Shell Creek Pawnee Settlements

Pawnee oral history brings the people into Nebraska from the south around 1600. Archaeologists gave these towns a name of their own, the Lower Loup culture, after the river. Nebraska Studies traces its village ruins along the Loup and Platte valleys from Howard County to Saunders County and says its pottery, tools and way of life strongly suggest it became the Pawnee, though other scholars look north to South Dakota for its roots. History Nebraska's Highway Archeology Program has excavated cache pits at a Shell Creek site beside Highway 15 and mapped an earthlodge there.

What the plaque says

Shell Creek Pawnee Settlements By the early 1600s, the ancestors of the Pawnee Nation began consolidating into a few large communities. Each was home to hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Some of these were built along nearby Shell Creek. These Shell Creek cities may have been built by ancestors of the Čawî, Kitkehahki, and Pîtahawirâta bands. Oral tradition mentions an ancestral group, the Kawarakîs. The other major division of the Pawnee, the Ckîri, built their early communities near Genoa. The Shell Creek villages were occupied before the Pawnees acquired horses and guns. A few items of European manufacture found at these sites show direct or indirect contact with early French traders. During this time, the Pawnees made a beautiful assortment of tools and ornaments fashioned from bone, stone, shell, antler, and clay. The Pawnees built and lived in sturdy earthlodges, timber-framed lodges covered with earth. These lodges were occupied for decades. Community members grew large amounts of corn and other crops. They went on long-distance hunting trips into Kansas, using dogs to carry home processed buffalo meat and stone for tool manufacture. Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma Nebraska State Historical Society, 2018

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Shinn's Ferry — 12 mi
• Columbus Powerhouse — 14 mi
• Millar-Sloss Pioneer Cemetery — 14 mi
• Agricultural Park — 15 mi