The Pawnee Indians (Volume 128) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)

No assessment of the Plains Indians can be complete without some account of the Pawnees. They ranged from Nebraska to Mexico and, when not fighting among themselves, fought with almost every other Plains tribe at one time or another. Regarded as "aliens" by many other tribes, the Pawnees were distinctively different from most of their friends and enemies.

George Hyde spent more than thirty years collecting materials for his history of the Pawnees. The story is both a rewarding and a painful one. The Pawnee culture was rich in social and religious development. But the Pawnees' highly developed political and religious organization was not a source of power in war, and their permanent villages and high standard of living made them inviting and 'fixed targets for their enemies.

They fought and sometimes defeated larger tribes, even the Cheyennes and Sioux, and in one important battle sent an attacking party of Cheyennes home in humiliation after seizing the Cheyennes' sacred arrows. While many Pawnee heroes died fighting off enemy attacks on Loup Fork, still more died of smallpox, of neglect at the hands of the government, and of errors in the policies of Quaker agents.

In many ways The Pawnee Indians is the best synthesis Hyde ever wrote. It looks far back into tribal history, assessing Pawnee oral history against anthropological evidence and examining military patterns and cultural characteristics.

Hyde tells the story of the Pawnees objectively, reinforcing it with firsthand accounts gleaned from many sources, both Indian and white.

• History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan
• Indians of the High Plains: From the prehistoric period to the coming of Europeans (The Civilization of the American Indian series)
• The Crow Indians
• Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Sioux, Arickaras, Assiniboines, Crees, Crows (Volume 59) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)
• Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Pawnee
• The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture
• Red Cloud's Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians (Civilization of the American Indian)
• Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West
• Spotted Tail's Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux (Volume 57) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series)
• Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters