CROOKED HAND.

PAWNEE CHIEF.

 Crooked Hand, a Pawnee, gained notoriety as the “greatest warrior in the tribe,” anthropologist George Bird Grinnell reported. His son, Dog Chief, went on to serve as a U.S

They say they came from the southwest or south to their Great Plains homes long before living memory.  Evidence says that the Pawnees resided in the Central Plains region for centuries before the historical period.  The Pawnees lived in elevated river terraces and bluff sites along fifty-mile stretch of the Loup and Platte Rivers.  There they gathered wild foods, grew squash, pumpkins, beans, and corn.  They also hunted buffalo on annual hunts.

         Pawnee hunters first saw horses in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries.  When settlers came from Europe, they began trading and giving gifts to the Indians for land to make North America bigger.  The Pawnee leaders met with major U.S. leaders and began so called treaties and agreements that eventually ended up with Pawnee tribes on reservations.  To escape these reservations the warriors joined the United States army as scouts.  They fought against their enemies, the Sioux  , Cheyenne,  Arapahos, Delawares,Comanches, Apaches, and the Kiowas in the 1860s and 1870s.