CHAPTER IV.
NOTES ON THE PAWNEES
Tribes of the Pawnees - Dwellings - Abandonment of the aged - Morning star worship - Human sacrifice - Particulars of sacrifice of a Sioux captive.
Philadelphia, April 6, 1;847.
Mr. 1. D. Bryant a
'SEAR SIR.-The nation of the Pawnees is divided into l.V four great tribes, which act in concert as one people. They have their villages upon the river Platte, or Nebraska, and its tributaries, about 150 miles west of the Missouri river. They are the same true children of the desert as they
have been these many ages. They dress in the skins of ani mals killed in the chase. They cultivate maize and squashes, using the shoulder-blade of the buffalo as a substitute for the plow and hoe. In the season of the chase, a whole village, men, women and children, abandon their settlements and go in pursuit of the animals whose flesh supplies them with food. Their huts, which they call akkaros, are circular, and about i4o feet in circumference. They are ingeniously formed by planting young trees at suitable distances apart, then bending and joining their tops to a number of pillars or posts fixed circularly in the centre of the inclosure. The trees are then covered. with bark, over which is thrown a layer of earth nearly a foot in thickness, and finally a solid mass of green turf completes the structure.
1 The account of human sacrifice among the Pawnees was published as Letters XXVI, Oregon Missions, XXVIII, Missions de 1'Oregon. It is dated as above in both, but addressed in French to a Father. The English, which seems to be a translation from the French, is here followed.