Sowing sacred seeds: How the Pawnee Nation saved ancestral corn by returning it to its Nebraska home

PAWNEE — Each ear of corn was sacred and symbolic.

The husks were gently peeled from the kernels by a group of Pawnee Indians gathered recently at the Pawnee Nation Round House. The treasure they discovered gleamed for all to see — blue-speckled corn, and corn with tan-colored kernels known for its sweetness.

"This is our Christmas," Sonny Howell said of the unique unveiling.

Each fall, Deb Echo-Hawk gathers members of the Pawnee Nation for "The Reveal," an intergenerational assembly hosted by the tribe's Pawnee Seed Preservation Project.

The gatherings are held to show off the latest harvest of corn, special to the Pawnee. As interest in the "mother corn" grows among Pawnee of all ages, Echo-Hawk believes she is fulfilling her mission.

She's known as the "Keeper of the Seed."

The seeds and the corn that sprouts from them connect the Pawnee to their ancestors who traveled from Nebraska to Indian Territory in the mid-1870s, several decades after the Trail of Tears.

Echo-Hawk said her Pawnee forebears, forced from their ancestral land by the U.S. government, took as much of their corn seed as they could carry on the arduous trek into what is now Oklahoma. The corn was a staple for the tribe and was served at every meal. Because the corn, like buffalo, sustained the Pawnee throughout the year, it was considered sacred. An ear of corn often hung alongside a buffalo skull at the altar in every earth lodge. The federal government prohibited the Pawnee from hunting buffalo on the journey, but the corn was there for nourishment.

Unfortunately, their corn did not flourish in the Oklahoma soil.

Echo-Hawk, who is Pawnee-Otoe, knew that the Pawnee had grown their own varieties of non-hybrid corn that they had developed over the years. But harvest after harvest failed in Oklahoma, she said.

In a quest to revive tribal culture, Echo-Hawk and the Pawnee Nation's Culture Committee asked Pawnee families for some of their corn seeds in 1998. To her dismay, Oklahoma's clay-like soil was no more conducive to the seeds then than it was when the Pawnee first attempted to grow the seeds more than a century before in their new home.

Eventually, Echo-Hawk's stash of rare Eagle Corn seeds (so-called because its kernels exhibit dark speckles that look like an eagle in flight) dwindled to about 50 that she stored in a Mason jar.

In 2003, a phone call from a Nebraska woman helped save the Pawnee sacred corn from extinction — and boosted Echo-Hawk's Pawnee Seed Preservation Project to new heights.

Seeds return home

Ronnie O'Brien, then the educational director of the Great Platte River Road Archway in Kearney, Nebraska, was on a fact-finding mission. She reached out to the Pawnee Nation and Echo-Hawk hoping to gain more knowledge about the Pawnee people, whose homeland is Nebraska.

O'Brien and Echo-Hawk, who was then the Pawnee Nation's education and training director, struck up a friendship and began talking about gardening. The Pawnees' sacred corn inevitably came up in their conversation.

Hearing that the corn seeds hadn't really taken root in Oklahoma, O'Brien offered to take return some seeds "home" for planting in Nebraska. O'Brien and Echo-Hawk persuaded the tribe's elders to allow O'Brien to plant some of the corn.

Echo-Hawk said she was optimistic about the outcome because one of the Pawnee Nation's most respected elders, Nora Pratt, had prayed over the remaining three varieties of seeds in 1998.

"She held those Pawnee seeds in her hand and she prayed for over an hour, and it was a beautiful prayer. She talked about the walk down here and shared some of the stories. She remembered what it tasted like and what it really meant to us, how our lives centered around the corn," Echo-Hawk said.

Echo-Hawk said those prayers were answered. O'Brien's first effort to harvest the corn in 2004 failed, but the next year's crop of Eagle Corn was a success.

The victory in the Cornhusker state came just in time. That 2005 harvest had sprouted from some of the Pawnee Nation's last remaining Eagle Corn seeds, Echo-Hawk said.

These days, O'Brien serves as hospitality management and culinary arts instructor at Central Community College-Hasting, while Echo-Hawk is in charge of the Pawnee Nation's food programs.

O'Brien and her students have been working with Echo-Hawk, farmers in Nebraska and other Pawnee Indians like Howell to continue the seed preservation project.

Del Ficke, one of the participating Nebraska farmers, believes he was meant to be part of the effort.

Ficke's family owns and operates Ficke's Cattle Co. in Pleasant Dale, Nebraska, just west of Lincoln. He became involved in the seed preservation project after meeting Echo-Hawk in Lincoln where she had given a presentation about the effort.

"Everyone knew this was the connection we'd been looking for," he said.

Her story resonated with him and the tales of yesteryear he grew up hearing from his older relatives. Ficke said his grandfather often shared the story of the struggles the family encountered when they homesteaded in Pleasant Dale in 1869. His grandfather told him the Ficke family wouldn't have made through that first winter without the help of Pawnee Indians living down by Middle Creek who had befriended the pioneers.

"My grandfather had the utmost respect for the Pawnee," Ficke said. "We certainly, or I do anyway, feel a certain amount of indebtedness to the Pawnee."

He said most of the Nebraska farmers helping with the project have been planting the Pawnee corn seed in garden plots. Ficke said he has planted the Pawnee's sacred blue corn on three acres of his land for the last two years.

He said the latest batch harvested in September — about 140 bushels — was just enough for everyone in the Pawnee Nation to have one meal of the blue corn — which is said to have medicinal properties.

Lessons from the harvest

The seed preservation project has brought joy and meaning to groups like the one that gathered on Oct. 27 for the "Reveal" event.

"It's always been a part of our ceremonies, feasts and dinners," Electa Hare-Red Corn, a Pawnee and Ihanktowan Indian, said of the corn. "It's more meaningful because of all the prayers that come with it."

Matt Reed, a Pawnee Nation chief who serves as the tribe's historic preservation officer, agreed, as he stripped away the husks of several ears of corn.

"I know intimately a lot of details about our history, so when I look at this I'm seeing the end result of generation after generation after generation of Pawnee farmers, what they created for almost 1,000 years," Reed said.

"So, this is really a treat just thinking of it historically — all the different varieties that they created, that they invented on their own without scientific labs and reading journals and things like that. They just did it through trial and error. It really makes you feel proud of what your ancestors created, and it's unique to us."