b. Showing screen near same entrance
IN A PAWNEE VILLAGE Photographs by W. H. Jackson, 1871
In addition to the permanent earth-covered lodges the Pawnee made extensive use of temporary skin-covered shelters, unlike the conical lodge of the plains tribes. These served as their habitations during the hunting season, when away from their villages. A most valuable and interesting description of the ways and customs of the Pawnee while occupying their movable villages was prepared by one who, during the summer and autumn of 1835, lived among the people, sharing their primitive ways of life and thereby learning many of their peculiar traits. The English traveler, Charles A. Murray, whose narrative is quoted in part on the following pages, left Fort Leavenworth July 7, 1835, and two weeks later reached the summer camp of the Pawnee: "and a more interesting or picturesque scene I never beheld. Upon an extensive prairie gently sloping down to a creek, the winding course of which marked a broken line of wood here and there interspersed with a fine clump of trees, were about five thousand savages, inclusive of women and children; some were sitting under their buffalo-skin lodges lazily smoking their pipes; while the women were stooping over their fires busily employed in preparing meat and maize for these indolent lords of the creation. Far as the eye could reach, were scattered herds of horses, watched (or as we should say in Scotland, 'tented') by urchins, whose whole dress and equipment was the slight bow and arrow, with which they exercised their infant archery upon the heads of the taller flowers, or upon the luckless blackbird perched near them. Here and there might be seen some gay young warrior ambling along the heights, his painted form partially exposed to view as his bright scarlet blanket waved in the breeze." (Murray, (1), I, pp. 277-278.) Later he described the manner of moving and pitching their large temporary camps: "On reaching the camping-place, which is selected by the grand chief (or, in his absence, by the next in rank), the senior squaw chooses the spot most agreeable to her fancy, and orders the younger women and children, who lead the pack-horses and mules (generally from five to ten in number, according to the size or wealth of the family), to halt; but in making this choice of ground, she is restricted within certain limits, and those of no great extent, as the Pawnees observe great regularity both in their line of march and encampment. I could not ascertain whether these regulations were invariable, or made at the pleasure of the chief; but I believe the latter; and that on leaving their winter, or stationary, villages, he issues the general orders on this subject, which are observed during the season or the expedition; at any rate, they never varied during my stay among them.
"They move in three parallel bodies; the left wing consisting of part of the Grand Pawnees and the Tapages; the centre of the remaining Grand Pawnees; and the right of the Republicans.... All these bodies move in 'Indian file,' though of course in the mingled mass of men, women, children, and pack-horses, it was not very regularly observed; nevertheless, on arriving at the halting-place, the party to which I belonged invariably camped at the eastern extremity of the village, the great chief in the centre, and the Républiques on the western side; and this arrangement was kept so well, that, after I had been a few days with them, I could generally find our lodge in a new encampment with very little trouble, although the village consisted of about six hundred of them, all nearly similar in appearance.
"They first unpack and unsaddle the horses, which are given to a boy to drive off to their grass and water; they then arrange all their bales, saddles, &c. in a semi-circular form, and pile them from two to three feet high. Around the exterior of these they drive into the ground eight or ten curved willow rods, from two to three feet distant from each other, but all firmly bound by leather thongs to four large upright poles, that form the front of the lodge, and along which run transverse willow rods, to which the extremities of the curved ones are fastened. When the frame, or skeleton, is thus finished, they stretch the cover (made of buffalo hides, sewed together) tight over the whole, leaving an aperture for entrance and egress in the centre of the front; and in fine weather, the whole front open.
"This is an accurate description of a Pawnee summer-lodge; but, of course, the dimensions vary according to the number and wealth of the families residing therein; in some tents I have observed the front consisting of six or eight upright poles, to which were fixed more skins, for additional shelter or shade. On the grass, in the interior, are spread mats, made by the squaws from reeds, and skins of buffalo or bear.
"From the foregoing it will be easily understood that the bales of cloth, maize, skins, and whatever other property they possess, form the back of the tent. Each occupant, from the chief to the lowest in rank, has his assigned place; sleeps upon his own blanket, or buffalo robe; has his bow and quiver suspended over his head; his saddle, bridle, and laryettes, &c. behind his back: and thus little confusion prevails, although each individual has only just room to sit or lie at full length.
"Before the tent a kind of shield is raised, upon three poles pyramidically placed, on which is the device of the chief, by which his tent is to be recognised.... In the interior of the tent, and generally about the centre of its concave, is suspended the 'medicine,' which is most carefully and religiously preserved.... Under the head of 'medicine,' the Indians comprise not only its own healing department, but everything connected with religion of superstition; all omens, all relics, and everything extraordinary or supernatural." (Murray (1), I, pp. 282-286.)
Late in the year 1835 Murray left the Pawnee encampment to return to Fort Leavenworth, but, meeting with an accident, was not able to proceed on his way. The Pawnee were likewise moving, and in moving over the prairie made a well-defined trail. Retracing his way, and seeking the Pawnee, he wrote: "About ten o'clock on the following day we found the great Pawnee trail, and, following it, came at mid-day to the place where they had camped the night before, and a most hideous spectacle did it present; the grass was all trodden into mud—hundreds of circular heaps of charred wood attested the number of fires that had been used; and the whole plain was strewed with split heads, bare skeletons, and scattered entrails of buffalo; while some hundreds of the half-starved Pawnee dogs who had lingered behind the village were endeavoring to dispute some morsels of the carcasses with the gaunt snarling wolves, who were stripping the scanty relics of skin and sinew which are left by Indian butchery attached to the bone." (Op. cit., p. 438.) This vivid description of the appearance of an abandoned camp site quite agrees with a reference made by Dr. Grinnell a few years ago. Writing of events during the year 1853, and alluding to an abandoned camp of the Pawnee that year discovered by the Cheyenne, he said: "It was a big camp; and there were many fires. It seemed as if the Pawnees had been camped there killing buffalo for a long time. There were still many dogs in the camp. On one side was a well-beaten trail which led to another camp two hundred yards off where a number of people had been camped, not in lodges but in shelters made of willows bent over, after the fashion of a sweat-house." (Grinnell, (2), p. 86.)
These temporary and easily erected structures of the Pawnee were probably quite similar in form and appearance to that of the Cheyenne, part of which is shown in plate [14]. But in the latter instance the cover is not formed of the primitive buffalo skin, but of canvas, or some other material obtained from the trader.
The Pawnee had a strange method of dealing with their sick or wounded during the movement of a village from place to place, and, so wrote Father De Smet, "if, in the long journeys which they undertake in search of game, any should be impeded, either by age or sickness, their children or relations make a small hut of dried grass to shelter them from the heat of the sun or from the weather, leaving as much provision as they are able to spare, and thus abandon them to their destiny.... If, some days after, they are successful in the chase, they return as quickly as possible to render assistance and consolation. These practices are common to all the nomadic tribes of the mountains." (De Smet, (2), pp. 356-357.) It is more than probable that similar grass shelters were constructed and used by small parties when away from the villages, but such structures would necessarily have been of only temporary use.