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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Pawnee Indian Village Museum Historic Marker & Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site Welcome Sign.
he Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site, designated by the Smithsonian trinomial 14RP1, is an archaeological site and museum located near the city of Republic in the state of Kansas in the Midwestern United States. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places under the name Pawnee Indian Village Site.

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his is the site of a large, fortified village of the Republican band of Pawnee Indians, occupied during the early 1800s.
As the inscription on the stone marker indicates, the village was long believed by local, state and national historians to be that visited by Zebulon M. Pike in 1808. On the strength of this belief, the site was purchased and presented to the state in 1899 by Elizabeth A. and George Johnson. Later investigations cast doubt on the claim, chiefly because the topography does not match that described by Pike.
Nevertheless, there can be no question that the farsighted and public-spirited action for the donors save this important location from destruction. Today it is the only major preserved Pawnee village site in the Central Plains area, and this museum, constructed around a scientifically excavated house floor, is unique in Plains archeology.

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In the 1870s, Elizabeth A. Johnson of Republic County became interested in Pike's flag episode. She discovered this site in 1875 and, after studying Pike's journals and investigating another reported Pawnee site in southern Nebraska, concluded that this was the village that Pike had visited. To protect the site from being plowed, she and her husband bought the land. In 1901, the Johnsons donated the site to the state of Kansas for historic preservation.
The state appropriated $3,000 to fence the land and build a 26-foot (7.9 m) granite monument commemorating the 1806 flag incident. At the 1901 dedication ceremony, several of the speakers drew parallels between Pike's symbolic triumph over Spain and the recent American victory in the Spanish–American War. In 1906, a four-day celebration was held to mark the centennial of the Pike episode.
Subsequent research showed that Pike's expedition had not visited this village, but the Kitkehahki village now known as the Pike-Pawnee Village Site, located on the Republican River in Webster County in south-central Nebraska. The error was a fortunate one, however: it led to the preservation of this site, whereas the Nebraska site had been degraded by years of cultivation.
Some archaeological investigation at the site was conducted in 1933, 1949, and 1957. Intensive investigation took place from 1965 to 1968. In 1967, a museum was constructed around one of the earth lodges prior to its excavation; the excavated lodge has been left open, with many artifacts in situ. The museum is operated by the Kansas Historical Society.
In 1971, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The 1901 monument at the site was damaged by a tornado in 2004. As a historically significant structure, it has been restored, but not to its original height and appearance.

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At the site are the remains of a village once occupied by the Kitkehahki, or Republican, band of the Pawnee tribe of Native Americans. It is one of four known Kitkehahki sites in the Republican River valley. The dates of occupation of this particular village are not known; the Kitkehahki intermittently occupied the Republican valley from the 1770s to the 1820s.
After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Spain and the United States disputed possession of the Louisiana Territory. Both nations sought allies among the Native American peoples of the territory, including the Pawnees. In 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike led an expedition into the southwestern portions of the Territory. He visited a Pawnee village soon after the departure of a much larger Spanish expedition; there, he persuaded the inhabitants to haul down a Spanish flag and to replace it with that of the United States.

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