Philadelphia, April 6th, 1847.
Mr. J. D. Bryant,
Dear Sir,—The nation of the Pawnees is divided into four great tribes, which act in concert as one people. They have their villages upon the river Platte, or Nebrasca, and its tributaries, about 150 miles west of the Missouri river. They are the same true children of the desert as they have been these many ages.—They dress in the skins of animals killed in the chase. They cultivate maize and squashes, using the shoulder-blade of the buffalo as a substitute for the plough and hoe. In the season of the chase, a whole village, men, women, and children, abandon their settlements and go in pursuit of the animals whose flesh supplies them with food. Their huts, which they call akkaros, are circular, and about 140 feet in circumference. They are ingeniously formed by planting young trees {356} at suitable distances apart, then bending and joining their tops to a number of pillars or posts fixed circularly in the centre of the enclosure. The trees are then covered with bark, over which is thrown a layer of earth, nearly a foot in thickness, and finally, a solid mass of green turf completes the structure. These dwellings, thus completed, resemble hillocks. A large aperture in the top serves to admit the light and also to emit the smoke. They are very warm in winter, and cool, but oftentimes very damp, in summer. They are large enough to contain ten or a dozen families.[348]
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. Nothing is more touching than this constrained separation, caused by absolute necessity—the tears and cries of the children on the one hand, and the calm resignation of the aged father or mother on the other. They often encourage their children not to expose their own lives in order to prolong their short remnant {357} of time. They are anxious to depart on their long journey, and to join their ancestors in the hunting-grounds of the Great Spirit. 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.
The Pawnees have nearly the same ideas concerning the universal deluge as those which I have given of the Potawotomies. In relation to the soul, they say, that there is a resemblance in the body which does not die, but detaches itself when the body expires. If a man has been good during his life, kind to his parents, a good hunter, a good warrior, his soul (sa ressemblance) is transported into a land of delights, abundance, and pleasures. If, on the contrary, a man has been wicked, hard-hearted, cruel and indolent, his soul passes through narrow straits, difficult and dangerous, into a country where all is confusion, contrariety and unhappiness.
In their religious ceremonies, they dance, sing and pray before a bird stuffed with all kinds of roots and herbs used in their superstition. They have a fabulous tradition, which teaches them that the morning star sent this bird to their ancestors, {358} as its representative, with orders to invoke it on all important occasions and to exhibit it in times of sacrifice.[349] Before the invocation, they fill the calumet with the sacred herb contained in the bird. They then puff out the smoke towards the star, offer the prayers and make their demands, dancing and singing, and celebrating in verses the great power of the bird. They implore its assistance and its favor, whether to obtain success in hunting or in war, or to demand snow in order to make the buffalo descend from the mountains, or to appease the Great Spirit when a public calamity befalls the nation, or a family, or even a single person. The Pawnees are one of the few aboriginal tribes, which, descending from the ancient Mexicans, are guilty of offering human sacrifices.[350] In order to justify this barbarous practice, they say that the morning star taught them by means of the bird, that such sacrifices were agreeable to it, and would bring down upon the nation the favor of the great Deliberator[351] of the universe. They are firmly persuaded that human sacrifices are most agreeable to the Great Spirit. Hence, when the Pawnee takes a prisoner and wishes {359} to render himself acceptable to Heaven, he devotes it to the morning star. At the time of sacrifice, he delivers the prisoner over into the hands of the jugglers; soon after which, commence the ceremonies preparatory to the offering. I was in the neighborhood when one of these bloody sacrifices took place, and the particulars, which I am about to relate, were reported to me by worthy eye-witnesses.
The victim in this horrid transaction was a young Sioux girl, named Dakotha, aged 15 years, who had been taken prisoner by the Pawnees about six months previous to her immolation. During the months of her captivity, Dakotha received from the Pawnees every mark of regard which savages are capable of bestowing. She was an honored guest at all the fêtes and festivities of the village; and everywhere was treated, in appearance at least, rather as a fond friend than as a prisoner. It is the custom thus to prepare the victim, in order to conceal their infernal design.
The month of April being the season for planting, is on that account selected for the offering of their abominable sacrifices. To this end, four of the principal savages of the tribe assemble in the largest and most beautiful {360} akkaro or hut, to deliberate with Tirawaat, or the great Deliberator of the universe, concerning the sacrifice of the victim. According to their belief, a human offering is rewarded by him with an abundant harvest. He fills the hunting-grounds convenient to their villages with immense herds of buffaloes, deer and antelopes, thus enabling them to kill their prey with more facility and with less risk of coming in contact with other warlike and hostile nations.
The oldest savage of the tribe presides at the feast given on the occasion. Ten of the best singers and musicians, each with his peculiar instrument, squat in the middle of the akkaro. Four of them have dried calabashes in their hands, from which the seeds have been extracted and small pebbles placed in their stead, which being shaken by the muscular arms of these gigantic savages, produce a sound like falling hail. Four others beat their tekapiroutche—this is a kind of drum of a most mournful and deafening sound; it is made from the trunk of a tree and is about three feet long and one-and-a-half broad, covered at both ends with deer skin. The remaining two have a kind of flute made of reeds, about two feet long and one inch in diameter, instruments, such as were used by {361} the ancient shepherds, and which give forth sounds that may be heard at the distance of half a mile. They fasten to each instrument a little tewaara, or medicine bag, filled with roots and other materials, to which, in their superstitious rites, they attach a supernatural power, that renders their offering more agreeable to the Author of life. Four sentinels, each armed with a lance, take their position at the four cardinal points of the lodge, to maintain order among the spectators and to prevent the entrance of the women, young girls and children. The guests are seated upon the ground or upon mats on the right and left of the presiding juggler, turning around from time to time in the most grotesque and ridiculous dances. Imagine thirty swarthy savages, with their bodies tattooed; their faces besmeared with paint—white, black, made of soot and the scrapings of the kettles, yellow, green and vermilion; and their long and dishevelled hair clotted with mud or clay. Placing themselves in a circle, they shriek, they leap, and give to their bodies, their arms, their legs, and their heads a thousand hideous contortions; while streams of perspiration, pouring down their bodies, render the horrors of their appearance still more dreadful, by {362} the confused commingling of the colors with which they are smeared—now they crowd together pell-mell, then separate, some to the right, some to the left, one upon one foot, another upon two, while others go on all-fours without order, and although without appearance of measure, yet, in perfect harmony with their drums, their calabashes and their flutes.
Near the centre of the hut, at about four feet from the fire-place, are placed four large buffalo heads, dissected, in order that they may take the augury. The presiding juggler, the musicians and the dancers have their heads covered with the down of the swan, which sticks to them by means of honey, with which they smear their hair—a practice common to all the tribes of North America in their superstitious rites. The president or presiding juggler alone is painted with red, the musicians, one half red and the other half black, while all the others are daubed with all colors, and in the most fantastic figures.