Salina Post proudly presents Flashback Friday in partnership with the Smoky Hill Museum. Enjoy a weekly tidbit of local history from the staff at Salina Post and the Smoky Hill Museum as we present "Salina-Flashback Fridays."
By SALINA POST
The landscape of Saline County was first shaped by its Indigenous peoples, with waves of Native American nations thriving across the open prairie.
According to the Smoky Hill Museum, a group named the Smoky Hill Phase of the Central Plains Village Farmers called the region home 700 to 900 years ago.
Indigenous nations roamed the Smoky Hill River region, settling villages and spreading their cultures across Kansas.
For the Pawnee Nation, the open prairie of northern Kansas was a sacred homeland with multiple sacred sites spread throughout its long horizons and occasional jutting hilltops.
Pawnee Nation Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Joseph Reed described the historic and cultural significance of the land and the importance of preserving Native history.
"Historically, that area is very well known," Reed said. "There's a lot of petroglyphs west of Salina that are important to us — both as constellations and it probably has some mystical meaning behind them, but it's been lost over 1000s of years."
"That area has always been important to us."
As years passed and American settlers began violently pushing Native Americans from their homes, much of the history of Indigenous culture became victim to archeological research and tourist attractions.
The "Indian Burial Pit," better known as the Salina Burial Pit for the Pawnee, was only one of these sites. Still, its reclamation and reburial paved the way for further activism and, eventually, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.
The historic significance of Salina Burial Pit
According to Reed, the Pawnee people inhabited the Salina region for thousands of years, with the Salina Burial Pit representing one example of thousands of sacred burial sites.
Reed said the Wichita and Arikira nations participated in the reburial protocol due to their historic ancestry with the expansive Pawnee Nation, as close relatives but distinct cultures during 1000 - 1320 C.E.
One specific area in Saline County once housed thousands of Pawnee settlements.
Along the Republic River, the Pawnee people constructed hundreds of earth lodge towns and roamed about every two decades for areas of fresh resources.
"The footprint for that settlement would have been pretty big," Reed said. "The areas where we lived and built our earth lodge towns gradually shrank down and down because of resource competition, diseases from Europeans and things like that."
Kansas settlers gradually took over the region in the late 1800s and drove the Pawnee Nation and its various bands of culture from its homeland.
In the 1930s, a family of farmers known as the Kohr or Price family discovered a Pawnee earth lodge about four and a half miles east of Salina. This discovery prompted a married couple from Salina with no recorded archeological training to excavate the site.
While working on the location in 1936, the couple, Guy and Mabel Whiteford, discovered the remains of more than 145 Native American people.
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The couple then convinced the farmers to open a tourist attraction named the "Indian Burial Pit" and began charging attendees to view the remains and artifacts.
According to an article in The Salina Journal from October 1936, provided by the Smoky Hill Museum, the unnamed author described the site as a 15 by 18 feet pit lined with an assortment of skeletal remains.
The writer described one of the bodies, "Notably the one in the northeast corner of the area thus far exposed. There, lying on its side and curled into a jack-knife position, is the skeleton of an Indian who was about seven feet tall."
The Whitefords were amateur archeologists and believed the remains to be from a "giant race" of Native Americans and used that to sell the attraction to passersby.
Later, Reed and researchers in the Pawnee Nation discovered that their Nation had used the site as a burial ground throughout the course of about three centuries from 1000 C.E. to 1350 C.E.
Various artifacts from the Wichita and Arikira were buried in the pit since the Pawnee people would trade and have close ties with each Nation. So, some of the people's personal artifacts from other nations were buried with them 800 to 900 years ago.
In another article by The Salina Journal from March 30, 1973, provided by the Smoky Hill Museum, the author described the site again and some new controversy surrounding the tourist attraction.
The writer spoke with the owner, John and Howard Price, a pair of brothers and hog farmers in Saline County, who boasted with pride about his tourist attraction and that it had become the fifth most popular tourist spot in Kansas.
Toward the end of the article, it states, "'People enjoy coming here. It's a novelty — something different.' said Price as he brushed a mixture of alcohol and shellac on the remains of a child to preserve the tiny skeleton. 'I can recall only two or three people in the last 37 years who didn't think it was worth the 50 cents.' The hog farmer admitted, however, that he has had complaints from Indians in recent months."
A local Native American named Elmer Creekpaun posted a statement on the wall that read, "Digging up a whole Indian cemetery and placing it on display for a few paltry dollars is going a little too far. I have never witnessed anything as pagan as this in my life. Since my boyhood in the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, I never heard of or know of Indians molesting the final resting place of anyone. Dead people deserve eternal respect."
Posting the paper caused a snowball effect on the site, with a Lutheran Church group canceling its annual convention in town and demanding the place be closed to the public.
Reed said the Pawnee Nation also played a significant role in repatriating the site, with some members stumbling across its plaque along the highway in the early 1980s.
"When you pulled up to the rest stop, that kind of gave you an idea of where you could go and see some stuff and that quote-unquote 'Indian Burial Pit' was one of them," Reed said. "That kind of hit you in the gut, when you see some of those things for the first time."
The Kansas Historical Society and Indigenous representatives began pushing the state in the 1970s to reclaim the site and participate in a reburial protocol. In 1989, their combined efforts closed the tourist attraction for good.
The following year, in 1990, the Arikara, Wichita, and Pawnee Nations participated in a reburial protocol, covered the remains with blankets and shawls, and workers reburied the entire site. Reed said they also capped it with cement to keep the area safe.
Today, the sacred site remains closed to the public and protected as an essential piece of Native culture and history.
Many Americans believe that American history is young, and few old buildings are left for tourists to visit and revel in its history. Still, Reed likes to remind those that the United States and Kansas have an expansive history.
"Our earth lodges date back, maybe another 800 years before that [1000 C.E.]," Reed said. "Then we've got stories that happened before those earth lodges. So we've been living on the plains as a tribe and The nation for 1000s of years."
"We didn't go too far away. We're just down the road a little bit. We're still out on the plains."
The Pawnee Nation has actively participated in the national effort for Native American repatriation and continues to collect artifacts and reclaim its history to teach the next generation of Pawnee people.