Red pigment in the Central Plains: A Pawnee case at Kitkahahki Town

Abstract

James Murie, early twentieth century ethnographer and member of the Pawnee Nation, once wrote that the “things that are most acceptable to the Pawnee gods are smoke, fat, paint, and flesh” (Murie 1981:466). Here we describe red paint at Kitkahahki Town, a late eighteenth–early nineteenth-century Kitkahahki Pawnee village in north-central Kansas. Using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, we compare archaeological paint and pigment samples to three pigment materials – pipestone powder, vermilion, and ochre – all documented in the Great Plains after European colonization. We ultimately find no evidence of pipestone powder or vermilion as pigment at Kitkahahki Town and conclude that ochre (some of which may be from the Lower Cretaceous Dakota formation) is the most likely pigment material at the site. Ochre may have been especially significant because of links between this earth pigment and Pawnee sacred geography.