Pawnee Agency

The ground around this agency came back to the Pawnee only in 1968. In 1937 the nation's leaders began a campaign of three decades to regain the Pawnee Reserve lands surrounding the agency, then on the east edge of town; ownership returned in 1968, and two tracts were added later. In 1962 the tribe had acquired the former Pawnee Indian School, stone buildings empty for twenty years, and in 1980 it built a roundhouse modeled on the earth lodge. Since 1946 the Pawnee Indian Homecoming has drawn families back each July for four days.

What the plaque says

Pawnee Agency Established 1874. Pawnees sold their Nebraska lands and bought reservation here, selected by their chiefs and Wm. Burgess, U.S. agent. Pawnee boarding school was opened near agency in 1877. Reservation opened to white settlement Sept. 16, 1893. Agency consolidated, 1928, for 5 tribes: Pawnee, Oto, Ponca, Tonkawa and Kaw. Oklahoma Historical Society 162-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pawnee Nation Museum — 1.0 mi
  The Pawnee Nation's own museum in Pawnee, keeping the Nation's objects and the record of a military tradition it traces from the Pawnee Scouts of 1864 to the code talkers of World War II.
• Standing Bear Park & Museum — 28 mi
  An eight-acre park and museum in Ponca City built by six area nations and the town together, under a 22-foot bronze of the Ponca chief whose 1879 case made Native people persons at law.

More markers nearby

• Outlaw Battle — 15 mi
• World Famous Athlete Jim Thorpe — 17 mi
• Otoe-Missouria Tribal Reservation — 18 mi
• Boundary Line 1889 and 1893 — 18 mi