NO. 7 PAWNEE ARCHEOLOGY — -WEDEL I7 



them the Pawnee who seem to have been in firm possession of the 

 Platte valley. 



Archeological findings leave no room for doubt that some at least 

 of the sites belonging to the Lower Loup Focus were inhabited 

 during a period when commercial intercourse was still comparatively 

 limited in volume. Moreover, the European beads and other ma- 

 terials so far studied from these sites, insofar as they can be dated, 

 appear to be of types used in the Indian trade not prior to the latter 

 seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Finally, no early contact sites 

 have been found in the region, other than those belonging to this 

 complex, which could possibly be connected with the Pawnee or 

 which can be viewed as the residence of settled Indians in contact 

 with early traders. 



The historical background as here reviewed sheds significant light 

 on the contention that the Lower Loup Focus may represent some 

 group other than the Pawnee, not necessarily ancestral or even 

 related to them. In the latest published work on this complex, it is 

 suggested that "possible migration could account for the settling of 

 different peoples in the same locality." "^ Early in this discussion it 

 was pointed out that the village sites of the Lower Loup Focus, 

 although of comparatively restricted distribution, are both numerous 

 and very large. Moreover, since all those so far excavated have 

 consistently yielded limited quantities of copper, glass beads, and 

 (rarely) iron, it follows that they must have flourished for a time 

 after white influences had penetrated into their locality. Even 

 granting that all were not inhabited simultaneously, they undoubtedly 

 indicate the presence here in protohistoric times of a populous, firmly 

 established, and presumably potent ethnic group. Let us assume for 

 the moment that this group was not ancestral nor even related to the 

 Pawnee. We then have the somewhat difficult situation of a numerous 

 and powerful tribe, resident for many years (witness the innumerable 

 middens, earthlodge sites, etc.) in the very heart of the Pawnee 

 territory, clinging to it until after trade contacts had been established 

 with Europeans (circa 1650 or later), and then emigrating so un- 

 obtrusively and so completely that the Pawnee, who must have 

 followed closely on their heels so as to be firmly settled in the region 

 by Delisle's time (1718), retained no tradition of their existence. 

 This would not only do violence to Pawnee traditions linking that 

 group with the protohistoric Lower Loup Focus, but would also 

 require an explanation for the apparent absence of any legends of 



"' Dunlevy, op. cit., p. 215. 



