The Pawnee are a Caddo-speaking agricultural people whose homelands, at the time of first European contact, was in the Arkansas River region of northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Each Pawnee village contained a number of earthlodges. Earthlodges were constructed by excavating the ground up to 18 inches in depth, then constructing a frame for the roof and walls. Among the Pawnee the earthlodges were 24 to 42 feet in diameter and could stand as high as 20 feet.
The basic unit of Pawnee kinship was the earthlodge in which an extended family lived together. The earthlodge was headed by an older woman and her husband, her younger sisters (sororal polygyny was common), their unmarried sons, their daughters and daughters’ spouses, and daughters’ children. Children were generally under the care of the grandmothers.
Among many American Indian tribes, polygyny (the marriage of one man to more than one woman at the same time) was common. Among many of the tribes, such as the Pawnee, polygyny was most frequently based on the sororate: marrying sisters.
A Pawnee man did not consider his married-in household to be his true home. Anthropologist Gene Weltfish, in The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture, reports:
“In his married in household he was an outsider with formal obligations, which sometimes tended to weigh rather heavily on him. Then he would go where his home really was—that of his sisters and his mother, where they would gladly feed him and take care of him and where he could relax and feel like a child.”
Women were often married at the age of 14 or 15. Marriage was often arranged by the parents without consulting the young people. A young man was considered to be eligible for marriage when he had gone on a successful war party and had killed a buffalo. Marriage also involved the transfer of horses and other property from one family to another. Divorce was customarily by mutual consent.
The Pawnee also practiced a form of temporary polyandry. When a boy reached puberty, his mother’s brother’s wife would take charge of him and initiate him into sex. He would continue having sex with her until he married. According to Douglas Parks, n his chapter on the Pawnee in the Handbook of North American Indians:
“Thus, for a period of four or five years the young man, and perhaps his brothers as well, would be a junior husband for this woman, creating a temporary state of polyandry.”
With regard to the sexual sharing of wives by brothers among the Pawnee, anthropologist Gene Weltfish reports:
“It was fairly usual form for two or more brothers to set up a joint household, sharing their wives and their property.”
Among the Pawnee, each village was ideally endogamous; that is, people were expected to marry within the village. However, Douglas Parks reports:
“Women rarely left the village into which they were born, but men sometimes married outside of it and then went to the wife’s village to live.”
The Pawnee never addressed each other by personal name, but by a kinship term. This kinship term indicated the expected behavior and reinforced the relationships between people. Anthropologist Gene Weltfish writes:
“A personal name among the Pawnees was of an entirely different character from our own. It was an honorary title of an extremely personal nature.”
She goes on to report that
“the substance of the name was strictly private and reserved to oneself. The name was cited only on the most formal occasions and from the name itself it was not possible to deduce its private significance.”
Indians 101
Twice each week Indians 101 explores different American Indian topics. More tribal profiles from this series:
Indians 101: Native American Marriage
Indians 101: Personal Names Among the Eastern Nations
Indians 101: Marriage Among the Great Basin Indian Nations
Indians 101: The Traditional Cherokee Family
Indians 101: Marriage Among the Southern Plains Indians
Indians 101: Personal Names Among Central Plains Indians
Indians 101: The Omaha Family
Indians 101: Gender Among Northern Plains Indians
Indians 101: Northwest Coast Indian Names