John Carbutt

Artist Biography

In the early 19th century, the Pawnee were one of the largest and most powerful tribes in the west, inhabiting the land around the Platte, Loup, and Republican Rivers. After increasing encroachment by nomadic enemies, white settlers, and then an outbreak of smallpox in 1831, the Pawnee were eventually reduced from approximately 10,000 to 4,000 people and by the 1850s had ceded the rest of their land to the whites. In return they received a reservation along the Loup River near present-day Genoa, Nebraska. By 1873, the Pawnee settled on a new reservation in Indian Territory located in what is today, Oklahoma. The stress of the move, diseases, and poor reservation conditions reduced their numbers even further to approximately 2,400. By 1892, the Pawnee in Oklahoma were forced by the United States government to sign an agreement with the Cherokee Commission to accept individual allotments of land in a breakup of their communal holding. The Pawnee population was recorded by the United States Census as 633 in 1900. Since that time the tribe has begun to recover in numbers and today enrolled Tribal members are over 3,200.