THE PAWNEES AND THEIR STORIES.
ONCE 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, poor, a prey to disease, a vanishing race.
My acquaintance with the tribe began in 1870. From that time to the present I have had frequent intercourse with them; have lived in their villages; and been with them on their buffalo hunts. During the weeks and months spent in camp and village, I have listened to many stories of Pawnee heroes and to folk-tales of the miraculous doings of the olden time. In my intercourse with the tribe, extending over a period of nearly twenty years, I have been deeply impressed by the high qualities of the Pawnee character; and the more familiar I have become with this people, the more strongly have I felt that a permanent record should be made of the tales which reflect that character. Unless thus collected now, much of this lore must inevitably be forgotten.
For the Pawnees are passing away. When I first joined them on their buffalo hunts from their old home on the Loup Fork in Nebraska, the tribe numbered three thousand; last March in the Indian Territory I found but eight hundred. And more rapidly than the dwindling of the people are their traditions lapsing from memory under the changed conditions of the tribe’s life. The lore, which sprang up as an indigenous growth of the wide-stretching prairie and the wilderness where the wild Pawnee warrior hunted free, finds scanty nurture in the uncongenial soil of fields tilled by Pawnee followers of the plow. With the new modes of living come new views of life, new motives, new sympathies—in a word, civilization. To earn a living by toil, to wrest subsistence from the earth, this is the problem confronting the Pawnees to-day, the task which is engaging the sinew and purpose of the tribe. In the transition stage, the memory of the old days, of old manners and rites and ceremonies and of old heroes, is with the elders of the race, those ancient braves whose lives bridge the past and the present. When I visited the Agency last March, it was to write down from the lips of these old men such material as I could collect. When they shall die much of the unwritten lore will perish too, for with them will cease that sympathetic and perfect credence, which alone gives to folk-lore vitality and lastingness. What is written in this volume then belongs distinctly to the wild Indian.
The task that I have set for myself is that of a recorder. No attempt has been made to give a literary color to the hero stories and folk-tales here written out. I have scrupulously avoided putting into them anything of my own. The stories are told to the reader as they were told to me. They are not elaborated. I have tried to show how Indians think and speak, rather than to make their stories more entertaining by dressing them up to suit the civilized taste. My object in giving these narratives in their present shape is to make a book which shall be true to life, and shall faithfully reflect the Pawnee character, as the story tellers have themselves painted it. In a very few cases I have added some words explaining matters so well understood by those familiar with the Indians as to need no explanation. If these tales have any ethnological value, it will be enhanced by their being given in the precise form in which they were told by those to whom they have been handed down from generation to generation; but quite apart from this is another point which is entitled to consideration.
The entire ignorance concerning Indians, which prevails among the general public, can be dispelled only by letting that public understand something of the ways of life of the wild Indian, something of the subjects about which he thinks and talks, as well as of how he looks at these subjects, and what he has to say about them.
The late Mrs. Jackson’s charming story, “Ramona,” did much to bring the more intelligent class of readers in touch with the Indians, and to awaken sympathy for them by pointing out the unnumbered wrongs perpetrated on this race by the Government. Mrs. Jackson’s book was a story, a novel; wonderfully well told and full of truth and feeling; but while it may have been a relation of facts, it did not profess to treat of actual persons. It is looked upon by many readers as a mere romance. It is a book about which I was once asked, skeptically, “Did you ever see any Indians like those?” In the Pawnee stories here set down there is no romance nor coloring. The Indians themselves are talking, and whatever the faults and weak points of these tales—and some of them are sufficiently obvious—they at least give the reader a true conception of Indians as they have actually lived. They are stories of Indians by Indians. There is about them nothing of the white man; and the intelligent person, who is sufficiently interested in the subject to read this book through, will gain from it a new insight into Indian character.
The Indian of Cooper—with his bravery, his endurance, his acuteness, his high qualities of honesty, generosity, courtesy and hospitality—has been laughed at for half a century. Yet every man who has mingled much with the Indians in their homes has known individuals who might have sat for the portraits which Cooper drew of some of his aboriginal heroes. There are good men among Indians, just as among the whites. The prevalent notion of the Indian has been formed from the worst class of this people, the lazy, filthy beggars who haunt the settlements of the West, who to their own vices have added new ones picked up from their surroundings, and who are hopelessly degraded. These are not typical Indians, and it is unjust to judge a whole race from such degenerate specimens. There is still another notion of the Indian fondly cherished by many worthy people, whose sympathies have been wrought upon by the cruelty and injustice with which we have treated this race. These good people look upon all Indians as simple children of nature, who would do no wrong if they had not been contaminated by contact with vicious whites. It is unnecessary to say that this notion of the Indian is also incorrect.
The Indian is neither a fiend nor a saint. There are good ones and bad ones. As a rule, perhaps they try to act up to their ideas of what is right, but the standard of a race of barbarians cannot be the same as that of a civilized people, and in judging of their character we must make allowances for this difference. The standard of right and wrong among civilized people is a growth, the product of the experience of thousands of years. The Indian races have not been through a like experience. They have regarded as virtues some things which seem to us the worst of crimes. The Indian differs from the white man in education and manner of life, and so, of course, in his modes of thought. He has not been taught the lesson of self-control, which his surroundings oblige each civilized man to begin to learn as a child. He has known until recent times no law save that of strength. He has been taught that war is the noblest of pursuits—the only one worthy of man. And that war has consisted in making forays upon his enemies, taking their possessions, and, if possible, their lives and their scalps. His warfare consisted in surprises rather than open combat. A scalp taken was a trophy of victory, and the scalp of a woman was almost as eagerly sought as that of a brave or of a chief. It was an evidence of injury inflicted on the enemy. To steal horses from the enemy was an achievement creditable and also profitable.
We commonly speak of the raids of war parties as horse stealing expeditions, but this is wholly misleading, because to the civilized understanding the phrase horse stealing carries with it an idea of dishonesty. No such meaning attaches to the Indian equivalent of this phrase. They take horses by stratagem or secretly, by the usual, and to them legitimate, methods of warfare. To speak of their stealing horses, using that verb in the sense which we commonly give it, would be like saying that an army stole the cannon which it captured in an engagement with the enemy. Captured horses were the legitimate spoils of war. The wealth of the Indians was in their horses. They had no fortified places, no ships of war, no cannon, no works of art. Their only valuable possessions were their horses. These were the only property that could be carried off. Therefore, when an expedition was made against a hostile tribe, scalps and horses were naturally its object. Horses, being their only valuable possessions, constituted their medium of exchange, so far as they had any. Did a man wish to purchase an ornament, or an article of dress which took his fancy, he gave a horse for it. If he bought a wife he paid for her in horses. The most valuable present that could be made was a good horse; and horses were often given by the well-to-do to their friends and relations who had been sick or unfortunate. On the other hand, when, as was sometimes the case, a conquered tribe was condemned to pay a war indemnity, they paid it in horses. It is related that when the Skidi broke their treaty with the other bands, and were afterward conquered by them, they were obliged to pay such a fine.
This view of Indian warfare being understood, the motive of the hero stories here given, and of many of the folk-tales, becomes plain.
The Pawnees are essentially a religious people. They worship Ti-ra´-wa, who is in and of everything. Unlike many of the Indian tribes of the West, they do not adore any material thing. They regard certain places as sacred, but these are so only because blessed by the Divine presence. The Pawnee Deity is not personified. He is intangible, quite as much so as the God of the Christians. The sacred character of Ti-ra´-wa extends to animal nature. The fishes which swim in the rivers, the birds of the air and the beasts which roam over the prairie, have sometimes intelligence, knowledge and power far beyond those of man. But they are not gods. Their miraculous attributes are given them by the Ruler, whose servants they are, and who often makes them the medium of his communications to man. They are his messengers—his angels—and their powers are always used for good. Prayers are made to them; sometimes for direct help in time of need, but more often for intercession. Often in the folk-tales it will be seen that when the blessing asked for is some small thing, a prayer is made to the animals (Nahu´rac), but if the petitioners are asking for some great thing, something which is very difficult to grant, then the prayer is made to “One Above,” to “The Ruler,” that is, to the Supreme Being.
Nothing of importance was ever undertaken without a prayer for help, for success. All the serious undertakings of the year, whose success would affect the general welfare, were preceded by religious ceremonies, when all the tribe took part, and prayers were made and sacrifices offered to Ti-ra´-wa; and in all lesser enterprises, the individuals who were interested humbled themselves and implored the Divine assistance. A party starting off on the warpath prayed for success and made a burnt offering. Prayer and sacrifice always marked the beginning of the feast, and often its end. Success in their undertakings was acknowledged by grateful offerings to the Ruler. The victorious warrior sometimes sacrificed the scalp torn from the head of his enemy, and this was burned with elaborate ceremonies by the High Priest. He who brought back from a foray many horses, gave one to the priest as a thank-offering to the Ruler. One of the well-known Seven Brothers said to me, “It is our aim, after we have been helped, to give thanks.”
The feeling of these Indians toward their God is one of humility and reverence. They do not love him, but they look to him for help at all times. The young are exhorted to humble themselves before him, to pray to him, to look to One Above, to ask help from the Ruler. In the stories which are included in this book the allusions constantly made to Ti-ra´-wa—the Supreme Power—the prayers offered and the humility and self-abnegation so often expressed, show faith, profound religious feelings, and great elevation of thought.
Among tribal names of North American Indians, none is more familiar to us than Pawnee; yet of no tribe is less known. Frequent allusions to them occur in the writings of early travelers in the West; but only one satisfactory attempt has been made to write a connected history of this family. In the Magazine of American History for 1880 Mr. John B. Dunbar published a most interesting account of this tribe, but his sketch is mainly historical, and does not profess to treat exhaustively of the lives and modes of thought of this people. It is, however, a history of very great importance and value, and in preparing the historical matter which is included in this volume, I have not hesitated to draw on Mr. Dunbar’s papers, which must form the basis of any subsequent account of the Pawnees, and which should be read by all who are interested in this people.
I owe much of my interest in and knowledge of the Pawnees to my long intimacy with the late Major Frank North, who from his extended intercourse and close connection with this people—a connection which lasted more than thirty years—was unquestionably better informed about them than any other white man has ever been; and with Capt. L. H. North, his brother, who was for many years associated with Major North in command of the Pawnee Scouts.
In gathering the material here presented I have been assisted also by James R. Murie, a nephew of Comanche Chief; by Ralph J. Weeks, a half-brother of Lone Chief; by Harry Kuhns, by Eagle Chief and Bear Chief, Skidis; by Good Chief and Curly Chief, Kit-ke-hahk´-is; by Secret Pipe Chief and Frank White, Chau-is, and by many others of my Pawnee friends, to all of whom my acknowledgments are due.
In the pronunciation of the few Pawnee words used in these stories, the vowel sounds, as nearly as I can give them, are as follows: a as in father, e as the a in ale, i as e in cede, ū long as oo in pool, ŭ short as in us, au as ou in house. These sounds depend somewhat on the letters which follow the vowels, and the spelling does not always conform to the rule laid down. The last two syllables in the word Pita-hau-erat, for example, are pronounced ērăt or idot. The sounds of d, l, n and r are difficult to express by English letters; r sometimes has its own sound quite distinctly, at others more the sound of d; n often has a d sound, and l a sound of n. It will be noted that throughout this volume I have used the familiar English word Pawnee instead of the evidently more correct Pa´-ni.
Finally I have refrained from commenting on the stories, though there is abundant opportunity for comment.
G. B. G.
July, 1889.
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