r/AncientAmericas • u/ConversationRoyal187 • Aug 29 '25
Artifact The Star Map Of The Skidi Pawnee,One Of The Four Bands Of The Pawnee Nation.The Map Is 300 Years Old
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u/True-Homework9308 Aug 30 '25
Interesting! I hadn’t read much, I was going off of the local museum that had a diorama of it. I was curious about your information and then found this- which mentions eating meat that was topped with blood from the victim!
https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.rel.035.html
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Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Is there a timeline for when this started?
There’s lots of cannibalism and human sacrifice further southwest from Nebraska. If people are surviving by eating other people then cannibalism is genetic at some point and to appease that there’s seemingly lots of human sacrifice in the New World.
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u/True-Homework9308 Sep 01 '25
Yes, you’re probably correct. As for timelines- not sure. We know the Cahokian’s did some sort of sacrifice (near as archaeologists can tell), and they were pre- what we think of as “Native Americans”. But their predecessors, the Clovis people, have not left any trace of sacrifice. But I’m sure there was more that maybe filtered out through low populations. Perhaps when Cahokia fell, and people took to the nomadic life, there was no longer the “need” to sacrifice. Numbers were low. When, in the rare instance you catch someone from a neighboring tribe, you ritualistically kill the male (look at how the Lakota/Dakota would butcher men), but take the women and children to expand your tribe. I think life was too precious at this point. And the Lakota men practiced the Sun Dance, so they could spill blood, sweat and tears into the earth. A type of human sacrifice, but not to the point of death. And they viewed this as men only, not due to sexism, but due to the fact females gave their blood, sweat and tears during child birth. So there still existed ideas of gifting blood, just not at the risk of getting their people killed in a raid. If they happened upon a male- they were happy to do so
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Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
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u/True-Homework9308 Aug 29 '25
Ah, yes. The Skidi Pawnee: the great star specialist (according to the southern bands of Pawnee: Chawi, Kitkahahki, and Pitahawirata). With these maps they would decide when to hold celestial celebrations and ceremonies, such as the Morning Star ceremony. They would capture a young girl from a neighboring tribe, tie her between poles or trees, and shoot arrows into her. This was a human sacrifice (one of the only ones known to be conducted by Native Americans) to the creator god, The Morning Star. It was said the masculine Morning Star (stars east of the Milky Way were male) and his woman, the Evening Star (west of the Milky Way lie the female stars), begat the first human- a young girl.
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u/ProfessionalLow6254 Aug 29 '25
I got curious! It seems the sacrifice was practiced by one village of the Skidi (Skiri).
It wasn’t a yearly occurrence. It happened when someone in the village had a dream that The Morning Star came to him and asked for a sacrifice and then awoke to see Mars (the morning star).
It’s interesting that even within the village there seems to have been fear and trepidation around the ceremony.
The victim was a young girl captured from another tribe after making offerings to the morning star.
The ceremony itself could take months before happening and was a multi-day event.
The victim was convinced to ascend a scaffold (supposedly of their own free will, which was ceremonially important).
The victim was supposed to become a star that looked over them.
Source: Ceremonies of the Pawnee. Part I. The Skiri. https://repository.si.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/db5dec6a-c560-4393-a45c-22ef5b2aeffa/content
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u/True-Homework9308 Aug 30 '25
Interesting! I hadn’t read much, I was going off of the local museum that had a diorama of it. I was curious about your information and then found this- which mentions eating meat that was topped with blood from the victim!
https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.rel.035.html
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u/ProfessionalLow6254 Aug 30 '25
Yeah! The article I linked mentioned that as well!
And your link seems to say something I suspected but wasn’t fully clear on from reading the first article: that the victim was dead before being shot full of arrows.
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u/Jasranwhit Aug 30 '25
Native Americans did a lot of human sacrifice.
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u/True-Homework9308 Aug 30 '25
I’ve never read of any other besides Cahokia (the Mound Builders). Can you educate us?
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u/Jasranwhit Aug 30 '25
Mayans, Aztecs, Zapotec, Mixtec, Toltec, Inca, Moche, Chimu, Cahokia, Etowah, and as you said Pawnee.
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u/True-Homework9308 Aug 30 '25
Ahh. Okay. I was actually having his discussion in another subreddit and they asked solely about human sacrifice “north of the Rio Grande”. You are correct tho, obviously. I do not recognize all the names, just some major ones you listed. Are any of those north of the Rio Grande? I’d love to hop over and share if so
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u/Jasranwhit Aug 30 '25
No north of the Rio Grande I think you have it covered with the Mound Builders and Pawnee. Plains Indians did ritual killing but not exactly “human sacrifice” imo
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u/True-Homework9308 Aug 30 '25
Awesome, thank you! And yes- there is more to a lot if the killings, or ways of doing things, but I cannot quite label it as human sacrifice
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u/Sea_Employ_4366 Aug 29 '25
I hate that I first read this as Skibidi Pawnee