NO. 10 NEBRASKA ARCHROLOGV STRONG 273 



boundary of the State. The Pawnee, as has previously been stressed, 

 seem to have been the oldest Nebraska tribe. Apparently moving up 

 from the south in the rather dim past, they have occupied the heart 

 of the Nebraska region from the earliest dawn of recorded history. 

 As Wedel has suggested, they appear to be a people originally of 

 southeastern woodland cultural antecedents that had become habitu- 

 ated to a settled horticultural life along the lesser rivers of the cen- 

 tral loess plains. The time t)f their arrival in Nebraska is unknown, 

 but from the archeological record it must have been considerably 

 prior to the historic period. Of the nomadic buffalo-hunting peoples 

 of Siouan and Algonkian speech, namely, the Dakota and the Arapaho 

 and Cheyenne, the historic record indicates recency of occupation 

 along the western borders of the State. 



During the protohistoric period, roughly between 1540 and 1682, 

 Pawnee culture seems to have achieved its highest development. The 

 known protohistoric Pawnee villages are larger, the house types in 

 closer conformity to native ideology and sometimes more elaborate, 

 and the ceramics and other artifacts of better quality than at any other 

 period. The pottery from protohistoric Pawnee sites is the finest 

 known in the Nebraska region and is as advanced and well finished 

 as any known Arikara or Mandan wares. This seems to be the type 

 of culture so briefly mentioned by the chroniclers of the Coronado 

 expedition, and archeology is thus able to confirm their reports of large, 

 settled villages west of the Missouri, whose numerous inhabitants were 

 horticulturists and in no sense nomadic hunters. Many things remain 

 to be determined concerning this culture, as, ^or example, the methods 

 of burial employed, the range of the culture in space, and the exact 

 transitions occurring between the historic sites on the one hand and 

 the prehistoric (Upper Republican) culture on the other. Never- 

 theless, the work already accomplished at the Burkett and Schuyler 

 sites is sufficient to indicate the high level of Pawnee development 

 just prior to the acquisition of the horse, and its subsequent decline. 

 So far nothing is known concerning either the sedentary Siouan 

 peoples of the east or the peoples of western Nebraska during this 

 period. From historical sources it is known that the Comanche oc- 

 cupied the sand-hill region of central Nebraska at about this time, 

 coming in from the west and moving out toward the south. Archeo- 

 logical investigation to date adds little to the incomplete historic 

 record in this regard, except that sites marked by unique pottery types 

 do occur on the Dismal River in the heart of the sand-hill region, in 

 places where the Comanche are reported to have been settled. At 

 the present time only the protohistoric Pawnee culture clearly bridges 



