NO. 7 PAWNEE ARCHEOLOGY WEDEL 3 



The extreme limits of the known Pawnee settlements were, to the 

 west, near St. Paul on the Loup and Central City on the Platte; to 

 the east, downriver, they ran to Leshara or Yutan on the Platte 

 (see fig. I for location of all sites discussed herein). Within this 

 120-mile stretch of river valley they shifted back and forth as fancy 

 or circumstance dictated, leaving it only for their seasonal hunting 

 excursions. The exceptions, it may be noted, included two sites on 

 the Republican near the Kansas-Nebraska line and one on the Blue 

 near Blue Springs, Nebr. That this nineteenth century restriction 

 of habitat was in effect long before will become apparent presently 

 when certain additional historical and ethnographic facts are con- 

 sidered. Here it is desired to add only the observation that all of 

 these village sites, in addition to a somewhat decadent aboriginal 

 material culture, yield also many articles of iron, copper, brass, and 

 glassware. 



Within this same area, but of even more limited distribution, are 

 found other sites whereon the native remains are far more abundant, 

 of superior quality, and associated with much smaller quantities of 

 white contact material. These sites extend along the Platte-Loup 

 riverway from Schuyler on the east to the vicinity of Genoa on the 

 west, a distance of approximately 50 miles ; they are mostly on the 

 north bank, but one is also known on the south side. Generally, the 

 sites are large (from 15 to 100 acres or more) and compactly 

 arranged ; not infrequently they seem to have been located on bluffs 

 or hilltops with an eye to defensibility and in a few instances they 

 were further protected by earth walls and ditches. To date about a 

 dozen have been placed on record. The sites are particularly abun- 

 dant from Monroe westward, where for more than 8 miles remains 

 occur almost continuously along the Loup and on the lower portion 

 of Beaver Creek. In the aggregate these antiquities cover many 

 hundreds of acres, and prior to introduction of modern farming 

 operations, innumerable house circles, middens, and artifacts were 

 to be found. Because of their occurrence in the very heart of the 

 historic Pawnee habitat and since they yielded smaller amounts of 

 contact material than the identified nineteenth century Pawnee sites 

 while exhibiting many similarities to the latter, it was thought that 

 they might prove to be an earlier, if still post-European, phase of 

 Pawnee culture. Consequently, in 1931, as a sequel to the study of 

 the historic Pawnee, two of these protohistoric ^ sites were partially 



^ Protohistoric sites yield limited amounts of glass and metal trade wares, 

 indicating their occupancy, at least in part, since the arrival of Europeans. They 



