Esoteric visionary experience once shaped the Pawnee worldbuilding project. Dreams and visions descended from hidden mechanisms of the cosmic order, floating down from celestial realms of the deities of the heavens to define what it meant to be Pawnee, the truths of history and culture.
When François Marie Perrin du Lac wrote a memoir of his 1801–1803 journeys across the United States, he mentioned a visit to a Chaui Pawnee city. He included a fascinating map. Along the edges of the upper waters of the Many Wild Potatoes River, a curious note appeared, translated as “Great Desert of quicksand where there is no wood, no earth, no stone, no water, no animals except small turtles of various colors.”
Scholars agree that Perrin du Lac fabricated his account of visiting Pawneeland in 1802 borrowing from other fur traders headquartered in St Louis. It seems that he visited St. Louis in 1802, he found various records there, he talked to some fur traders, and may even have met a Pawnee or two. Perhaps he did take a trip up the Mysterious River. But he most likely just invented that journey to Pawneeland. And as he pictured what he would have seen there, he decided to include a desert filled with turtles.
Turtles do exist in the Nebraska Sandhills. Very pretty creatures—Americans call them ornate box turtles. The Pawnees have several terms for turtles, but the most likely Pawnee name for the ornate box turtle is a Skidi Pawnee word: caaskíwiktu’, or “sand turtle.”
I make these comments on turtles with a slight disquiet. Long ago I dreamed that I found my way to the edge of a lake, and as I stood on a bluff above the water, I slowly noticed that I was surrounded. Dark, unsettling holes. And turtles. Many turtles dwelt there. I watched as they slipped in and out of the water, disappearing on unknown errands. I watched for a time, glad that they took no notice of me. Ever since, turtles seem creatures of a solemn antiquity. Masterful. Capable of inexplicable magic. Keepers of dread secrets long lost from our sunlit world. And I dare not inquire.
My dreaming can be read many ways in Pawneeland today. But it wasn’t so long ago that Pawnees centered the magic of dream imagery in civic life and ceremonial storytelling. This mystical Pawnee dream-world has wafted away, displaced, thoroughly Americanized by alternate cultural protocols. During the decades around 1900, the ancient surrealism of dream worldbuilding evaporated from the essences of Pawnee cultural identity. And when the Pawnees of that time realized their world was vanishing, concerned tradition-keepers took action. They helped to create a vast written literature of oral traditions, precious glimpses of the inner realms of Pawneeland.
Around 1905 Little Chief was the leading Chaui resaru, a community leader with celestial blessings. He related a story that was usually told during the Chaui Bear Dance. When a man named Smoking With The Bear was a youth, he got lost while hunting a káwahki—a magpie. And he dreamed of a magic turtle “covered with mud. Fire came from his mouth and eyes.” The turtle told him: “I am the fireplace of the animal lodges.” The youth awakened and “he saw in the pond sparks of fire.”
Some Pawnee doctors constructed a special turtle sculpture in their rites. In 1914 Skidi scholar James R. Murie wrote that preparation of the ritual lodge for the annual doctor ceremonial included a special fireplace: “The fireplace is cleared out and a large turtle modeled there, his head toward the altar. A new fireplace is then made on his back.”
In 1905 Kiwikurawaruksti or Mysterious Buffalo Bull was a prominent Skidi ceremonialist; he told of how the great ghost divinity, Pahukatawa, predicted a meteor shower. One particular star would fall to earth, “the shape of a turtle and will have many colors.” And one night in 1833 the stars fell, and they “flew around like birds.” Several years later two men found a meteorite in “the shape of a turtle,” and the Skidi priests decided to keep it with the Morning Star Bundle.
And one day in April 1905 Mysterious Buffalo Bull spoke to James R. Murie about the dedication of a ceremonial earthlodge: “You see our fire place. It is the Morning Star that is where our sun come from. It is also the picture of a turtle when really it is the Morning Star. You see the head of the turtle is towards the east. That is where the gods [do] their thinking in the East. While in the west is where all things are created and you see the hind end of the turtle is in the West. The four legs are the four world quarter gods uphold the Heavens.”
In Pawneeland the caaskíwiktu’ is filled with fire, a meditative keeper of celestial magic and obscure intentions.
Surrealism can grant us glimpses of mysterious truths. We value unexpected juxtapositions that bestow new insights. But this functional surrealism differs from fictional inventions—Perrin du Lac gave himself permission to imagine a realm of colorful turtles in the Sandhills of Pawneeland, and we can readily distinguish his invented Pawnee turtles from Pawnee mythological dream turtles.
Culture can be manufactured from dreams, but history is not a dream. And making sense of dreams is not the same as fabricating the past. We need to know what really happened; lies do not help. In this true story, dream and visionary experience once shaped the psychedelic mythmaking of Pawneeland. That world has faded, but perhaps we can nevertheless suggest that caaskíwiktu’ still lingers at the edge of our dreaming, filled with fire.
And in 1875 before the Skidi left their ancient homeland, removing to Oklahoma, Lone Chief and several men rode off on a secret errand, bearing the Morning Star meteorite turtle. They set this turtle from the stars “on a high, sandy hill in the western part of Nebraska.” We can guess that they wished to make it possible for the turtle to return to the stars. This turtle, foretold in a vision, had one more dreamlike journey to make.
And we could say that this final mystical journey of the meteorite turtle marked a symbolic end to Pawnee dream-culture. Lone Chief and his men rode down from that sandy hill, then returned to Wild Licorice Creek. When the Skidi departed from the Pawnee homeland, they forever left behind their surreal project of dream worldbuilding.