Tribe: The Pawnee Nation, which includes the Chaui, the Kitkehakhi, the Pitahawirata and the Skidi. "Pawnee" is the name given to them by the Lakota, who were one of their enemies. They call themselves the "Chahiksichahiks."
Meaning of Name: "Chahiksichahiks," means "the men of men." "Chaui" means "People in the middle." "Kitkehakhi" means "Little Muddy Bottom Village." "Pirahawirata" means "Man Screaming," and "Skidi" means "Wolf."
Location: The Pawnee had lived in Nebraska and northern Kansas since about 1250 AD, but relocated of their own volition to Oklahoma in 1874.
Original Language: Pawnee, a dialect of Caddo.
Tribal Affiliations: The French, the Americans, the Cherokee.
Traditional Enemies: The various Pawnee tribes looked after their own until they were forced to band together to resist the English, the Spanish, and, at one time, the Americans who encroached upon their land. They were at frequent war with the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Comanche and the Kiowa.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Pawnee were semi-sedentary, and during the Spring and Fall, they lived in rectangular or circular earth lodges built on the high banks of rivers. These looked like small hills covered in grass, like a Hobbit's shire, with a foyer leading to an entrance facing east. Each lodge took about two years to build due to the need for seasoned wood and dry mud and grass. First, a three-foot deep hole had to be dug, and then roughly ten-foot wood scaffolding had to be imbedded firmly in the ground and erected over the hole. The center poles were painted in sacred black, white, yellow and red, and a second outer ring of poles outlined the circumference, with horizontal poles that provided stability to the lodge. More poles covered the wooden frames, upon which was placed thatch and dirt, upon which eventually grass grew. The entire lodge was so stable that it could withstand straight-line winds and tornadoes, and since most storms travel west to east, the east-facing entrance meant that debris would not clog up the door. Each lodge lasted between ten and fifteen years, or twenty-to-thirty tornado seasons, and housed up to fifty people, usually the mother's line. And during the Summer and Winter, which was buffalo-hunting season, the Pawnee lived in teepees which could be easily transported.
Traditional Attire: Before contact with white people, Pawnee clothing was fairly typical of the People of the Plains; colorfully-beaded, fringed and quilled buckskin shirts and leggings, moccasins, ponchos, and blankets made of skins for the men, and long plain buckskin dresses or ponchos and skirts for the women. After the white men came, they quickly incorporated ready-to-wear off-the-rack clothing into their everyday wardrobe and embellished them with silk ribbons and other decorations. The women wore their hair plain and long. The men sported scalp-locks which were often greased with buffalo fat and curved backwards until it looked like a backwards-facing horn. Otherwise, Pawnee men wore their hair loose and long, and with roaches or fancy feathered headdresses for ceremonial occasions.
Traditional Foods: While the earth-lodges were (hopefully) safely up on the bluffs overlooking the rivers and streams, Pawnee crops were closer to the water where the women grew corn, beans, squash, melons and possibly sunflowers. They probably also grew their own or foraged for mulberries, wild plums, asparagus, grapes, elderberries, chokeberries, gooseberries, raspberries, chives, borage, calendula, hyssop, hickory nuts, black walnuts, crabapples, yucca and edible mushrooms. Hunting season brought in bison, bear, elk and deer meat which could be cooked or dried and eaten as jerky or used in making pemmican. The Pawnee men also hunted panther and skunk, but mostly for their fur and hides with which to make accessories. The women, probably the younger ones, also went on hunting trips and did the meat processing, the cooking, the tanning and the setting up of their teepees.
Position of Women: The Pawnee were matrilineal and matrilocal, meaning that lineage was reckoned through the mother's line, and that young men moved into their mothers-in-law's lodges, although they were certainly welcomed back into their own mother's homes. The women owned their own lodges and teepees, owned their own equipment, and did most of the work. They also made most of the decisions for the family and tribe when it came to marriages, food production, diplomacy, trade and peace, and men made most of the decisions when it came to hunting, war, spiritual matters and health. There was, however, one notable and probably elderly female warrior who went by the interesting name, "Old Lady Grieves the Enemy." Women were not, on the other hand, allowed to be chieftains, medicine men or shamans, nor could they inherit or bequeath property, probably apart from what they owned.
Pawnee Courtship: Although I couldn't find any information specific to Pawnee courtship, it probably follows patterns similar to those found in other People of the Plains. And if young women went on hunting trips with young men, this would provide an excellent opportunity for the man to show off his horsemanship and hunting skills, and for the woman to show off her cooking and domestic skills. What did come up in my research is that Pawnee relationships were fluid and serial monogamy was common, which does explain why the lineage of the children was reckoned through the mother's line.
Interesting Tidbits:
The Skidi Pawnee, at one time, practiced a somewhat humane form of human sacrifice as part of their fertility ritual. In this, a Skidi hunter-warrior would dream of the Morning Star, a male figure of light, and then tell the Morning Star priest (or holy man) about the dream. They would then gather a group of men to raid a teepee village belonging to the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche or Kiowa where they would capture one of their enemy's maidens. This did nothing to promote peace between the Pawnee and their enemies who would be forced to try to capture her back again or seek revenge. Provided that they were not successful, the enemy maiden would be taken back to the hunter-warrior's teepee and be taken very good care-of until the hunting party returned to their earth-lodges in the Spring, and probably thereafter, until her time of ritual sacrifice. (I would suppose that if the young hunter-warrior fell in love with her during this time, she would be rendered ineligible for virgin sacrifice, and the Skidi men would have to raid another village for her replacement.)
Then, when the Morning Star was barely visible through a red early-morning sunrise (the beginning of the Spring rainy season), the tribe would know that it was time for the sacrifice, at which time, they would build an altar/stage above an open pit in which they would place sacred objects. Then, in the very early morning about four days after the first rains of the season, all of the men, boys and male babies of the Skidi tribe would gather just before daybreak around the altar/stage. The enemy maiden was then brought forth from the hunter-warrior's earth-lodge and tied to a pole on the altar. As soon as the Morning Star arose, she would be shot through the heart with a well-aimed arrow, stabbed with a knife to hasten death and bleeding, and then shot full of arrows by the other Skidi men. After that, her body would be taken to a place on the eastern side of the village where it would be placed face-down upon the earth and her blood would flow into the ground to give nourishment to the prairie-lands.
Parenthetically, I could not find information regarding the beginnings of this custom. However, since it bears some similarity to Aztecan customs, I think that it is possible that in the 1540's, when the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado passed through Pawnee country looking for riches, he may have described it to the locals, since he had passed through Aztec country first, and that they thought it was a swell idea and decided to make this custom their own. And, while the Skidi may have done ritual human sacrifices long before 1540 AD, they are, so far, the only Native American tribe north of the Mexican border that I have come across to do so.
Traditional Religions: Native American Church, Christianity, traditional tribal religions.
Slavery and the Pawnee: The Pawnee were so often captured and enslaved that the word "Pawnee" became equivalent to "Slave." However, as can be seen in the "Interesting Customs" section, the Pawnee also enslaved members of other tribes for sacrifice and probably to do the menial labor like weeding the crops, feeding the horses, setting up teepees, tanning the hides, making the wicker mats, making the lodges and general fetching-and-carrying.
Current Population: There are currently about 3200 registered Pawnee. This is down from 60,000 reckoned in the early 18th Century when they were one of the largest tribes in the Plains.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Casinos, gas stations, smoke shops and a truck stop.
Famous Pawnee: None that I have heard of.
No comments:
Post a Comment