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Essay / The History of the Genocide of the Pawnee People
Around the beginning of the 13th century, a period of drought more remarkable than any other in the written history of the region occurred in the Great Plains. As the showers faded long enough and the crops dwindled in the fields, the hunters and horticulturists who lived along the waterways of present-day western Nebraska and Kansas abandoned their small huts on the fields central and moved eastwards. Behind them, relentless winds covered abandoned towns with 10 to 20 streams of fine loess, a quiet statement about the severity of climate change that forced tenants to move (Baerreis and Bryson). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The dry season has been an ecological fiasco. It drove various peoples from their lands, reorganized the social and political topography of the fields and, incidentally, expanded the fighting between groups competing for the now scarce resources of the available lands. As already isolated societies met, shared and fought; archaeologists have shown that individuals exchanged different material systems, objects and presumably beliefs. However, what is surprising is how little these societies reacted, particularly during the dry season. Any power that caused large-scale social movements and contacts may have been necessary to create changes generally similar to those brought about by the drought period. Basically, it is the population areas that have changed, not their trends. The Pawnees are descended from the land villagers of the Focal Plains. Horticulturists had reestablished themselves along the Loup River by the 15th century when the atmosphere of the fields improved. Archaeologists, by tracking the development of artistic projects and other social correlations, have established that these returning herders, the general population of the Focus Wolf, were the predecessors of the Pawnees. The exact descent of the Pawnees from these individuals is unclear (Weltfish 8). The essential division of the country between the Skidis on one point of view and the bands of the South (the Greats [Tsawi or Chaui], the Republicans [Kitkehaxhi] and the Tapages [Pitahawirats]) on the other hand is archaic. The Pawnees ensured that this division preceded the land itself. The Skidis attested to a unique family relationship with the Arikaras, who lived farther north on the Missouri River, while the southern bands claimed they were once the Kawarahkis, a solitary group who had moved north with the Wichita (Dunbar 261). By the mid-16th century, the underlying developments of the Wolf Valley were complete and the Pawnees' constituent parts had been built near the river. The Skidis had a progression of towns near Beaver Creek, while the Kawarahkis settled near Shell Creek (James 141). By the mid-17th century, the Kawarahki had expanded southwest and built their towns on the south bank of the Platte, while the Skidis remained on the Wolf. Each of these towns, especially those in Beaver Creek, were granted sizable areas, covering between 10 and 100 acres of land. Their promoters found them on ridges for the sake of resistance and, in a few cases, reinforced the towns with partitions and trenches. Edwin James, who traveled the territory during the long effort of 1820, even composed the obsolete remains of vast fortresses in the Beaver Creek area, near the home of the Skidis towns (141). Regardless of signs of war, the two centuries following Pawnee settlement on the Wolf and Platte.