Editing Pawnee people (section)

===Before metal or horses===
The ancestors of the Pawnees also spoke [[Caddoan languages]] and had developed a semi-sedentary lifestyle in valley-bottom lands on the Great Plains. Unlike other groups of the Great Plains, they had a stratified society with priests and hereditary chiefs. Their religion included ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice.<ref name=Hyde1951>{{cite book |title=The Pawnee Indians |url=https://archive.org/details/pawneeindians0000hyde |url-access=registration |first=George E. |last=Hyde |orig-year=1951 |year=1974 |edition=New |series=The Civilization of the American Indian |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |location=Norman, OK |isbn=0-8061-2094-0}}</ref>{{rp|19–20, 28}}

At first contact, they lived through what is now Oklahoma and Kansas, and they reached Nebraska in about 1750. (Other Caddoan speakers lived in the Southern Plains into Texas and Arkansas, forming a belt of related populations along the eastern edge of the Great Plains.)
[[File:Caddoan langs.png|thumb|left|Approximate distribution of Caddoan-speakers in the early 19th century]]

They lived in spacious villages of [[grass lodge]]s and [[earth lodge]]s. These were unfortified, reflecting an assumption that large raiding parties would not arrive without warning. They did not need to rapidly coordinate defense against a large party of enemies.<ref name=Hyde1951/>{{rp|17}} The Pawnees, with the [[Wichita people|Wichita]] and [[Arikara people|Arikara]] survived European encroachment, and they all adapted to forming compact villages on high ground and surrounding them with ditch-and-wall defenses.<ref name=Hyde1951/>{{rp|4}} They lived most of the year in these well-insulated homes, but many would travel on multi-day communal deer hunts. Many also hunted [[American bison|buffalo]], which, before the induction of horses, was challenging and dangerous. 
[[File:Wichita Indian village 1850-1875.jpg|thumb|250px|left|A sketch of an early 19th-century [[Wichita (tribe)|Wichita Indian]] village. The beehive-shaped grass lodges surrounded by corn fields appear similar to those described by Coronado in 1541.]]

The first written records of Caddoans come from [[Francisco Vázquez de Coronado|Coronado]]'s ''entrada'' in 1541. With cavalry, steel weapons, and guns he had forced his way through the Apaches, Pueblos, and other nations of the modern southeastern US, but they had no gold. Coronado's interpreter repeated rumors (or confirmed Coronado's fantasies) that gold was to be had elsewhere in a location named [[Quivira]].

After more than 30-day journey, Coronado found a river larger than any he had seen before. This was the [[Arkansas River|Arkansas]], probably a few miles east of present-day [[Dodge City, Kansas]]. The Spaniards and their Indian allies followed the Arkansas northeast for three days and found Quivirans hunting buffalo. The Indians greeted the Spanish with wonderment and fear, but calmed down when one of Coronado's guides addressed them in their own language.

Coronado reached Quivira itself after a few more days of traveling. He found Quivira "well settled ... along good river bottoms, although without much water, and good streams which flow into another". Coronado believed that there were twenty-five settlements in Quivira. Both men and women Quivirans were nearly naked. Coronado was impressed with the size of the Quivirans and all the other Indians he met. They were "large people of very good build".<ref name=Winship1990>{{cite book |editor=Winship, George Parker |translator=Winship, George Parker |title=The Journey of Coronado 1540–1542 |year=1990 |pages=113, 209, 215, 234–237 |location=Golden, Colorado |publisher=Fulcrum Publishing |others=Introduction by Donald C. Cutter |isbn=1-55591-066-1}}</ref> Coronado spent 25 days among the Quivirans trying to learn of richer kingdoms just over the horizon. He found nothing but straw-thatched villages of up to two hundred houses and fields containing corn, beans, and squash. A copper pendant was the only evidence of wealth he discovered. The Quivirans were almost certainly Caddoans, and they built grass lodges as only the [[Wichita people|Wichita]] were still doing by 1898.<ref>Bolton, 293 and many subsequent scholars{{full citation needed|date=January 2019}}</ref><ref name=Hyde1951/>{{rp|29–33}}
[[File:Jan Mostaert - Landscape with a Scene of the Conquest of America.jpg|thumb|"Episode from the Conquest of America" by [[Jan Mostaert]] (c. 1545), probably Coronado in New Mexico]]

Coronado was escorted to the further edge of Quivira, called Tabas, where the neighboring land of Harahey began. He summoned the "Lord of Harahey" who, with two hundred followers, came to meet with the Spanish. He was disappointed in his hopes for riches. The Harahey Indians were "all naked – with bows, and some sort of things on their heads, and their privy parts slightly covered". Hyde identifies them as Awahis, the old Caddoan name for the Pawnees, possibly including the ancestors of the Skidis and the [[Arikara]]. Another group, the Guas, may have been known later as the Paniouace.<ref name=Hyde1951/>{{rp|33}} These people put up ferocious resistance when Coronado started to plunder their villages.<ref name=Winship1990/>

In 1601, [[Juan de Oñate]] led another ''entrada'' in search of the wealth of Quivira. He met "Escansaques", probably Apaches, who tried to persuade him to plunder and destroy "Quiviran" villages.