During the 1700s, French traders made regular stops at Southern Pawnee villages to trade guns, tools, and other European trade items for buffalo robes and other animal pelts. Caddoan relatives of the Pawnee—the CADDO and WICHITA—were central to French trade west of the Mississippi River. Other Caddoan relatives, the ARIKARA, also had important trading villages on the upper Missouri.
When France lost its holdings in North America in 1763 after the French and Indian wars, the fur trade declined for the Missouri River Indians. In 1770, the Southern Pawnee migrated northward to join the Skidi Pawnee.
The opening of the American frontier after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 brought more and more settlers to the lands of the Pawnee. From the very outset, the Pawnee were peaceful in their relations with the newcomers. In addition to trade advantages from this friendship, the Pawnee wanted allies against their traditional enemies—the SIOUX (DAKOTA, LAKOTA, NAKOTA), CHEYENNE, ARAPAHO, KIOWA, and COMANCHE—who often raided Pawnee villages and vice versa. (One Sioux warrior bore the name “Pawnee Killer,” because of his deeds in battle against the Pawnee.)
The fact that the Pawnee were allies and friends of the settlers did not halt the increasing loss of tribal lands. By the mid-1800s, tribal representatives had signed a number of treaties giving all their territory to the United States, except for a reservation along the banks of the Loup River near present-day Fullerton, Nebraska.
Even so, the Pawnee continued to support the whites against other Indians in the wars for the plains. They became the most famous of all Indian scouts for the U. S. Army under Frank and Luther North, who organized a battalion of Pawnee scouts active from 1865 to 1885. Other Pawnee under Sky Chief worked as guards for railroad construction crews.
The tribe’s assistance to whites angered other Native Americans. In 1873, a Sioux war party ambushed a Pawnee hunting party in southern Nebraska and killed a reported 150 of their enemy, including Sky Chief, before an army detachment came to the rescue. The site of this incident became known as Massacre Canyon.
Despite their great contribution and sacrifice on behalf of the United States, the Pawnee were pressured into giving up their Nebraska reservation in 1876. They were relocated to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), where their descendants live today near the city of Pawnee.
World History
