Oral traditions provide a viable source of information about historical settings dating back far in time—a fact that has gained increasing recognition in North America, although archaeologists and other scholars typically give minimal attention to this data. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) lists oral traditions as a source of evidence that must be considered by museum and federal agency officials in making findings of cultural affiliation between ancient and modern Native American communities. This paper sets forth the NAGPRA standards and presents an analytical framework under which scholars can proceed with evaluation of historicity in verbal records of the ancient past. The author focuses on an Arikara narrative and argues that it presents a summary of human history in the New World from initial settlement up to the founding of the Arikara homeland in North Dakota. Oral records and the archaeological record describe a shared past and should be viewed as natural partners in post-NAGPRA America. In conceptual terms, scholarship on the past should revisit the bibliocentric assumptions of “prehistory,” and pursue, instead, the study of “ancient American history”-an approach that treats oral documents as respectable siblings of written documents.

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Pawnee Mortuary Traditions ROGER C. ECHO-HAWKNative American societies throughout the Western Hemisphere have evolved diverse practices and complex traditions around the disposition of human remains. In the Central Plains area of the United States, Indian societies historically have buried their dead on scaffolds, among the branches of trees, and in the earth. For an unknown span of centuries, the Pawnee dwelt in the Central Plains, residing in earthlodge towns along the rivers of Nebraska and Kansas until their removal to Oklahoma during the 1870s. The four bands of the Pawnee Nation once existed as separate tribes of Caddoan Indians: The Chaui, Kitkahahki, and Pitahawirata are sometimes collectively termed the South Bands; the fourth group, the Skidi, differ from the other Pawnee bands in certain aspects of their cultural heritage. Mortuary practices and associated religious traditions may have varied among the four Pawnee bands, but available information indicates the prevalence of basic similarities rather than substantive differences.' Ethnographic literature, Pawnee traditions, and historical records all were consulted during preparation of this paper on the treatment of the dead by the Pawnee people.* These sources show a complex heritage at work, a heritage that continues as an active presence in the lives of the Pawnee today. PREPARING FOR BURIALPawnee communities in the nineteenth century readied their dead for burial with preparations that varied "according to the rank and Roger C. Echo-Hawk, a citizen of the Pawnee tribe, is a consultant on American Indian history.

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