Technological Progressions: Past, Present And Future

At the beginning of the thirteenth century a drought greater than any during the recorded history of the area came to the Great Plains. As the rains failed year after year and the crops withered in the fields, the hunters and horticulturalists who lived along the rivers of present-day western Nebraska and Kansas abandoned their small earthlodges on the central plains and moved east. Behind them the incessant winds covered the deserted villages with 10 to 20 inches of fine loess, a mute testimony to the severity of the climatic change that had forced the occupants away (Baerreis, and Bryson).

The dry season was an ecological fiasco. It sent various peoples out of their land, revamped the social and political topography of the fields, and incidentally expanded fighting among bunches vying for the now rare resources of available land. As already isolated societies met up, they shared and fought; archeologists have shown that individuals traded different material systems, objects, and presumably convictions. However, what is astonishing is how little these societies reacted particularly to the dry season. Any power that provoked large­scale movements and social contacts may have been required to create generally similar changes that the dry spell did. Roughly expressed, the general population's areas changed, not their tendencies.

The Pawnees started from the earthlodge villagers of the focal plains. Horticulturalists had restored themselves along the Loup River by the fifteenth century when the atmosphere of the fields enhanced. Archeologists, by following the development of artistic plans and by other social correlations, have built up that these returning ranchers, the general population of the Loup Focus, were predecessors of the Pawnees. The exact descent of the Pawnees from these individuals isn't clear (Weltfish 8). The essential division of the country into the Skidis from one viewpoint and the South Bands (the Grands [Tsawi or Chaui], the Republicans [Kitkehaxhi], and the Tapages [Pitahawirats]) on the other is an antiquated one. The Pawnees guaranteed that this division preceded the country itself. The Skidis attested unique family relationship with the Arikaras, who lived more distant north on the Missouri River, while the South Bands asserted that they were at one time the Kawarahkis, a solitary gathering who had relocated north with the Wichita's (Dunbar 261).

By the mid sixteenth century the underlying developments into the Loup valley had finished, and the constituent components of the Pawnees had built up themselves near the river. The Skidis possessed a progression of towns close to Beaver Creek, while the Kawarahkis, settled close Shell Creek (James 141). By the mid seventeenth century the Kawarahkis had extended southwest and fabricated their towns on the south bank of the Platte, while the Skidis stayed on the Loup. Every one of these towns, particularly those on Beaver Creek, secured substantial zones, taking in anywhere from 10-100 acers of land. Their developers found them on ridges with an eye for resistance and in a couple of cases strengthened the towns with dividers and trenches. Edwin James, who went by the territory with the Long endeavor of 1820, even composed of antiquated stays of extensive fortresses in the region of Beaver Creek close to the focal point of the Skidis' towns (141).

Regardless of indications of war, the two centuries that took after Pawnee settlement on the Loup and Platte seem to have been, in general, prosperous and productive. The Lower Loup Focus sites are recognized by their vast zones as well as by the number and size of their stockpiling, or store, pits. The town economy appears to have delivered substantial, storable surpluses, and in the round earthlodges the intricate culture of the Pawnees bloomed. The Skidis and Kawarahkis manufactured their towns as indicated by custom necessities regularly dismissed by the notable Pawnees. In Lower Loup towns, for example, the earthlodges had just four focus posts, and the doorways to the cabins perpetually confronted east—prerequisites recollected yet frequently not practiced in the nineteenth century (Wedel 123).