Pawnee

For the Pawnee the story here did not end with removal. In 1988 Lawrence Goodfox Jr. of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma asked the Nebraska State Historical Society to return ancestors' remains and burial offerings, and the society did not respond. With other Nebraska nations and the Native American Rights Fund, the Pawnee won the 1989 Unmarked Human Burial Sites and Skeletal Remains Protection Act, which required public museums to return tribally identifiable remains. On September 11, 1990, the Pawnee reburied hundreds of their ancestors in Genoa's municipal cemetery, on the site of their town at Wild Licorice Creek.

What the plaque says

Pawnee This was Pawnee Country, the last Nebraska home of an Indian Confederacy which once numbered more than 10,000, consisting of four tribes--Skidi, Grand, Republican and Tapage. Their domain covered a large part of Central Nebraska where they lived in permanent earth-lodge villages and developed an elaborate religious and social organization. The Pawnee grew corn, made pottery and many flint tools and weapons. They depended on buffalo for their meat and hides, and each year carried on extended hunts along the Platte and Republican rivers where they conflicted with their enemies the Sioux and other Plains Indians. In 1857 they ceded their remaining lands, with the exception of what is now Nance County and estab- lished their villages at this site under their famous Chief, Petalesharo. Nearly always friendly to the Whites, the Pawnee furnished scouts commanded by Major Frank North, which were a colorful and effective fighting force in the Indian wars of 1864-1877. Under continued harassment by nomadic tribes and demoralized by association with the Whites, the Pawnee dwindled in numbers and prestige. In 1873 they suffered major losses in battle with the Sioux at Massacre Canyon near present day Trenton. In 1874-1875 they left their ancestral Nebraska home for a reservation in Oklahoma. Genoa National Bank Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Genoa U.S. Indian School Museum — 0.8 mi
  The surviving trades building of a federal boarding school that ran from 1884 to 1934 on the Pawnee Nation's last Nebraska land, where at least 86 children died and the cemetery is still lost.

More markers nearby

• Genoa: 1857-1859 — steps away
• West Hill Community — 7.8 mi
• The Lincoln Highway-Gardiner Station Section — 10 mi
• St. Edward — 11 mi