On their hunts or when traveling, the Pawnees used the ordinary cow skin lodge of the plains Indians. This was composed of neatly dressed buffalo hides, from which the hair had been removed, set up over a frame-work, made up, usually, of sixteen long slender poles. An opening at the top gave exit to the smoke; and wings, projecting at either side of the smoke hole, and so arranged that their positions could be changed by moving two additional poles on the outside of the lodge, served to regulate the draft, and keep the lodge free from smoke. The inmates slept close to the walls, and the fire, with the inevitable pot hanging over it, burned in the middle. These lodges were warm, and usually dry, and made good shelters. They were occupied for the greater part of the year, for the Pawnees, after the spring planting was fairly over, usually started at once on their summer hunt, from which they only returned in time to harvest their crops. At the beginning of winter, when the robes were at their best, they made the winter hunt, from which they did not return until toward spring. The planting over, they set out again on the hunt.
In their personal intercourse with each other, and with strangers, the Pawnees were kindly and accommodating. I have had little kindnesses unostentatiously done me by Pawnee men, such as I should never expect to receive from white persons not connected with me by ties of blood. In the village, the well-to-do gave freely to those who were poor, and all were very hospitable. They were a light-hearted, merry race, keenly alive to the ridiculous, and very fond of a joke. They were great chatterers, and had about them nothing of the supposed taciturnity of the Indian. Of modesty or delicacy in conversation, as we know it, they had none. Both sexes spoke freely to each other of matters which are never mentioned in civilized society, and much of their conversation, as well as many of their stories, could not well be printed.
It was in the month of July, 1872. The Pawnees were preparing to start on their semi-annual buffalo hunt, and only the last religious rites remained to be performed before the nation should leave the village for the buffalo range.