Pawnee Indian Tribe

History Assignment – The Pawnee Indians. Adele Moore, Mr Tsomis’ class.
1. Provide a brief outline of your tribe’s way of life before the arrival of the Europeans. 300 words.
The Pawnee Indian tribe lived in central Nebraska and northern Kansas; they were a semi sedentary tribe (only partly move around) they would move to follow the buffalo one half of the year and the other half of the year they would harvest corn and other foods. They were historically one of the largest and most prominent Plains tribes; and they were a tribe of ten thousand or more. There permanent shelters were called earth lodges, earth lodges were a dome shaped home built over a framework of log poles that were covered with clumps of dirt and grass, around four to
The Pawnee Indians being a semi-sedentary tribe means that for one half of the year, they are in one place, and for the other half of the year they are nomadic and live in tepees, this is so they were able to follow the buffalo, one of their two staple foods. The other staple food was corn, but corn was not just used for eating, the Pawnee Indians used corn in many of their religious ceremonies.
Medicine men would create sacred bundles which included materials, such as an ear of corn, with great symbolic value. These were used in many religious ceremonies to maintain the balance of nature and the Pawnee relationship with the gods and spirits. The Pawnee Indians had such a strong relationship with their land, and valued it so much that their religion was based off, and devoted to, the nature around them.
The first Pawnee man was believed to be the offspring of the combination of the Moon and the Sun, as they believed they were descendants of the stars, cosmology had a central role in daily and spiritual life. They planted their crops according to the position of the stars, which related to the appropriate time of season for
The stress of the move, diseases and poor conditions reduced their numbers even more. In the lowest point of the Sioux history there 12,000 was reduced to 633.
By the close of the century, the Pawnee people had changed drastically. Rather than living in villages, they were living on farms, chiefs had been replaced and religious ceremonies and the knowledge of older generations were rapidly disappearing as the priests who possessed that knowledge died and no successors came forward.
4. In your own words, complete this sentence and add your own thoughts ‘’Native Americans suffered greatly after contact with the Europeans and that suffering still continues to this day because…’’400 words. Your response should look at word occurred in general as well as in your specific tribe. You will need to draw conclusions and inferences. You will probably need to research what is happening with the members of your tribe who are living in North America