In the 1700s the Pawnee people lived along the Republican, Loup and Platte Rivers in Nebraska. They were mainly farmers who planted corn, beans, squash and melons. The Pawnees had a special way of making their hairstyle. They greased their hair with buffalo fat until it stood straight up backwards like a horn. The word Pawnee comes from the word pariki meaning horn. The Pawnees were good in stealing horses from other tribes. Horses they used for buffalo hunting. They were always into conflicts with Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Crow, Sioux, Shoshoni and Ute. One estimates that there were about 10,000 Pawnees in the beginning of the 1800s, but as the Europeans arrived half of the Pawnee people died in 1831 from smallpox. They also had a cholera epidemic in 1849. The Pawnees never fought against the settlers and they wanted to sign piece treaties with the United States. In 1864 Major General Samuel R. Curtis ordered Frank North to hire some Pawnee scouts in the wars against the plains indians. In 1865 North's scouts followed Brigadier General Patrick Connor on the north plains from Julesburg to the Tongue River. The 23rd of August they fought against Sioux and Cheyenne warriors and killed 34 of them. Later that month the scouts took Connor and his men to an Arapaho camp and stole 750 horses and mules.

In March 1867 General Christopher Auger asked Frank North to hire 200 Pawnee scouts to protect the railroad workers on the Union Pacific Railroad. The scouts did their work well and managed among others to fight the Cheyenne at Plum Creek. The Pawnee people received a Reservation along the Loup River, which they later on sold in 1876 and moved to the indian territory in Oklahoma. In 1900 there were only 600 people left of the tribe, but it has increased some after that.