Pawnee Indian Village State Hist Site

Location:  From the Jct. of Hwy US-36 and K-266, take K-266 North 7 miles to the museum (follow the signs).

Nearest Town:  Scandia

Contact:  ph 785/361-2255

Hours:  10am-5pm Wednesday thru Saturday, 1pm-5pm Sunday

Long before the White Man broke Kansas sod with John Deere's steel plow, the Pawnee people
practiced agriculture on the banks of the Republican river.  Instead of iron plows they used hoes made from the shoulder blade of the bison.  The Kansas State Historical Society operates a museum at the site of one of the Pawnee's villages.  The museum building was constructed in  1967, right over an unexcavated lodge.  After the museum was built, the lodge was excavated by archeologists.

This is the interior of the museum, preserving the excavated ruins of one of the village's lodges.   Over the years, before the site was managed by the Historical Society, many of the artifacts were discovered and removed by the general public, destroying any information about these people's way of life that could have been determined by their location.   Still, the site contained enough intact relics to shed quite a bit of light on how these people lived.  The holes are where the lodge poles were once located.   Ashes, corn and other articles of every day life are preserved as the archeologists found them.

In this photo, you may be able to see the faint depressions.  The village, which once had a population of over 1000, was abandoned in the early 1800's.  This is all that remains of the village's many lodges.  The museum site only protects a portion of the once large village.  Most of the lodge remains have been destroyed by farming and road construction.  The Pawnee had a highly developed society.  The village was surrounded by a wall and even had an area devoted to sports.  The farming was carried out down the hill from the village, on the Republican River bottom.  They were also unique among the Plains Indians in that they practiced Human sacrifice, leading to speculation that they may have migrated from Central America to Kansas in ancient times.  

This marker, erected in 1901, marked the site of this village where it was at that time  thought that Lt. Zebulon Pike first encountered the Pawnee.  It is now believed by scholars that Pike actually visited a village a little farther North across the state line in Nebraska.

BACK TO INDEX