Pawnee mythology is the body of oral history, cosmology, and myths of the Pawnee people concerning their gods and heroes. The Pawnee are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans, originally located on the Great Plains along tributaries of the Missouri and Platte Rivers in Nebraska and Kansas and now are currently in Oklahoma. They traditionally speak Pawnee, a Caddoan language. The Pawnees lived in villages of earth lodges. They grew corn and went on long bison hunts on the open plains twice a year. The tribe has four bands: the Skidi and "the South Bands" consisted of the Chawi, the Kitkahahki and the Pitahawirata Pawnee.
The Republican River is a river in the central Great Plains of North America, rising in the High Plains of eastern Colorado and flowing east 453 miles (729 km) through the U.S. states of Nebraska and Kansas.
The Smoky Hill River is a 575-mile (925 km) river in the central Great Plains of North America, running through Colorado and Kansas.
Zebulon Montgomery Pike was an American brigadier general and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado was named. As a U.S. Army officer he led two expeditions under authority of President Thomas Jefferson through the Louisiana Purchase territory, first in 1805–1806 to reconnoiter the upper northern reaches of the Mississippi River, and then in 1806–1807 to explore the southwest to the fringes of the northern Spanish-colonial settlements of New Mexico and Texas. Pike's expeditions coincided with other Jeffersonian expeditions, including the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Red River Expedition in 1806.
The Pike Expedition was a military party sent out by President Thomas Jefferson and authorized by the United States government to explore the south and west of the recent Louisiana Purchase. Roughly contemporaneous with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it was led by United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Jr. who was promoted to captain during the trip. It was the first official American effort to explore the western Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado. Pike contacted several Native American tribes during his travels and informed them that the U.S. now claimed their territory. The expedition documented the United States' discovery of Tava which was later renamed Pikes Peak in honor of Pike. After splitting up his men, Pike led the larger contingent to find the headwaters of the Red River. A smaller group returned safely to the U.S. Army fort in St. Louis, Missouri before winter set in.
The Smoky Hills are an upland region of hills in the central Great Plains of North America. They are located in the Midwestern United States, encompassing north-central Kansas and a small portion of south-central Nebraska.
Waconda Spring, or Great Spirit Spring, was a natural artesian spring located in Mitchell County, near the communities of Glen Elder and Cawker City in the U.S. state of Kansas. It was a sacred site for Native American tribes of the Great Plains and, for a time, became the site of a health spa for American settlers. With the completion of the Glen Elder Dam in 1968, the mineral spring was sealed then disappeared beneath the waters of Waconda Reservoir.
The Solomon River, often referred to as the "Solomon Fork", is a 184-mile-long (296 km) river in the central Great Plains of North America. The entire length of the river lies in the U.S. state of Kansas. It is a tributary of the Smoky Hill River.
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.
The 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.
Pikes Peak is the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in North America. The ultra-prominent 14,115-foot (4,302.31 m) fourteener is located in Pike National Forest, 12 miles (19 km) west of downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado. The town of Manitou Springs lies at its base.
Eastshore is an unincorporated community in Marion County, Kansas, United States. The community name comes from it being near the east shore of the Marion Reservoir. As of the 2020 census, the population of the community and nearby areas was 92. It is located north of the intersection of Pawnee Road and 210th Street.
Pahuk, also written Pahaku, or Pahuk Hill, is a bluff on the Platte River in eastern Nebraska in the United States. In the traditional Pawnee religion, it was one of five dwellings of spirit animals with miraculous powers. The Pawnee occupied three villages near Pahuk in the decade prior to their removal to the Pawnee Reservation on the Loup River in 1859.
Marion Reservoir is a body of water on the Cottonwood River, 3 miles (4.8 km) north-west of Marion, on the western edge of the Flint Hills region of Kansas in the United States. It was completed in 1968 and is operated by the Army Corps of Engineers for the purpose of flood control.
Asa Thomas Hill was an American businessman and archaeologist. His work on sites in and around Nebraska, with such collaborators as William Duncan Strong and Waldo Wedel, was instrumental in the development of Great Plains archaeology.
Facundo Melgares was a Spanish military officer who served as both the last Spanish Governor of New Mexico and the first Mexican Governor of New Mexico. Melgares was, like most of the officials of the Spanish crown in his time, a member of the Spanish upper class. He is described as a "portly man of military demeanour" and as "a gentleman and gallant soldier".
Elizabeth A. Johnson was a prominent advocate of Kansas history. She discovered, purchased, and donated the land that makes up the Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site to the state of Kansas in 1899. At the time, it was considered to be the first place the United States flag was raised on the state of Kansas.
A Spanish military fort was constructed and occupied in 1819 near Sangre de Cristo Pass in the present U.S. State of Colorado to protect the Spanish colony of Santa Fe de Nuevo México from a possible invasion from the United States. The fort was the only Spanish settlement in present-day Colorado. The site of this fort is known today as the Spanish Fort.
Pedro Vial, or Pierre Vial, was a French explorer and frontiersman who lived among the Comanche and Wichita Indians for many years. He later worked for the Spanish government as a peacemaker, guide, and interpreter. He blazed trails across the Great Plains to connect the Spanish and French settlements in Texas, New Mexico, Missouri, and Louisiana. He led three Spanish expeditions that attempted unsuccessfully to intercept and halt the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The Stephen H. Long Expedition of 1820 traversed America's Great Plains and up to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was the first scientific party hired by the United States government to explore the West. Lewis and Clark (1803–1806) and Zebulon Pike (1805–1807) explored the western frontier but they were primarily military expeditions. A group of scientists traveled to St. Louis and on to Council Bluff (Nebraska) for the Yellowstone expedition of the upper Missouri River that would have established a number of military posts. The expensive effort was cancelled following a financial crash, steamboat failures, operational scandals, and negotiation of the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which changed the border between New Spain and the United States. The scientists were reassigned to an expedition led by Stephen Harriman Long. From June 6 to September 13, 1820, Long and fellow scientists traveled across the Great Plains beginning at the Missouri River near present Omaha, Nebraska, along the Platte River to the Front Range, and east along the Arkansas and Canadian Rivers of Colorado and Oklahoma. The expedition terminated at Fort Smith in Arkansas. They recorded many new species of plants, insects, and animals. Long termed the land the Great American Desert.
