l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 97 



an earlier tribe, unrelated but with very similar culture, whom the 

 Pawnee could reasonably be thought to have displaced since estab- 

 lishment of European contacts. Such a theory, furthermore, would 

 presumably postulate a comparatively late incursion for the Pawnee, 

 which is at variance with the ethnographic indications. Pawnee ma- 

 terial culture of the nineteenth century, as has been stated, is pretty 

 clearly a composite based essentially on two distinct and funda- 

 mentally divergent economies — one horticultural and sedentary, the 

 other hunting and nomadic. The significant constituents of the former, 

 irrespective of their ultimate origin, are now known to have been well 

 established west of the Missouri in prehistoric times. Those of the 

 latter, in part rooted .in the very remote past, were shared with 

 numerous other historic tribes of the Plains and particularly with 

 the western bison hunters. The Pawnee seem to have combined 

 the two in harmonious fashion, and so far as adjustment to environ- 

 mental and ethnic conditions goes, give no evidence whatever of 

 having been recent arrivals in the Nebraska region. 



There are other clues. Dunbar has shown how the placement of 

 villages relative to one another has modified certain linguistic usages 

 in accord with local geography .^^ During the later years of their 

 residence in Nebraska there were seldom more than three or four 

 villages — in other words, usually one for each of the four bands. 

 At times two or more bands might occupy a single town, but the Skidi 

 seem always to have remained more or less aloof. Both Murie and 

 Grinnell present evidence supporting the view that subgroups within 

 each of the main bands formerly constituted separate villages.** 

 Murie credits the Skidi with 13 of these originally. This interesting 

 observation may partially explain the general tendency of the early 

 explorers to assign, usually from hearsay, as many as a score or 

 more towns to the Pawnee nation. Incidentally, too, it may have 

 archeological implications since the Pawnee locality abounds with 

 small and Widely scattered precontact earthlodge villages which appear 

 to have a number of features in common with the later ones. The 

 sudden disappearance of the many small prehistoric villages and the 

 presence of a few very large fortified towns in protohistoric times 

 is an archeological puzzle which still awaits solution. Finally, the 

 mythology of the Pawnee is replete with local Nebraska place names 

 such as the Platte, the Loup, the Republican, Nemaha, and others.^* 

 There are migration legends, to be sure, but none which afford any 



^^ Dunbar, 1880, p. 251. 



^ Murie, 1914, pp. 549-556; Grinnell, 1893, PP- 231-239. 



"* Dorsey, 1906. 



