Traditional Education

In traditional Pawnee culture, children learned their societal roles, values, and beliefs through observation, role-playing, storytelling, and participation. As with their parents, girls and boys functioned primarily in separate realms for survival. The saying goes, “It took a village to raise a child.”

 Learning from their mothers and grandmothers, girls acquired knowledge of domestic activities, planting, cultivating, and harvesting. They planted corn, beans, pumpkin, and squash seeds their ancestors had received from the Sacred Deities, along with instructions telling them what, when, and how to do so. During the buffalo hunts, they observed women tan hides, pitch camp, cook, and carried out other vital functions. Grandmothers often tended to the young while their mothers engaged in other activities.