hero Stories and Folk-Tales
PAWNEE Hero Stories and Folk-Tales
WITH NOTES ON THE ORIGIN, CUSTOMS AND CHARACTER OF THE PAWNEE PEOPLE BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL New York Forest and Stream Publishing Company 1889 Copyright, 1889, by George Bird Grinnell . SIGNAL—“WHO ARE YOU?” ANSWER—“PA´-NI.” TO THE MEMORY OF MAJOR FRANK NORTH — Pa´-ni Le-shar — This Record of His People is Inscribed ....
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NOTE.
NOTE.
Last spring I visited the Pawnee Agency in the Indian Territory. On the day after my arrival, I rode over to the house of Eagle Chief, whom, under his warrior name, White Eagle, I had known for many years. Entering the door, I found myself in the presence of the Chief, who, after quickly putting his hand over his mouth in his astonishment, greeted me with a cordial deep-voiced Lau . Then we sat down and filled the pipe and talked. Through all our talk I could see that he was curious to know the
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THE PAWNEES AND THEIR STORIES.
THE PAWNEES AND THEIR STORIES.
O NCE the Pawnees were a great people. They were very numerous. They were undisputed masters of a vast territory. They had everything that heart could wish. Their corn and their buffalo gave them food, clothing and shelter; they had weapons for war and for the chase. They roamed over the country without let or hindrance. In peace they were light-hearted and contented; in war cunning, fierce and successful. Their name was a terror to their enemies. This was in the past. Now they are few in number
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COMANCHE CHIEF.
COMANCHE CHIEF.
The Peace-Maker. M ANY years ago there lived in the Ski´-di village a young man, about sixteen years old. His name was Kut-a´wi-kutz (the hawk). At this time the Pawnees wore their hair in the ancient fashion, cut as the Osages wear theirs; the whole head was shaved except a roach running back from the forehead beyond the scalp lock. A war party went off to the south and he joined them as a servant. They went a long way and a long way, traveling far, but they got no horses and came back. Afterwa
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LONE CHIEF.
LONE CHIEF.
Skŭr´-ar-a Le-shar. L ONE CHIEF was the son of the chief of the Kit-ke-hahk´-i band. His father died when the boy was very young, less than a year old. Until he was old enough to go to war, his mother had supported him by farming—raising corn, beans and pumpkins. She taught the boy many things, and advised him how to live and how to act so that he might be successful. She used to say to him, “You must trust always in Ti-ra´-wa . He made us, and through him we live. When you grow up, you must be
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THE PRISONERS OF COURT HOUSE ROCK.
THE PRISONERS OF COURT HOUSE ROCK.
C OURT HOUSE ROCK is a high, square-shaped bluff, or butte, on the North Platte River. It is composed of a hard, yellowish clay, which is but slowly eroded by the weather, though soft enough to be cut readily with a knife. On all sides except one, this rock or butte is nearly or quite vertical, and its sides, smoothed and polished by the wind and the rain, offer no projecting points, to serve as foot or hand holds for one who might wish to climb up or down. On one side there is a way by which an
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WOLVES IN THE NIGHT.
WOLVES IN THE NIGHT.
I N the year 1879 Little Warrior, with a Chaui boy and a soldier, was off scouting on the plains east of the mountains. They saw a long way off—perhaps twenty miles—some objects that seemed to be moving. It was one of those hot dry days in summer, when all the air is quivering and all things are distorted by the mirage. They watched these objects through their glasses for a long time. They seemed to move and quiver, and they could not tell what they were, but Little Warrior thought they were mou
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A LEADER OF SOLDIERS.
A LEADER OF SOLDIERS.
I N 1876, when the attack was made by General Mackenzie on the village of the Cheyenne chief, Dull Knife, the Pawnee Scouts charged down on the village on the south side of the creek, while on the north side of the stream, a company of United States cavalry, under Lieut. McKinney, were making a charge. Before the village was reached, Ralph J. Weeks, an educated Pawnee, and some others of the scouts crossed the stream and were riding near the soldiers. As they were crossing the cañon at the mouth
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A CHEYENNE BLANKET.
A CHEYENNE BLANKET.
T HE Cheyennes, like other Indians, do not speak to each other when they are away from the camp. If a man goes away from the village, and sits or stands by himself on the top of a hill, it is a sign that he wants to be alone; perhaps to meditate; perhaps to pray. No one speaks to him or goes near him. Now, there was once a Pawnee boy, who went off on the warpath to the Cheyenne camp. In some way he had obtained a Cheyenne blanket. This Pawnee came close to the Cheyenne camp, and hid himself ther
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LITTLE WARRIOR’S COUNSEL.
LITTLE WARRIOR’S COUNSEL.
M OST of the Pawnee heroes are so regarded because of victories, daring deeds, the coups they have counted and the horses they have stolen. The glory of Comanche Chief and of Lone Chief depends mainly on their bravery, rather than on the fact that they were peace-makers. Yet there should be room among these stories for the account of an educated Pawnee—a brave—who by his wise counsel to an Indian of a hostile tribe saved many lives, both of Indians and of white men. Little Warrior was educated a
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A COMANCHE BUNDLE.
A COMANCHE BUNDLE.
A PAWNEE boy went to the Comanche village after horses. At night he went into the camp, crept to the door of a lodge, and took a horse that was tied there. It was bright moonlight, and as he was cutting the rope he saw, hanging before the lodge, a handsome shield and a spear, which he took. There was also a bundle hanging there. He took this down, opened it, and found in it a war bonnet, beaded moccasins and leggings, and a breast-plate of long beads. He dressed himself in all these fine things,
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THE DUN HORSE.
THE DUN HORSE.
M ANY years ago, there lived in the Pawnee tribe an old woman and her grandson, a boy about sixteen years old. These people had no relations and were very poor. They were so poor that they were despised by the rest of the tribe. They had nothing of their own; and always, after the village started to move the camp from one place to another, these two would stay behind the rest, to look over the old camp, and pick up anything that the other Indians had thrown away, as worn out or useless. In this
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A STORY OF FAITH.
A STORY OF FAITH.
L ONG ago, before they ever had any of these doctors’ dances, there was, in the Kit-ke-hahk´-i tribe, a young boy, small, growing up. He seemed not to go with the other boys nor to play with them, but would keep away from them. He would go off by himself, and lie down, and sometimes they would find him crying, or half crying. He seemed to have peculiar ways. His father and mother did not try to interfere with him, but let him alone. Sometimes they would find him with mud or clay smeared over his
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THE BEAR MAN.
THE BEAR MAN.
T HERE was once a young boy, who, when he was playing with his fellows, used often to imitate the ways of a bear, and to pretend that he was one. The boys did not know much about bears. They only knew that there were such animals. Now, it had happened that before this boy was born his mother had been left alone at home, for his father had gone on the warpath toward the enemy, and this was about five or six months before the babe would be born. As the man was going on the warpath, he came upon a
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THE GHOST WIFE.
THE GHOST WIFE.
O NE time there were living together a man and his wife. They had a young child. The woman died. The man was very sad, and mourned for his wife. One night he took the child in his arms, and went out from the village to the place where his wife was buried, and stood over the grave, and mourned for his wife. The little child was very helpless, and cried all the time. The man’s heart was sick with grief and loneliness. Late in the night he fell asleep, fainting and worn out with sorrow. After a whi
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TI-KE-WA-KUSH.
TI-KE-WA-KUSH.
The Man who Called the Buffalo. T HIS happened in the olden time before we had met the white people. Then the different bands lived in separate villages. The lodges were made of dirt. The Kit-ke-hahk´-i band went off on a winter hunt, roaming over the country, as they used to do, after buffalo. At this time they did not find the buffalo near. They scouted in all directions, but could discover no signs of them. It was a hard time of starvation. The children cried and the women cried; they had not
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PA-HU-KA´-TAWA.
PA-HU-KA´-TAWA.
A BOUT the end of the winter, before the grass began to grow in the spring, a company of three brothers and two other men went out from the village to trap beaver. When they had been gone about ten days, and had got up above the Forks of the Loup River, they camped on the South Fork, and in the morning sent one man ahead to see if he could find any beaver sign, and could look out a good trapping ground. When he had gone a little distance from the camp, he saw some Sioux, and at the same moment t
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THE BOY WHO WAS SACRIFICED.
THE BOY WHO WAS SACRIFICED.
T HERE was a time, far back, when some people thought that it was good to sacrifice to Ti-ra´-wa whatever they had that was most precious to them. The sacrifice of the animal, the burnt offering, has always been made by all the Pawnees; that is one of the things handed down from the ruler. It is very old. The Skidi have always performed the sacrifice of the captive. Each one of these is sacred and solemn, but it is not like giving up something that belongs to you, and that you love. It is a sacr
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THE SNAKE BROTHER.
THE SNAKE BROTHER.
O NE time, long ago, a big party of Pawnees went on the warpath down to the south. They could find no enemies anywhere, and they went a long way south. In this party were two brothers, poor boys, and one day as they were traveling along, apart from the others, in a piece of woods where it was very thick, they got lost. When they found that they were lost, they tried to go back to the camp, but they could not find the others, and at last gave up looking for them and started to go back north to th
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O´RE-KA-RAHR.
O´RE-KA-RAHR.
A LONG time ago, as the tribe were on their summer hunt, a man and his wife got to quarreling. They had a child, a boy about ten months old. It was while they were traveling along, going from one camp to another, that they began to quarrel. At length the wife became very angry, and threw the baby to the man, saying, “You take that baby. It belongs to you, for it is a man child. I am not going to nurse it for you any longer.” Then she went away. The man took the child and carried it along with hi
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THE GHOST BRIDE.
THE GHOST BRIDE.
I N a place where we used to have a village, a young woman died just before the tribe started on the hunt. When she died they dressed her up in her finest clothes, and buried her, and soon after this the tribe started on the hunt. A party of young men had gone off to visit another tribe, and they did not get back until after this girl had died and the tribe had left the village. Most of this party did not go back to the village, but met the tribe and went with them on the hunt. Among the young m
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THE BOY WHO SAW A-TI´-US.
THE BOY WHO SAW A-TI´-US.
M ANY years ago the Pawnees started on their winter hunt. The buffalo were scarce, and the people could get hardly any meat. It was very cold, and the snow lay deep on the ground. The tribe traveled southward, and crossed the Republican, but still found no buffalo. They had eaten all the dried meat, and all the corn that they had brought with them, and now they were starving. The sufferings of the people were great, and the little ones began to die of hunger. Now they began to eat their robes, a
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HOW THE DEER LOST HIS GALL.
HOW THE DEER LOST HIS GALL.
A LONG time ago, the deer and the antelope met upon the prairie. At that time both of them had dew-claws, and both had galls. After they had talked for a little while, each one of them began to boast about how fast he could run. Each one, the deer and the antelope, claimed that he could run faster than any other animal, and at length they became very angry in their dispute, and determined that they would have a race. They staked their galls on the race, and it was run on the prairie. The antelop
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YELLOW FOX.
YELLOW FOX.
A LONG time ago, while the Pawnees were on their winter hunt, a young boy, Kiwuk-u lah´-kahta (Yellow Fox), went out alone to hunt, to see if he could kill a deer. When he left the camp in the morning, it was warm and pleasant, but in the middle of the day a great storm of wind and snow came up, and the flying snow hid everything, and it grew very cold. By and by the ground was covered with snow, and the whole look of the prairie was changed, and the boy became lost, and did not know where he wa
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NOTE.
NOTE.
The notes on the origin, customs and character of the Pawnees, which follow, have been gathered during twenty years’ acquaintance with this people. They are what they profess to be; not a history of the people, but a series of notes bearing on their mode of life in the old wild days, an attempt to give some clues to their habits of thought, and thus to indicate the character of the people. Such notes may be of use to some future historian who shall have the time and the inclination to trace out
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THE PAWNEES.
THE PAWNEES.
U NTIL within a few years the home of the Pawnees was in southern Nebraska and northern Kansas. This group of tribes may be called the main stock of the family; from them it took its name; they are its best and longest known members. In the earlier accounts of this people, the Pawnee Picts or Wichitas are often confounded with their more northern relatives. The Pawnees proper consisted at one time of three bands or tribes, federated under a single head chief. These bands, in the order of their i
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PAWNEE CUSTOMS.
PAWNEE CUSTOMS.
P AWNEE history goes back to a time when the tribe knew nothing of horses. In those early days they went on foot, and depended for animal food on their bows and arrows. At that time their bows did not differ from those recently in use, but the heads of their arrows were made of stone, and their knives were of flint. With this simple equipment they set out on the hunt. Choosing a still day, they would surround a small bunch of buffalo, stretching out in a long line whose extremities would gradual
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THE PAWNEE IN WAR.
THE PAWNEE IN WAR.
T HE Pawnees were a race of warriors. War was their pleasure and their business. By war they gained credit, respect, fame. By war they acquired wealth. On their long journey from their primitive home in the far southwest, they must have met, fought with and conquered many tribes. By conquest—so says tradition—they obtained their first horses, captured no one knows how long ago, in an attack on a Cheyenne village. They were brave men, but brave after their own peculiar fashion. Their courage was
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RELIGION.
RELIGION.
I T is generally believed that, among the Indians of North America, the priests and the shamans, “medicine men,” or doctors, are the same. This is not the case with the Pawnees. Among them the priestly office was entirely distinct from that of the doctor, and had nothing in common with it. The priest was in a sense the medium of communication with Ti-ra´-wa ; he prayed to the deity more efficaciously than could a common person, acted, in fact, as an intercessor; he knew the secrets of the sacred
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LATER HISTORY.
LATER HISTORY.
T HE project of removing the Pawnees from their reservation on the Loup River in Nebraska appears to have been first heard of in the year 1872. The Pawnee reservation was close to civilization, and the settlers moving west into Nebraska coveted the Indians’ lands. It was the old story, the same one that has been heard ever since the rapacious whites first set foot on the shores of this continent. The Pawnees were strongly attached to their home in Nebraska. They had always lived there, and were
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