The Pawnee Indians (Volume 128)

by George E. Hyde, Savoie Lottinville (Foreword)

No assessment of the Plains Indians can be complete without some account of the Pawnees. They ranged from Nebraska to Mexico and, when not fighting among themselves, fought with almost every other Plains tribe at one time or another. Regarded as "aliens" by many other tribes, the Pawnees were distinctively different from most of their friends and enemies. George Hyde spent more than thirty years collecting materials for his history of the Pawnees. The story is both a rewarding and a painful one. The Pawnee culture was rich in social and religious development. But the Pawnees' highly developed political and religious organization was not a source of power in war, and their permanent villages and high standard of living made them inviting and fixed targets for their enemies. They fought and sometimes defeated larger tribes, even the Cheyennes and Sioux, and in one important battle sent an attacking party of Cheyennes home in humiliation after seizing the Cheyennes' sacred arrows. While many Pawnee heroes died fighting off enemy attacks on Loup Fork, still more died of smallpox, of neglect at the hands of the government, and of errors in the policies of Quaker agents. In many ways The Pawnee Indians is the best synthesis Hyde ever wrote. It looks far back into tribal history, assessing Pawnee oral history against anthropological evidence and examining military patterns and cultural characteristics. Hyde tells the story of the Pawnees objectively, reinforcing it with firsthand accounts gleaned from many sources, both Indian and white.

384 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1974

About the author

George E. Hyde (1882–1968)

Reviews

[Richard Jespers · Rating 4 out of 5]

One might believe, as I did, that at one time all Native American tribes live in peace before the white race’s entry into their world. That would be wrong, according to author Hyde. American tribes do not have the same strict notion of what property lines might be as European settlers. The tribes who hunt each summer go where the Bison and other game are located. Some tribes are more passive than others that are likewise more bellicose and aggressive. All tribes, including the Pawnees, have subtribal groupings. One really can’t say that such and such area belongs to the Pawnees. And some tribes even enslave members of other tribes. Though, before the entry of the white race, there may be enough land for some tribes to live an easy, nearly passive and lazy life of hunting and growing crops, all is not peace and light.

The Pawnees are among these “passive” groups. The men are warriors who hunt for game in the summer—when that is over they like to live a casual life. The women take charge happily of the fields of corn and other crops. The entire tribe travels during the hunts and returns to their farm to harvest in the autumn. The Pawnee do not always have a crop when they return, it being exposed to drought or devastation by insects. Enemy tribes might take what they want and burn the rest. Hyde presents an even-handed view of the Pawnees. They are picked on by more aggressive tribes, and they trust the government agents more than they should. Many agreements are broken or forgotten, even ones put in writing. Agents insist that the Pawnee become farmers, when it is not in their cultural thinking to do so. On the other hand men are warriors, not farmers, and they refuse to learn farming. And while the government actually supplement, say, the Sioux, one of the more bellicose tribes, they, to the chagrin of Pawnee agents, omit or forget about the Pawnee who could actually use government assistance when their traditional ways go by the wayside. In the last chapter of their existence, in the late nineteenth century, they are driven from a reservation in Nebraska by the Sioux and the government’s laxity in protecting Pawnee rights, both. They migrate to the south where they join with the Wichitas. Due to disease and “war” casualties, the Pawnee are reduced to a population of 800 by 1890. To their credit and without much recognition, there are fifty-six young men of the Pawnee who serve their country in France in World War I. At the time Hyde’s research ends, 1933, he believes the Roosevelt administration is finally “pouring out funds of very kind for their assistance” (348). One must believe that no matter how large the amount, it isn’t nearly enough to pay back what the Pawnee people have lost.

As a lay reader, not a historian with the proper background, I found some of the reading slow-going, but if one is willing to plow through such an academic work, one’s reward will be to learn at least a little about one of our Native American tribes.

[R.B. Nease · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a lot of information to read through, almost to the point it became confusing, and I can see where it would almost overwhelm a reader with too much information. I more or less read about 1/3 of the book skimming over information that was either confusing or that the author had no information to complete the thought the author had intially started. I would definetly recommend this book for anyone doing an essay or book report on the Pawnee, seeking maps that showed the locations of some camps of Pawnee, or searching for information on the different bands of Pawnees migirating into different areas of the United States. I believe there are better books out there that are more complete with information of the Pawnee that are more easily readable.