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

by George Bird Grinnell

COW SKIN LODGE.

The permanent habitations of the Pawnees were dirt or sod houses, often of very considerable size. The remains of the old medicine lodge of the Skidi, on the Loup, show it to have been two hundred and [!-- original location of Cow Skin Lodge illustration --] ten feet in diameter. The lodges were circular in form, with walls seven or eight feet high, and the roof rose from these walls to the apex above the center of the lodge, where was the hole for the escape of smoke from the fire, which burned on the floor below. A covered passageway led to the entrance. Around the walls the inmates slept, the beds being partitioned off, and protected in front as well, by a curtain which might be a skin, or a mat woven of reeds or coarse grass. The cooking was all done over the fire in the middle of the lodge. Possessions were stowed away behind the beds, or hung up on the posts which supported the roof.

On their hunts or when traveling, the Pawnees used the ordinary cow skin lodge of the plains Indians. This was composed of neatly dressed buffalo hides, from which the hair had been removed, set up over a frame-work, made up, usually, of sixteen long slender poles. An opening at the top gave exit to the smoke; and wings, projecting at either side of the smoke hole, and so arranged that their positions could be changed by moving two additional poles on the outside of the lodge, served to regulate the draft, and keep the lodge free from smoke. The inmates slept close to the walls, and the fire, with the inevitable pot hanging over it, burned in the middle. These lodges were warm, and usually dry, and made good shelters. They were occupied for the greater part of the year, for the Pawnees, after the spring planting was fairly over, usually started at once on their summer hunt, from which they only returned in time to harvest their crops. At the beginning of winter, when the robes were at their best, they made the winter hunt, from which they did not return until toward spring. The planting over, they set out again on the hunt.

In their personal intercourse with each other, and with strangers, the Pawnees were kindly and accommodating. I have had little kindnesses unostentatiously done me by Pawnee men, such as I should never expect to receive from white persons not connected with me by ties of blood. In the village, the well-to-do gave freely to those who were poor, and all were very hospitable. They were a light-hearted, merry race, keenly alive to the ridiculous, and very fond of a joke. They were great chatterers, and had about them nothing of the supposed taciturnity of the Indian. Of modesty or delicacy in conversation, as we know it, they had none. Both sexes spoke freely to each other of matters which are never mentioned in civilized society, and much of their conversation, as well as many of their stories, could not well be printed.

III. A SUMMER HUNT.

It was in the month of July, 1872. The Pawnees were preparing to start on their semi-annual buffalo hunt, and only the last religious rites remained to be performed before the nation should leave the village for the buffalo range.

“Eh, idadi, whoop,” came from without the lodge; and as I replied, “Ehya, whoop,” the sturdy figure of Le-ta-kats-ta´-ka appeared in the doorway.

“Lau, idad, tŭt-tū-ta-rik ti-rah-rēk—Come, brother, they are going to dance,” he said, and then he turned and went out.

I rose from the pile of robes on which I had been dozing, and, after rolling them up, strolled out after him. The village seemed deserted, but off toward the medicine lodge, which stood upon its outskirts, I could see a throng of Indians; and a low murmur of voices and of footsteps, the hum which always accompanies any large assemblage, was borne to my ears on the evening breeze. The ceremonies, which comprised the consecration of the buffalo staves and the buffalo dance, were about to begin. The great dirt lodge was crowded. I pushed my way through the throng of women and boys, who made up the outer circle of spectators, and soon found myself among the men, who made way for me, until I reached a position from which I could see all that was going on within the circle about which they stood.