American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The policy of removing American Indian people from their traditional homelands to other locations considered by non-Indians to be more suitable forms a long and painful chapter in the history of Indian-white relations. The word itself-removal-is a negative term describing a volatile situation between the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless, between the "removers" and the "removed." For the Pawnee, removal from Nebraska to Oklahoma created tremendous stress and dislocation. As the years passed, they adapted to their new home; ultimately, however, removal came to have another, even more dreadful meaning for the Pawnee than any of them could have imagined. Once they had departed Nebraska, non-Indians began removing the contents of Pawnee cemeteries, looting graves of Pawnee remains and funerary goods. Grave robbers and trophy hunters sought out abandoned Pawnee villages and included their cemeteries in their "treasure hunt" for what remained of Pawnee life in Nebraska. Amateur archaeologists continued the cultural plundering in the 1920s, systematizing their searches-even purchasing parcels of land believed to contain the remnants of Pawnee villages. In the 1930s and 1940s, Work Projects Administration personnel joined with the Nebraska State Historical Society to professionalize the activity, labeling their work archaeological excavation. By the 1950s, the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln had in its possession between five hundred and one thousand Pawnee bodies and thousands of funerary goods taken from their graves. In this sense, the Pawnee of Nebraska were “twice removed” from their homeland.