Pawnee capture of the Cheyenne Sacred Arrows
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The Skidi Pawnee Indians were on a communal bison hunt in the central Nebraska, when all the warriors of the Cheyenne attacked them. It was likely in the summer of 1830. The Cheyennes carried the most potent sacred bundle of the tribe with them on the battlefield. It consisted of four Sacred Arrows, the Mahuts. The superhuman powers of the bundle should ensure the Cheyenne a great victory. Due to a premature attack, the magic of the arrows failed and the Pawnee captured them instead. The Cheyenne stopped fighting and left the battlefield. The whole tribe wailed and cried on the way back to the Cheyenne country.
The loss of the Mahuts was the worst blow to the Cheyenne during the 19th century. To the Pawnee, the capture of the Sacred Arrows was a momentous victory over the Cheyenne.
The Pawnee
Likely, the Pawnee Indians lived in villages of earth lodges in the present-day state of Nebraska[1]: 32 and northern Kansas[2]: 5 already in the 16th century.[3]: 121
The tribe consist of four bands. At the time of the battle with the Cheyenne, the Skidi Pawnee populated the banks of Loup River in the central part of Nebraska. The Chaui, the Kitkahahki and the Pitahawirata made up the South Bands[2]: 183, 195 and 199 as they lived south of the Platte.[2]: 4 [1]: 72 Just some years later, they would move north and gather in the same area as the Skidi Pawnee.[4]: 305
The Pawnee raised corn and other crops near their villages. However, they went on long communal bison hunts both summer and winter. While out on the plains, they lived in skin tents and tipis.[1]: 71–84
The Cheyenne
The final groups of Cheyenne Indians seem to have crossed Missouri River from the eastern North Dakota in the last quarter of the 18th century and lived south of Cannonball River near already established Cheyenne villages or camps for a while.[5]: 272 In the first decade of the 19th century, they mainly camped north of the North Platte.[6]: 32 Around 1825, some bands headed south[6]: 37 lured by reports about large herds of wild horses between Platte River and Arkansas River.[6]: 33 This brought them close to the hunting grounds used by the Pawnee.[6]: 48 [1]: 204
Old foes
The Pawnee and the Cheyenne had been enemies right from the start.[6]: 47 They captured horses[6]: 101 and confronted each other on the plains.[7]: 337–340 [8]: 61–63
The Sacred Arrows of the Cheyenne
Back in time, the great Cheyenne prophet Sweet Medicine received the Sacred Arrows a blessed gift from the highest superhuman powers or "gods".[8]: 36 Two of the arrows in the bundle were painted red and called "buffalo arrows".[9]: 543 They ensured the tribe plenty. Two black painted "man arrows" represented war.[9]: 543 When the four arrows were tied near the top of a lance in two separate pairs[9]: 557 and carried against an enemy after the performance of the proper ceremony, they promised the tribe a great victory.[6]: 50
The power of the bundle had already resulted in the total destruction of a big Crow camp at Tongue River in 1820.[6]: 24–26
The decision to go against the Pawnee
A year before the battle, a party of Cheyenne warriors intended to raid the Pawnee near the lower Platte. The party was discovered and all killed. Just as the Cheyenne had done ten years before after the annihilation of 30 Cheyenne Bowstring warriors by the Crows, the tribe vowed to avenge the neutralized war group by moving the Sacred Arrows against those to blame for the killings.[6]: 49
The search for the enemy
The summer of 1830, the entire Cheyenne tribe started down the Platte. (The year 1830 was agreed upon by a Cheyenne and a Pawnee, both participating in the battle.[9]: 556 Some give the year as 1833.)[6]: 48 A number of allied Lakota and Arapaho Indians joined. The special custodian or keeper of the Sacred Arrows, White Thunder, and his wife led the people.[6]: 49
The scouts send out to locate the enemy found no traces of the Pawnee. By chance, the tribe came across four messengers from a party of scouts, all killed by the Pawnee.[9]: 557 Now the Cheyenne tribe was even more determined to find the enemy. The scouts finally located a large camp of Pawnees at the head of the South Loup.[6]: 49 (According to the Pawnee, they had camp somewhere on Platte River).[10]: 644
After a forced day and night march, the big body of people reached a place near the Pawnee camp in the early morning. The warriors prepared for battle. The women and children grouped in a circle where they had view to the flat area soon to become a battlefield.[6]: 49 [9]: 558 The Pawnee camp seems to have been hidden on the other side of a ridge.
The premature attack
The Cheyenne warriors and their allies placed themselves in two separate wings. The Sacred Arrows should be in front of one wing. The other wing would follow a man wearing the sacred Buffalo Cap. "These two great medicines protected all who were behind them ... and rendered the enemy in front helpless".[6]: 50
Meanwhile, the first bison hunters left the Pawnee camp and almost stumbled on the lined up Indian army. The battle was on, and White Thunder was unable to restrain the Cheyenne. Without having performed the required ceremony, he handed over the arrow bundle to a selected medicine man named Bull. Bull in turn hastily tied the whole bundle to the middle of his lance.[10]: 646 Then he mounted his horse and tried to catch up with the rest of the warriors.[6]: 57
On the battleground
"The battle was hard fought".[10]: 647
An old Pawnee, apparently a Pitahawirata[9]: 552 from the South Bands, was sick and tired of living. He had told his relatives to carry him to the very frontline of the battle.[10]: 645 He was sitting on the ground with a bow and some arrows. Bull wanted to count coup on this enemy, although the rest of the Cheyennes tried to talk him from it.[9]: 558 The old Pawnee avoided the thrust with the lance and seized it. He dragged it from Bull, who slowly rode back to his own line.
"This spear must be a wonderful spear ...", shouted the Pawnee when he saw the medicine bundle in a wrapping of coyote hide tied to it.[10]: 649 The Pawnee rushed forward. Chief Big Eagle came first and secured the lance before the Cheyenne had a chance to recapture it.
During the fight, Chief Big Eagle wore the Wonderful Leggings of Pahukatawa. Pahukatawa was a most remarkable Pawnee, who turned into a northern star at his death.) The leggings were a part of a tribal war bundle, and they seemed to make Big Eagle fearless. "Through the power of these leggings the Skiri [Skidi] captured the wonderful Cheyenne arrows".[11]: 66 Further, Big Eagle was dressed in a red shirt and wore a government medal on his breast. Throughout the battle, he rode on a small spotted horse. Therefore, the Cheyenne remembered him as Spotted Horse or Big Spotted Horse.[10]: 648 [9]: 552
According to the Cheyenne, they killed the old Pawnee on the battlefield.[9]: 558 The Pawnee say, he first died the next summer during a Cheyenne attack on an almost empty Pawnee village.[10]: 651
The end of the battle
With the Sacred Arrows gone, there was nothing more for the Cheyenne warriors to do on the battlefield. They could never win now. They stopped fighting. "How many were killed on either side was not known".[9]: 558 A little later, the Cheyenne Indians retreated up the Platte, all mourning and crying over the loss of one of the most important bundles in the tribe. Mixed blood George Bent describes the loss of the arrows as "... the greatest disaster the Cheyennes ever suffered."[6]: 51 (George Bent barely survived the Sand Creek Massacre on Chief Black Kettle's camp in 1864).[6]: 152
Later
Pawnee Chief Big Eagle concluded they had captured something of extraordinary importance when he examined the four arrows in his tipi. He was keeper of the Morning Star bundle of the Skidi Pawnee and placed three of the arrows in that bundle.[10]: 650 [11]: 66 One Sacred Arrow was in the possession of the old Pawnee and his relatives. They had claimed the captured lance after the fight and received an arrow in addition.[10]: 650
Some time after the battle, the very best Cheyenne arrow makers made four surrogate Sacred Arrows.[6]: 53 [9]: 558–560 However, they tried in various ways to get the originals back. Once, they invited Big Eagle and the Pawnees to their camp. In return for the four arrows they promised the guests many horses. Big Eagle expected treachery and brought just one arrow wrapped in a bundle. As feared, a Cheyenne rode away with the arrow in an unguarded moment.[10]: 657
In 1843, the Lakota attacked a village of South Bands Pawnees and burned down half of it. In one earth lodge they found one of the Sacred Arrows. They recognized it and returned it to the Cheyenne. The Cheyenne gave them one hundred horses.[12]: 141
Two of the manmade Sacred Arrows were now in excess. The Cheyennes left them near the place, where Sweet Medicine had received the true arrows long ago.[6]: 55
The Sacred Arrows were turned against the Pawnee for a second time in 1853. The Cheyenne wanted to avenge the killing of the noteworthy Alights on the Cloud and other warriors the previous year.[9]: 571
The Pawnee still have the two genuine Sacred Arrows captured from the Cheyenne in 1830.[6]: 53
References
- ^ a b c d Blaine, Martha R. (1990): Pawnee Passage, 1870-1875. Norman and London.
- ^ a b c Murie, James R. (1981): Ceremonies of the Pawnee. Part II. The South Bands. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology. No. 27. Washington.
- ^ Wedel, Mildred Mott (1982): "The Wichita Indian in the Arkansas River Basin". Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology. No. 30, pp. 118-134. Washington.
- ^ Jensen, Richard E.: "The Pawnee Mission, 1834-1846." Nebraska History, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 301-310.
- ^ Wood, W.Raymond: "The Earliest Map of the Mandan Heartland: Notes on the Jarvis and Mackay 1791 Map. Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 55, No. 216 (Nov. 2010), pp. 255-276.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Hyde, George E. (1987): Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman.
- ^ Dorsey, George A.: "Pawnee War Tales". American Anthropologist. New Series, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr. -Jun. 1906), pp. 337-345.
- ^ a b Stands In Timber, John and Margot Liberty (1972): Cheyenne Memories. Lincoln.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Grinnell, George Bird: "The Great Mysteries of the Cheyenne". American Anthropologist. New Series, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1910), pp. 542-575.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Dorsey, George A.: "How the Pawnee Captured the Cheyenne Medicine Arrows". American Anthropologist. New Series, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1903), pp. 644-658.
- ^ a b Murie, James R. (1981): Ceremonies of the Pawnee. Part I. The Skiri. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology. No. 27. Washington.
- ^ Mallory, Gerrick (1886): "The Corbusier Winter Counts." Smithsonian Institution. Fourth Annual Report to the Bureau of Ethnology. Washington.