Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales / With notes on the origin, customs and character of the Pawnee people

by George Bird Grinnell

Game, which inhabited the underbrush or the forest, was captured by a method similar to that employed to secure the buffalo. If the Pawnees discovered that deer or elk were in a piece of timber, they would surround it, and then alarm the game, and keep them from breaking through the line of men. The animals, frightened and confused, would run round and round in a circle until exhausted, when the Pawnees would close in, and kill them with their arrows.

It must be remembered in this connection, that in those days game animals were enormously abundant and comparatively tame, and also, that the Pawnees, from the necessities of their lives, were tremendously active, very swift runners, and as tireless as the wolves from which they took their name. Their endurance was something astonishing. In their long journeys on the warpath they often traversed on foot six or eight hundred miles of country, carrying, during a part of the time, very heavy loads. Instances are not uncommon where runners have traveled one hundred miles in twenty-four hours. I myself know of a case where two men ran over seventy miles in eleven hours. We may imagine that in the old days when the Pawnees made all their journeys on foot, and were thus constantly exercising, their speed and activity were greater, and their powers of endurance still more remarkable.

Although their ancient arrows were usually headed with flint, they sometimes used bone or the sharpened tine of a deer’s horn. No one now alive can remember when these were in common use, but there are men who have heard their fathers and their grandfathers tell of them, and who say that these arrows were good for war and for the chase. “You could drive them through a thick shield,” said Bear Chief. As soon as they began to trade with the whites, arrow heads of sheet-iron came into use. They say that, so long as the Pawnees used flint for making arrow heads, they used to find plenty of these stones lying on the prairie, but that when the whites brought them iron, Ti-ra´-wa said to himself, “The Pawnees no longer need these flint stones; I will make no more of them.” This shows an odd confusion of ideas, for, of course, the reason that they did not find the stones was that they no longer looked for them, their use having been abandoned.

Although these stone arrow heads must have passed out of general use toward the end of the last century, yet some of them were preserved much later, and it is possible that there may even now be some among the Pawnees, hidden away in the sacred bundles. After they ceased to be used for general purposes, they took on a sacred character and were employed to slay the sacrifices; among the Skidi to kill the captive, and in the Lower Village tribes the buffalo and deer, for sacrifice. There was a time when it was deemed essential that the animals to be sacrificed to Ti-ra´-wa, should be killed by one of these ancient—and so sacred—arrows.

In the early days the Pawnees did not depend for food wholly—perhaps not even largely—on the flesh of the animals which they killed by hunting. They have always been an agricultural people, cultivating the ground, and raising corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes. They also dug up many edible roots, and collected and dried various berries and other fruits. Besides this, they captured birds and smaller mammals by means of snares and traps. It is said that before they obtained horses, they killed but few buffalo, only enough to provide themselves with clothing and with sinew for sewing, backing bows, and other uses.

The Pawnees aver that they have cultivated the corn as far back as they can remember. They say also that this is their corn, that it is not the corn of the whites, but is different from it—which is true—and that they did not get it from the whites. It is their own. On this they insist strenuously. I have found it impossible to obtain any clue as to where the corn came from or how they obtained it. To all inquiries on this point, they reply that it must have been “handed down from above;” that it was given them by “the Ruler.” Various stories are told about it, but none of them are very pointed or satisfactory.

They call the corn a-ti´ra, “mother.” It has a sacred character, and plays an important part in many of their religious ceremonies. This name which they give it, the mother corn, no doubt refers to the fact that it nourishes and supports them; that by it they are made strong. I have also heard it said that it is called mother because it produces others; it has young ones like a woman; “you put it in the ground and it brings forth others.”

The Pawnees cultivated their fields with hoes made from the shoulder blade of the buffalo. Taking the ligament from the back of a buffalo’s neck, they lashed a stick firmly to the articulation of the shoulder blade, nearly at right angles to the plane of the bone and to its length. Then, dipping the joint into hot water, the ligament would shrink, and bind the bone and the handle together as firmly as iron.

Years ago, on the sites of abandoned Pawnee villages, on the Loup Fork and on the Platte, fragments of pottery used to be found among the débris of the fallen lodges. The manufacture of this pottery was no doubt abandoned long ago, and has probably not been practiced to any considerable extent since they met the whites. A man about fifty years of age stated to me that he had never seen these pots in use, but that his grandmother had told him that in her days they made and used them. He said that they were accustomed to smooth off the end of a tree for a mould. A hot fire was then built, in which stones were roasted, which were afterward pounded into fine powder or sand. This pounded stone they mixed with fine clay, and when the material was of the proper consistency, they smeared it over the rounded mould, which was perhaps first well greased with buffalo tallow. After the clay had been made of even thickness throughout, and smooth on the outside, they took a small, sharp stone, and made marks on the outside to ornament it. When the material was sufficiently dry, they lifted it from the mould and burned it in the fire, and while it was baking, “put corn in the pot and stirred it about, and this made it hard as iron.” This may mean that it gave the pot a glaze on the inside. In these pots they boiled food of all kinds. Mr. Dunbar informs me that these pots were also made in later times within a frame-work of willow twigs. The clay, made very stiff, was smeared on this frame, the inside being repeatedly smoothed with the moistened hand, and but little attention being given to the appearance of the outside. After they had been sun-dried, such pots were baked without removing the frame, which burned away in the fire, leaving the marks of the twigs visible on the outside of the pot.

Corn was, and is still, crushed in wooden mortars, hollowed out by fire, and the pestle is also of wood, about four feet long, with an enlargement at the upper end to give added weight.