.
Before metal or horses The ancestors of the Pawnees also spoke
Caddoan languages and had developed a semi-sedentary lifestyle in valley-bottom lands on the Great Plains. Unlike other groups of the Great Plains, they had a stratified society with priests and hereditary chiefs. Their religion included ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice. At first contact, they lived through what is now Oklahoma and Kansas, and they reached Nebraska in about 1750. (Other Caddoan speakers lived in the Southern Plains into Texas and Arkansas, forming a belt of related populations along the eastern edge of the Great Plains.) They lived in spacious villages of
grass lodges and
earth lodges. These were unfortified, reflecting an assumption that large raiding parties would not arrive without warning. They did not need to rapidly coordinate defense against a large party of enemies. Coronado spent 25 days among the Quivirans trying to learn of richer kingdoms just over the horizon. He found nothing but straw-thatched villages of up to two hundred houses and fields containing corn, beans, and squash. A copper pendant was the only evidence of wealth he discovered. The Quivirans were almost certainly Caddoans, and they built grass lodges as only the
Wichita were still doing by 1898. "In the middle of the 17th century the Pawnees were being savagely raided by eastern tribes that had obtained metal weapons from the French, which gave them a terrible advantage over Indians who had only weapons of wood, flint, and bone. The raiders carried off such great numbers of Pawnees into slavery, that in the country on and east of the upper Mississippi the name Pani developed a new meaning:
slave. The French adopted this meaning, and Indian slaves, no matter from which tribe they had been taken, were presently being termed
Panis. It was at this period, after the middle of the 17th century, that the name was introduced into New Mexico in the form
Panana by bands of mounted
Apaches who brought large numbers of Pawnee slaves to trade to the Spaniards and Pueblo Indians." George E. Hyde,
The Pawnee Indians The historian
Marcel Trudel documented that close to 2,000 "panis"
slaves lived in
Canada until the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1833. Villasur, 45 other Spaniards, and 11 Pueblos were killed, and the survivors fled. during an attack on a Pawnee hunting camp in 1852. The Pawnee won a "hard fought" defensive
battle around 1830, when they defeated the whole Cheyenne tribe. A Pitahawirata Pawnee captured one of the most sacred tribal bundles of the Cheyenne, the Sacred Arrows, and Skidi Chief Big Eagle secured it quickly. The Pawnees in the village of Chief Blue Coat suffered a severe defeat on 27 June 1843. A force of Lakotas
attacked the village, killed more than 65 inhabitants and burned 20 earth lodges. In 1852, a combined Indian force of Cheyennes and invited Kiowa and Kiowa Apaches attacked a Pawnee camp in Kansas during the summer hunt.
The killing of this notable Cheyenne affected the Cheyennes to the point, that they carried their Sacred Arrows against the Pawnee the following summer in an all-out war. Warriors enlisted as
Pawnee Scouts in the latter half of the 19th century in the
United States Army. Like other groups of Native American 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, they served with the army for 14 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 with the US 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.
Relocation and reservation for the years 1873–1874. Massacre Canyon battle, Nebraska. "They killed many Pawnees on the Republican River." As noted above, the Pawnee were subjected to continual raids by Lakota from the north and west. On one such raid, 5 August 1873, 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. In 1874, the Pawnee requested relocation to
Indian Territory (Oklahoma), but the stress of the move, diseases, and poor conditions on their reservation reduced their numbers even more. During this time, outlaws often smuggled whiskey to the Pawnee. The teenaged female bandits
Little Britches and
Cattle Annie were imprisoned for this crime. In 1875 most citizens of the nation moved to Indian Territory, a large area reserved to receive tribes displaced from east of the Mississippi River and elsewhere. The warriors resisted the loss of their freedom and culture, but gradually adapted to reservations. On 23 November 1892, the Pawnee in Oklahoma were forced by the US federal government to sign an agreement with the
Cherokee Commission to accept individual allotments of land in a breakup of their communal holding. By 1900, the Pawnee population was recorded by the US Census as 633. Since then the tribe has begun to recover in numbers. Bills such as the
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 have allowed the Pawnee Nation to regain some of its self-government. The Pawnee continue to practice cultural traditions, meeting twice a year for the intertribal gathering with their kinsmen the
Wichita Indians. They have an annual four-day Pawnee Homecoming for Pawnee veterans in July. Many Pawnee also return to their traditional lands to visit relatives and take part in scheduled
powwows. In 2004,
Pawnee Nation College was founded. The college's buildings are built with sandstone from the historical Pawnee Agency and
Indian Boarding School. In 2025, the college only had ten students enrolled and was still seeking accreditation. ==Notable Pawnee==