14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, Of] 



Insofar as they are any clue, legends are thus seen to point toward a 

 Pawnee authorship for at least some of the sites. 



It is unnecessary to stress the fact that mere areal concurrence of a 

 nineteenth century tribe and a certain archeological complex is, per se, 

 no proof of direct relationship. In the case of the Pawnee this par- 

 ticular argument has never been used except as a possible corroborative 

 circumstance. However, a careful study of the documentary history 

 of the tribe tends to strengthen rather than weaken its force. Here 

 it is possible to pass in review only a few of the more significant 

 points ; for further details the reader is referred to recent publica- 

 tions on the Pawnee and citations therein. Prior to the last quarter 

 of the seventeenth century the sources are inconclusive as to the 

 location of the tribe. Coronado, in 1541, places the province of 

 Harahey, tentatively identified as Pawnee territory, north of Quivira. 

 Later Spanish documents locate Quivira somewhere in central 

 Kansas and its people are believed to have been the Wichita. If these 

 identifications are correct, they suggest the presence of the Pawnee 

 in southern or central Nebraska at this early date. A century and a 

 quarter after, in 1666, Perrot mentions the Panys but without defining 

 their habitat.'' Bandelier notes their presence as captives in New 

 Mexico in the seventeenth century observing that they were not 

 uncommonly ransomed from the Yutes and Apaches." By 1673, 

 however, they had become sufficiently well known to be shown on 

 Marquette's map, as also on that of Hennepin in 1678. Before 1680 

 the Spanish in New Mexico heard rumors of Frenchmen among the 

 Pawnees, and, wherever the location is given, subsequent narratives 

 consistently place the Pawnee on the Rio Jesus Maria, north of 

 Quivira. This stream is identified by historians with the Platte." 

 For the eighteenth century there are many more records, as well as 

 numerous maps showing ethnic distributions in the Missouri drain- 

 age. Curiously enough, with all the unrest and tribal movements 

 manifested therein from time to time, the Pawnee are almost always 

 shown as a relatively stable group localized west of the Missouri 

 on streams identifiable with the Loup, Platte, and possibly Republican 

 Rivers. Particularly interesting in this connection is the 1718 Delisle 

 map of Louisiana and the Mississippi River," because it depicts 

 with remarkable accuracy the geographical details of the present 

 Nebraska region (fig. 2). It shows the Pani (Pawnee) in 12 villages 



^^ Wisconsin Hist. Soc, Coll., vol. 16, pp. 15, 27, 1902. 



"Bandelier, 1890, p. 185, n. 4. 



" Thomas, 1935, pp. 12, 37. 



"Delisle, G., Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississippi. Paris, 1718. 



