For many centuries this region was the homeland of the Republic band (Kitkahahakis) of Pawnees. A numerous and prosperous people, the Pawnees dominated the north central Plains for hundreds of years.
While Pawnee men were hunters, the women were accomplished farmers, tilling the bottomlands of the Republican and along other tributaries. The Pawnees lived in villages, which contained several large earth lodges that housed as many as 50 people.
I cannot live in a white man’s house of any kind . . . I must live there also so that as I sit I can stretch out my hand and lay it upon mother earth.—Tahi’roossawichi, Pawnee priest
In the summer and winter the Pawnees left their villages and went west and south for buffalo hunts. You can see the remains of an excavated earth lodge at Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site near here. Today the Pawnee tribal lands are in Oklahoma.
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