Pawnee Indian Museum - Exhibits
Current
The museum is built around and over the excavated floor of a Pawnee earth lodge. As you walk around the perimeter of the lodge, exhibits tell the story of the Pawnee people and the history of the site. View a rare sacred Pawnee bundle and other Pawnee artifacts and photos. Listen as the voice of a Pawnee elder describes her people's culture. After viewing the museum, take a walk along the path that winds through the depressions where other earth lodges once stood. Then stroll the Kitkahakis nature trail and let your imagination take you back to the time when the Kitkahaka Pawnee walked these same trails in search of game, returned from a raid, or went to the garden areas to farm. The nature trail includes a picnic area.
A computer display in the museum lobby allows visitors to deepen their understanding of native cultures. View short videos of the archeological excavation that took place at the site in June 2008. Listen to and learn several words from the disappearing Pawnee language, including both the Skidi and South Bands dialects, or hear a 1930 Pawnee oration by Henry Chapman. Explore the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and concerns about American Indian remains while watching the award-winning 10-minute video Bones of Contention; Battling for Human Dignity at the Salina Indian Burial Pit.
Visitors can also use a hand-held viewer to examine stereographs of Pawnee men, women, children, and their earth lodge homes.
Our current special exhibit is No Trespassing: The Segesser II Paintings and will be featured at the site through February 28, 2011. View the scene of the attack on a large Spanish expedition on August 20, 1720, in present day eastern Nebraska by the rulers of the region, the Pawnees. The Segesser II was painted on bison hides shortly after the remnants of the destroyed expedition returned to Santa Fe. Moreover, the tanned and smoothed hides carry the very faces of men whose descendants live in New Mexico today.
Upcoming
Trade Beads; the first Worldwide Currency, our next special exhibit, will be on display March 31 - August 31, 2011. Trade beads have been used for thousands years for various purposes such as decoration and money. The oldest beads were made from bones, copper, shell, and even teeth. European explorers used glass beads to trade with American Indians with the first recorded use by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The majority of these glass beads were made in Venice and Bohemia. Numerous glass beads of many different colors were discovered in the excavations at Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site. This exhibit features dozens of beads produced from the 1500s to the 1800s.
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