2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 97 



for a longer occupancy of its historic locale than the Pawnee. 

 Furthermore, of all the Nebraska peoples, the Pawnee appear to have 

 offered the most effective and prolonged resistance to the host of 

 alien practices introduced by the whites and to have retained longest 

 their own customs. As to documentation, allusions to the Pawnee 

 may be found from almost the very beginnings of recorded European 

 penetration into the interior United States, although it is true that 

 many of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century sources of 

 information leave much to be desired. Prior to about 1800, hazy 

 geographical concepts, occasional tribal shiftings, and the often hear- 

 say origin of the explorer's observations made impossible the record- 

 ing of village locations with the exactness necessary to permit their 

 individual identification today. After that date, thanks to the lucid 

 narratives and excellent maps of such men as Dulac, Pike, Lewis 

 and Clark, Long, and others, the historical record has enabled us to 

 correlate with reasonable certainty the native towns with known 

 archeological sites. Excavations in sites so identified have revealed 

 the distinguishing characteristics of historic Pawnee culture, insofar 

 as these include nonperishable material traits. As the term is now 

 used in Nebraska prehistory and in this paper, historic Pawnee 

 archeology refers to the antiquities from documented village sites 

 where the Pawnee are known to have been living in or after circa 

 1800.' Needless to say, throughout this period the archeological 

 picture can be greatly enriched through the ethnographic observa- 

 tions of many of the white travelers. 



During the nineteenth century, the Pawnee villages with but two 

 or three apparent exceptions were centered about the confluence of 

 the Loup with the Platte River. Both of these streams flow in a 

 general easterly direction through broad flat-floored valleys inclosed 

 on either side by lofty bluff's. Above the mouth of Shell Creek the 

 native towns stood on terraces or second bottoms well out of reach 

 of floods; below this point suitable terraces are mostly lacking and 

 the sites are situated on the bluffs with the river sweeping past their 

 bases. The tree- fringed watercourses are in marked contrast to the 

 dry rolling, formerly grass-covered, uplands which lie beyond the 

 valley margins. To the natives the latter were suited only for hunting 

 and it was the fertile river bottoms, with an abundance of wood, 

 water, arable ground, and shelter, that determined the location of 

 their villages. 



^ For a discussion of historic Pawnee archeological remains see Wedel, 1936, 

 and Strong, 1935, pp. 55-61. 



