The Pawnee Nation counts more than two thousand years of history on the central plains, from Iowa along the Missouri River to the front range of Colorado, and four bands: the Čawî' or Grand, the Kitkahaki or Republican, the Pitahawirata or Tappage, and the Skidi or Wolf. After years of trespass, theft, rape and murder by white settlers, the Nation writes, it sold its reservation in 1874 and bought new land from the Cherokee and Muscogee nations in what is now Oklahoma.
The Nation's museum on Harrison Street keeps cultural and historical objects, among them a bear claw necklace repatriated from the Gilcrease Museum. Much of what it keeps is a record of service. The Nation traces that record from the Pawnee Scout Battalion of 1864. William Pollock, Kitkahaki, rode with the Rough Riders in Cuba. Pawnees volunteered in World War I before they were citizens, and none was killed in combat, as an elder had foretold in a dream, and the old Scouts passed the drum to the men who came home.
In World War II, Sergeant Alex Mathews survived Cabanatuan prison camp and slave labor in Japan, Levi Horsechief jumped into Sicily, Anzio, Normandy and Holland with the 82nd Airborne, and Sergeant Grant Gover was killed in the Rhineland. Some Pawnees used their once-forbidden language as code talkers. The museum holds the Pawnee Indian Veterans program books from 1947 to the present, and the veterans still host dances on Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Christmas Day.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour