Product details
- ISBN 9780806120942
- Weight: 528g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Mar 1988
- Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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George Hyde spent more than thirty years collecting materials for his history of the Pawnees. The story is both a rewarding and a painful one. The Pawnee culture was rich in social and religious development. But the Pawnees' highly developed political and religious organization was not a source of power in war, and their permanent villages and high standard of living made them inviting and 'fixed targets for their enemies.
They fought and sometimes defeated larger tribes, even the Cheyennes and Sioux, and in one important battle sent an attacking party of Cheyennes home in humiliation after seizing the Cheyennes' sacred arrows. While many Pawnee heroes died fighting off enemy attacks on Loup Fork, still more died of smallpox, of neglect at the hands of the government, and of errors in the policies of Quaker agents.
In many ways The Pawnee Indians is the best synthesis Hyde ever wrote. It looks far back into tribal history, assessing Pawnee oral history against anthropological evidence and examining military patterns and cultural characteristics.
Hyde tells the story of the Pawnees objectively, reinforcing it with firsthand accounts gleaned from many sources, both Indian and white.
Savoie Lottinville, editor of four series of books published by the University of Oklahoma Press during his tenure as director from 1938 to 1967, was Regents Professor of History in the University and Director Emeritus of the Press. He was a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and of the University of Oxford, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
