Pawnee Power

The Pawnee scouts, revered to this day in Pawnee culture, played a pivotal role during the height of the Indian Wars between 1864 and 1877. “With war howling at the very doorstep of the Pawnee nation, these soldiers forestalled the specter of genocide in their homeland and safeguarded the cultural survival of their nation into the present,” states Mark van de Logt in War Party in Blue. Although five Pawnees had assisted in Col. Edwin Sumner’s 1857 campaign against the Cheyennes, many