leggings, fringed at the side, and reaching from ankle to thigh, and
moccasins. Over all this, when the weather demanded it, was worn the
buffalo robe, the hair side being turned in. The dress of the women
consisted of a sort of sleeveless shirt, and a skirt of dressed
buffalo cow skin, reaching to below the knee, with leggings of cloth
or buckskin, laced above the knee, and moccasins. They also wore the
robe or blanket. No head covering was used, though in war and on great
occasions the men wore bonnets or chaplets of eagle feathers, and
sometimes both men and women wove wreaths out of cottonwood or willow
twigs, with the green leaves left on, to shade their eyes from the
fierce rays of the sun. The children were at first scantily clad. The
boy, after he was released from his board, went naked, except perhaps
for a string of beads around his neck, until he was ten or twelve
years old, though usually he assumed the breech clout before that
age. Girls were clad in a shirt or smock almost as soon as they could
walk.
At the present time but few of the Pawnees wear their hair cut in the
ancient fashion, but twenty years ago a large proportion of the older
men had the whole head shaved, except a narrow roach which ran from
the forehead to the back of the head. This roach, on which the hair
was usually left less than an inch long, was sometimes stiffened at
the sides with grease and paint to make it stand up well. From this
roach the scalp lock fell back in its natural position. At the present
day many of the men cut their hair short, like the whites. The women
usually wore their hair in two braids, one on each side, falling
behind the ears, and the younger ones were careful in tending it.
All hair upon the face and on other parts of the body was usually
plucked out, but I have seen a Pawnee with a heavy beard under his
chin.
Paint was freely used in ornamentation, especially on the face and
breast. Black, as is the case with most tribes, was the color for war.
Red, white and yellow, were used merely for ornament.
As already indicated, the arms of the Pawnees were the bow and arrow,
the lance, the club, and the hatchet. The bow was almost invariably
made of the _bois d'arc_, and was backed with sinew, and had a string
of the same material. The arrows were made with the greatest labor,
care and exactness, and those manufactured by each individual were so
marked that they could at once be distinguished from those of every
other maker. It is well known that the arrows of each Indian tribe
differed from those of every other tribe, but besides this, each man's
arrows bore his private mark. The manufacture of the bow and arrows
was a long, slow process, and after they had been completed they were
carefully guarded and protected from injury. Although the Pawnees have
long been accustomed to use firearms in war, yet the use of the bow
and arrow in hunting persisted up to quite recent times, in fact up to
the date of the disappearance of the buffalo. A reason for this is
readily found in the fact that an arrow cost only time to manufacture,
and the Indian has an abundance of time. For cartridges, or for powder
and lead, he must pay money, or trade some of his possessions. An
arrow, too, may be used over and over again, and may thus account for
many head of game, whereas a cartridge can be used but once. In their
secret war expeditions, too, the bow was a favorite weapon, because
it was noiseless. An enemy found at a little distance from his camp,
could be stealthily approached and silently shot down, without
necessarily alarming persons in the neighborhood, when a rifle shot,
ringing over the prairie and echoing among the bluffs, would call out
every warrior in the village, to learn whence it came. I have been
told, by warriors, that on their war parties, they left their rifles
at home and carried only their bows, so that they might not be tempted
by the sight of an enemy to fire a shot, which might bring themselves
and their companions into danger.
The Pawnees were superb horsemen and owned many ponies. I can learn
nothing definite as to when they first obtained these animals, nor
from what source. A tradition exists, that up to the time of the
tribe's advent into the northern country, their only beast of burden
was the dog, which then carried their packs and hauled their
_travois_. The story goes that the Pawnees obtained their first horses
soon after their separation from the Wichitas. The three bands were
traveling north together, when the scouts who had been sent ahead to
overlook the country, hastened back and announced to the chiefs that
they had discovered a camp of Indians. A council was at once held to
determine whether they should attack this unknown village as enemies,
or should approach them as friends. The majority declared for an
attack, and it was so decided. Approaching under cover as near as
possible, the horde of dusky footmen poured over the hills and down
into the valley where stood the doomed village. The attack was sudden,
fierce, and successful. They killed and captured many of the enemy,
and took the camp, while the survivors fled in hopeless confusion.
Among the plunder taken were a lot of horses; strange beasts then to
the rude Pawnees, and at which they wondered greatly. A captive woman
explained to the conquerors that these creatures were good to ride,
and useful to pack on. Old men still tell, with a smile, of the
ludicrous first attempts of the warriors to ride the horses. This
occurrence is said to have taken place on the Smoky Hill River, in
what is now Kansas, and the Indians from whom the horses were
captured, are understood to have been Cheyennes.
[Illustration: 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 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, tüt-tû-ta-rik ti-rah-rêk_--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.
For several days the priests and the doctors had been preparing for
this solemn religious ceremonial. They had fasted long; earnest
prayers had been made to _Ti-ra´-wa_, and sacrifices had been offered.
Now the twelve buffalo skulls had been arranged on the ground in a
half-circle, and near them stood the chiefs and doctors, reverently
holding in their hands the buffalo staves and sacred bows and arrows,
and other implements of the chase. For a little while they stood
silent, with bowed heads, but presently one and then another began to
murmur their petitions to _A-ti-us Ti-ra´-wa_, the Spirit Father. At
first their voices were low and mumbling, but gradually they became
more earnest and lifted their eyes toward heaven. It was impossible to
distinguish what each one said, but now and then disjointed sentences
reached me. "Father, you are the Ruler--We are poor--Take pity on
us--Send us plenty of buffalo, plenty of fat cows--Father, we are your
children--help the people--send us plenty of meat, so that we may be
strong, and our bodies may increase and our flesh grow hard--Father,
you see us, listen." As they prayed they moved their hands backward
and forward over the implements which they held, and at length
reverently deposited them on the ground within the line of buffalo
skulls, and then stepped back, still continuing their prayers.
It was a touching sight to witness these men calling upon their God
for help. All of them had passed middle life, and some were
gray-haired, blind and tottering; but they prayed with a fervor and
earnestness that compelled respect. They threw their souls into their
prayers, and as a son might entreat his earthly father for some great
gift, so they plead with _Ti-ra´-wa_. Their bodies quivered with
emotion, and great drops of sweat stood upon their brows. They were
thoroughly sincere.
After the last of the articles had been placed upon the ground, their
voices grew lower and at length died away. A moment later a drum
sounded, and a dozen or twenty young warriors sprang into the circle
and began the buffalo dance. This was kept up without intermission for
three days, and as soon as it was over, the tribe moved out of the
village on the hunt.
From the village on the Loup, we traveled southward; for in those days
the region between the Platte and the Smoky rivers swarmed with
buffalo. With the Pawnees were a few Poncas, Omahas and Otoes, so that
there were about four thousand Indians in the camp. It was the summer
hunt of the tribe. Twice each year the agent permitted them to visit
the buffalo range. The meat which they killed and dried on these
hunts, the corn and squashes which they grew on their farms, and the
small annuities received from the Government, were all they had to
subsist on from season to season. Thus the occasion was one of
importance to the Indians. Perhaps only the older heads among them
fully appreciated its economic interest; but for all it was a holiday
time; a temporary escape from confinement. Life on the reservation was
monotonous. There was nothing to do except to sit in the sun and
smoke, and tell stories of the former glories of the nation; of
successful fights with the Sioux and Cheyennes, and of horse stealing
expeditions, from which the heroes had returned with great herds of
ponies and much glory. Now, for a little while, they returned to the
old free life of earlier years, when the land had been all their own,
and they had wandered at will over the broad expanse of the rolling
prairie. Now, for a time, it was as it had been before the cornfields
of the white man had begun to dot their river bottoms, before the
sound of his rifle had made wild their game, before the locomotive's
whistle had shrieked through the still, hot summer air. Half a year's
provision was now to be secured. The comfort--almost the existence--of
the tribe for the next six months depended on the accumulation of an
abundant supply of dried buffalo meat, and no precaution was omitted
to make the hunt successful. It would not do to permit each individual
to hunt independently. Indiscriminate buffalo running by six or eight
hundred men scattered over the prairie, each one working for himself
alone, would result in the killing of some few buffalo, but would
terrify and drive away all the others in the neighborhood. This matter
was too important to be trusted to chance. The hunting was
systematized.
The government of the hunt was intrusted to the Pawnee soldiers. These
were twenty-four warriors of mature age, not so old as to be unfitted
for active work, yet with the fires of early youth somewhat tempered
by years of experience; men whose judgment and discretion could at all
times be relied on. These soldiers acted under the chiefs, but the
practical guidance of the hunt was wholly in their hands. They
determined the direction and length of each day's march, and the spot
for camping. They selected the young men who should act as scouts, and
arranged all the details of the approach and the charge when a herd of
buffalo was discovered large enough to call for a general surround.
All the men were under their control, and amenable to their
discipline. They did not hesitate to exercise their authority, nor to
severely punish any one who committed an act by which the success of
the hunt might be imperilled.
The scouts sent out by the soldiers were chosen from among the younger
men. They acted merely as spies, their office was to find the buffalo.
They moved rapidly along, far in advance of the marching column, and
from the tops of the highest hills carefully scanned the country
before them in search of buffalo. If a herd was discerned, they were
not to show themselves, nor in any way to alarm it. Having found the
game, their duty was to observe its movement, learn where it was
likely to be for the next few hours, and then to report as quickly as
possible to the camp. The soldiers then determined what action should
be taken. If the news was received late in the day, and the buffalo
were at some distance, the camp would probably be moved as near as
practicable to where the herd was feeding, and the chase would take
place in the early morning. If, on the other hand, the scouts found
the herd in the morning, the men would start off at once for the
surround, leaving the women to follow, and make camp as near as
possible to where the dead buffalo lay.
Day after day we traveled southward, crossing the Platte River, and
then the Republican about due south of the present flourishing town of
Kearney. South of the Platte a few scattering buffalo were found, but
no large herds had been met with--nothing that called for a surround.
At length we camped one night on the Beaver, a small affluent of the
Republican, emptying into it from the south.
With the gray dawn of morning, the camp, as usual, is astir. By the
time our little party have turned out of our blankets, some of the
Indians have already finished eating, and are catching up their
horses and preparing to ride off over the bluffs, leaving the squaws
to take down the lodges, pack the ponies, and pursue the designated
line of march. Before we are ready to "pull out," most of the ponies
have been packed, and a long, irregular line of Indians is creeping
across the level valley, and beginning to wind up the face of the
bluffs. The procession moves slowly, proceeding at a walk. Most of
those who remain with the column are on foot, the squaws leading the
ponies, and many of the men, wrapped in their blankets, and with only
their bows and arrows on their backs, walking briskly over the
prairie, a little to one side. These last are the poorer
Indians--those who have but few horses. They travel on foot, letting
their horses run without burdens, so that they may be fresh and
strong, whenever they shall be needed for running the buffalo.
Side by side, at the head of the column, walk eight men who carry the
buffalo staves. These are slender spruce poles, like a short
lodge-pole, wrapped with blue and red cloth, and elaborately
ornamented with bead work, and with the feathers of hawks, and of the
war eagle. These sticks are carried by men selected by the chiefs and
doctors in private council, and are religiously guarded. Upon the
care of these emblems, and the respect paid to them, depends, in a
great measure, the success of the hunt. While borne before the moving
column, no one is permitted to cross the line of march in front of
them.
Close behind the staff bearers follow a number of the principal men of
the tribe; the head chief, old _Pi´ta Le-shar_, and a dozen or fifteen
sub-chiefs or head men, all mounted on superb horses. Behind them
comes the camp at large, a fantastically mingled multitude, marching
without any appearance of order. Here most of the individuals are
women, young girls and children, for the men who accompany the camp
usually march singly, or by twos and threes, a little apart from the
mob. Most of those rich enough in horses to be able to ride at all
times, are scattered over the prairie for miles in every direction,
picking up the small bands of buffalo, which have been passed by the
scouts as not large enough to call for a general surround. The hunters
are careful, however, not to follow too close upon the advance line,
whose movements they can readily observe upon the bare bluffs far
ahead of them.
At the time of which I am writing, the Pawnees had no wagons, all
their possessions being transported on pack horses. The Indian pack
pony is apt to be old and sedate, requiring no special guidance nor
control. A strip of rawhide, knotted about the lower jaw, serves as a
bridle, and is either tied up to the saddle or held in the rider's
hand. In packing the animals a bundle of lodge-poles is tied on either
side of the saddle, one end projecting forward toward the horse's
head, the other dragging on the ground behind. This is the _travois_.
Cross poles are often tied between these two dragging bundles, and on
these are carried packages of meat and robes. Often, too, on a robe
stretched between them, a sick or wounded Indian, unable to ride, is
transported. The lodge-poles having been fastened to the saddle, the
lodge is folded up and placed on it between them, and blankets, robes,
and other articles are piled on top of this, until the horse has on
its back what appears to be about as much as it can carry. The pack is
then lashed firmly in position, and pots, buckets and other utensils
are tied about it wherever there is room.
On top of the load so arranged one or two women, or three or four
children, clamber and settle themselves comfortably there, and the old
horse is turned loose. Each rider carries in her hand a whip, with
which she strikes the horse at every step, not cruelly at all, but
just from force of habit. If the pack is low, so that her feet reach
down to the animal's sides, she keeps up also a constant drumming on
his ribs with her heels. The old horse pays not the slightest
attention to any of these demonstrations of impatience, but plods
steadily along at a quiet walk, his eyes half closed and his ears
nodding at each step. If the riders are women, each one holds a child
or two in her arms, or on her back, or perhaps the baby board is hung
over the end of a lodge-pole, and swings free. If the living load
consists of children, they have in their arms a lot of puppies; for
puppies occupy with relation to the small Indian girls the place which
dolls hold among the white children. Many of the pack animals are
mares with young colts, and these last, instead of following quietly
at their mothers' heels, range here and there, sometimes before and
sometimes behind, their dams. They are thus constantly getting lost in
the crowd, and then they charge backward and forward in wild affright,
neighing shrilly, until they have again found their proper place in
the line of march. Many of the yearling colts have very small and
light packs tied on their backs, while the two-year-olds are often
ridden by the tiniest of Indian boys, who are now giving them their
first lesson in weight-carrying. Loose horses of all ages roam about
at will, and their continual cries mingle with the barking of dogs,
the calls of women and the yells of boys, and make an unceasing noise.
The boys are boiling over with animal spirits, and, like their
civilized brothers of the same age, are continually running about,
chasing each other, wrestling, shooting arrows and playing games, of
which the familiar stick game seems the favorite.
Whenever the column draws near any cover, which may shelter game, such
as a few bushes in a ravine, or the fringe of low willows along some
little watercourse, the younger men and boys scatter out and surround
it. They beat it in the most thorough manner, and any game which it
contains is driven out on the prairie, surrounded and killed. The
appearance even of a jackass rabbit throws the boys into a fever of
excitement, and causes them to shriek and yell as if in a frenzy.
All the morning I rode with the Indians, either at the head of the
column, chatting as best I could with _Pi´ta Le-shar_ and other
chiefs, or falling back and riding among the women and children, whom
I never tired of watching. Frequently during the day I saw at a
distance, on the prairie, small bunches of buffalo in full flight,
hotly pursued by dark-skinned riders, and occasionally two or three
men would ride up to the marching columns with heavy loads of
freshly-killed meat. The quick-heaving, wet flanks of the ponies told
a story of sharp, rapid chases, and their tossing heads and eager,
excited looks showed how much interest they took in the hunt.
The report of firearms was seldom heard. Most of the Indians hunted
with the primitive weapon of their forefathers--the bow and arrow. For
buffalo running an arrow is nearly as effective as lead. The power of
the bow in expert hands is tremendous. Riding within half a dozen
yards of the victim's side, the practiced bowman will drive the dart
so far through the body of the buffalo that its shaft may project a
foot or more from the opposite side--sometimes indeed may pass quite
through. Besides, the bow can be used very rapidly and accurately. I
have seen an Indian take a sheaf of six arrows in his hand, and
discharge them at a mark more rapidly and with more certainty of
hitting his target than I could fire the six barrels of a revolver.