The Pike-Pawnee Village Site, or Hill Farm Site, designated 25WT1 by archaeologists, is a site near the village of Guide Rock in Webster County, in the south central portion of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. It was the location of a village of the Kitkehahki band of the Pawnee people, in a region of the Republican River valley that they occupied intermittently from the 1770s to the 1820s.
In 1806, the village was visited by a Spanish expedition led by Lieutenant Facundo Melgares and, soon after, by an American expedition led by Lieutenant Zebulon Pike. At the village, Pike persuaded the Pawnee leaders to haul down a Spanish flag that they had received from Melgares, and to raise the flag of the United States in its stead.
The location of the village visited by Pike was not known for many years. In the early 20th century, two sites were proposed: this one in Nebraska, and one in Republic County in northern Kansas. A dispute between the historical societies of the two states ensued, titled "The War Between Nebraska and Kansas". The dispute was eventually resolved in favor of the Nebraska site.
Investigations conducted at the site by William Duncan Strong, Waldo Wedel, and A. T. Hill were instrumental in the development of Great Plains archaeology, and of Pawnee archaeology in particular.
The site is a National Historic Landmark, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Description
The site lies on a terrace on the Republican River's south side, near the village of Guide Rock. At the terrace's north edge is a near-vertical bank; the floodplain of the river extends about one-fourth mile (about one-half kilometer) from the bank's base to the present channel. The remains of over 100 earth lodges lie on the terrace between the bank and hills to the south, which rise above the site. On the hills are five cemeteries. The village complex also includes a council site and two open courts where a hoop game was played.
The village extended for at least from east to west. On its east and west sides were creeks, now dry, that ran northward into the Republican. At the time of the village's occupation, springs in the western creek flowed year-round; these would have provided a more convenient source of water than the river, since access to the latter was hampered by the steep bank. The springs ceased to flow at some time after the land came under cultivation in the 1870s.
Not far downstream from the site is a hill known to the Pawnees as Pa-hur, or "hill that points the way". In the traditional Pawnee religion, this was one of five lodges of the nahurac, spirit animals with supernatural healing powers.
History 1770–1806
The Southern Pawnees move north
The ancestors of the modern Pawnee people were not a single unified tribe. At the middle of the 18th century, they consisted of two major groups. The Skidis, or Wolf Pawnees, had migrated northward with the Arikaras, and had probably been in Nebraska since 1600 or earlier. By the beginning of the 18th century, they were established on the Loup River, which flows through central Nebraska into the Platte River from the north. The second major division of the ancestral Pawnees was the Southern, or Black Pawnees. Their migration history is not well documented; but by 1750 they, with the related and allied Wichitas, had established what seemed to be a secure territory on the Arkansas River.
The security of the southern bands depended on French trade in arms, and this was disrupted by the French and Indian War (1754–63). In 1763, France surrendered the Louisiana Territory under the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Great Britain obtained the portion of the territory east of the Mississippi River. Spain received the territory west of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, although they did not make their claim to that city effective until Alejandro O'Reilly suppressed the Louisiana Rebellion of 1768. Once in control of New Orleans, the Spanish imposed severe restrictions on trade up the Mississippi, cutting off the supply of arms to the Southern Pawnees and Wichitas.
The neighboring Osages were not so affected, as they had access to arms smuggled by French traders from British territory in present-day Illinois. With superior weaponry, they drove between the Southern Pawnees and the Wichitas, pushing the latter group southward to the Red River. The Pawnees moved northward into Nebraska, possibly because of news that modern weapons were available from traders on the Platte.
The dates of the moves are not known exactly. The Wichita move from the Arkansas to the Red occurred at some time between 1768 and 1772. The Osages occupied the former Pawnee-Wichita hunting grounds on the Arkansas in 1774, indicating that the Pawnees had left by then; in 1777, a Spanish report indicated that they were in Nebraska. The Southern Pawnees were divided into three bands: the Chauis, or Grand Pawnees; the Pitahawiratas, or Tappage Pawnees; and the Kitkehahkis, or Republican Pawnees. The Chauis were regarded as the nominal leaders, and in the traditional account they led the migration to Nebraska, followed by the Pitahawiratas. However, the Kitkehahkis declined to follow the Chaui chiefs to their new settlements on the Platte; instead, they established themselves on the Republican River, near what is now the Nebraska-Kansas border.
Occupation history
There is much debate among historians and archaeologists concerning the dates of occupation of the Webster County village. Four Kitkehahki village sites on the Republican are known, two of them quite large: this one, and the Pawnee Indian Village Site near Republic, Kansas, downstream. The band inhabited the Republican valley intermittently from the 1770s to the 1820s. Unfortunately, there is little information on which villages were occupied at what times, although there is a strong consensus that this village is the one visited by Pike in 1806. The following account, therefore, can only describe what is known about Kitkehahki occupation and abandonment of the Republican valley, and not the history of this particular village.
The Pawnees did not live in their villages year-round. In the spring, they planted and hoed crops near their villages. In mid-June, they left on their summer buffalo hunt. In September, they returned to harvest the crops and to hold their harvest festival; they then cached a portion of their food in their villages and left on the winter buffalo hunt, from which they did not return until planting time in the spring. Thus the villages were deserted for at least eight months of the year.
The Kitkehahkis also moved, both in small groups and en masse, between the Republican and the Platte. The Pitahawiratas and the Chauis seem to have lived together amicably from the time of their arrival in Nebraska. However, the Kitkehahkis were divided between those who wanted to live independently on the Republican, and those who wanted to live near the Chauis on the Platte. The three bands frequently moved together on the summer and winter buffalo hunts, so there was regular contact between them. It was common for people to move from one household to another, especially upon returning from a buffalo hunt; this would have facilitated moves from village to village.
At times, the entire Kitkehahki band abandoned the Republican and moved to the Platte. Generally, this took place in times of war, when the bands sought protection in numbers. Movement between the Republican and the Platte probably occurred continually until about 1825.
War with the Skidis
When the Southern Pawnees arrived in Nebraska, the Skidis were not pleased to see them on lands that they regarded as their own. Nevertheless, they were willing to accept them as neighbors, so long as they kept to the south side of the Platte. However, the Chaui leaders demanded that they be recognized as the heads of the entire Pawnee people, above the Skidi chiefs. They defied the Skidis by sending a large hunting party to Prairie Creek, on the north side of the Platte within sight of the Skidi villages on the Loup. The Skidis responded by attacking the Chaui hunters and driving them back across the Platte. The Chauis and Pitahawiratas resolved on war, and summoned the Kitkehahki fighters to join them against the Skidis; the Kitkehahkis, unwilling to leave their people unprotected against Skidi raids, left the Republican and moved to the Platte near the other bands.
The conflict with the Skidis probably took place sometime between 1770 and 1775. It concluded with the defeat of the Skidis, who, although nominally conquered, remained on the Loup and continued to hunt separately from the other three bands. By 1777, the Kitkehahkis had moved back to the Republican.
At some time between 1777 and 1785, the Kitkehahkis again abandoned and then re-occupied the Republican valley. A Spanish account of 1785 describes a village on the south side of the Platte in Butler County, not far from the modern town of Linwood, Nebraska; this village was occupied by the Kitkehahkis until about 1785, when they returned to the Republican.
War with the Omahas
War came to the Kitkehahkis on the Republican in 1798. The Omahas, under the leadership of Chief Blackbird, had become perhaps the most powerful group in Nebraska. They were located at the junction of the French trade route up the Missouri River and an overland route across northern Iowa whereby the Sac and Fox brought British arms and goods westward. This allowed them to levy tribute and exercise control over trade on the Missouri.
During the height of their power in the late 1790s, bands of Omaha warriors frequently visited the Kitkehahkis to perform the calumet ceremony. This traditional peacemaking ritual had degenerated into what the Omahas called "smoking for horses": the Kitkehahkis were obliged to give feasts and presents of horses to their uninvited guests. In 1798, a group of Omahas under Little Grizzly Bear went for this purpose to the Republican. The Kitkehahkis, feeling imposed upon by the frequency of these visits, stripped and beat the Omahas and drove them out of the village.
When Blackbird learned of this, he ordered an attack on the Kitkehahkis. The Omahas descended upon the band's village, burned and plundered many of the lodges, and killed about one hundred Pawnees at the cost of about fifteen of their own men. The remaining Kitkehahkis had withdrawn into four lodges, occupying a position too strong for the Omahas to reach them and massacre them without unacceptable losses.
Whether the Republican valley was abandoned after the Omaha attack is not recorded. The invading Omahas had camped on the Platte, undisturbed by the Chauis, on their way to the Kitkehahkis; this might indicate that the two Pawnee bands were on bad terms at the time. The power of the Omahas was broken soon thereafter: in about 1801, a smallpox epidemic spread from the Skidis to the Omahas, killing half of the tribe, Blackbird among them.
When the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Platte in 1804, they found the Kitkehahkis (whom they mistakenly called Arapahos) living there. They were told that the band had returned to the Republican about ten years before (that is, before the conflict with the Omahas), but had recently moved to the Platte under pressure from the Kanzas. By 1806, however, the Kitkehahkis were at peace with the Kanzas, and were once again living on the Republican.
1806: Melgares and Pike
Under the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France. In connection with this transfer, France agreed not to sell the territory to a third party; French foreign minister Talleyrand had indicated that a strong French Louisiana would halt the expansion of Britain and the United States in the New World.