There can be no doubt as to the belief of the Pawnees in a future life. The spirits of the dead live after their bodies have become dust. The stories of the Ghost Bride and the Ghost Wife, already given, are examples of this belief. Secret Pipe Chief told me of himself:
"I was dead once. Just as I died, I found my way leading to an Indian village. I entered it, and went straight to the lodge of my friends and my relations. I saw them, and when I saw them I knew them again. I even knew my old relations, whom I had never looked on when I was alive. I went into a lodge, but I was not offered a seat, and I thought that I was not welcome. I came out of the lodge, and went out of the village toward the west. Then I came back to life again. In the morning I had died, and I came to life in the afternoon. That must be the reason that I still live, and am getting old. I was not welcome yet. They did not receive me. From this I am convinced that there is a life after we are dead."
Sometimes ghosts appear to them, but more often they merely speak to them; only a voice is heard. They believe that the little whirlwinds often seen in summer are ghosts. The reason for this is that once a person shot at a whirlwind with his arrow. The arrow passed through it, and it all disappeared and came to nothing. Then the man was convinced that it was a ghost, and that he had killed it.
The different bands of the Pawnees had not all the same beliefs. Thus the Skidi band offered up the human sacrifice--a captive taken in war--to the morning star. This is thought to have been a propitiatory offering to avert the evil influences exerted by that planet. At the present day the Indians speak of the sacrifice as having been made to _Ti-ra´-wa_. None of the other tribes had this form of worship, and in this fact we have another indication that the separation of the Skidi from the Pawnees had been a long one. The _Ka-wa-ra-kish_ band of the Pita-hau-erat, are said to have been "the only ones of the Pawnees who did not worship _Ti-ra´-wa_. They worshiped toward the west."
Mention has been made of the _Nahu´rac_, or animals, which possess miraculous attributes given them by _Ti-ra´-wa_. The Pawnees know of five places where these animals meet to hold council--five of these _Nahu´rac_ lodges. One of these is at _Pa-hük´_, on the south side of the Platte River, opposite the town of Fremont, in Nebraska. The word _Pa-hük´_ means "hill island." Another animal home is under an island in the Platte River, near the town of Central City. It is called by the Pawnees _La-la-wa-koh-ti-to_, meaning "dark island." The third of these sacred places is on the Loup Fork, opposite the mouth of the Cedar River, and under a high, white cut bank. It is called _Ah-ka-wit-akol_, "white bank." Another is on the Solomon River, _Kitz-a-witz-ük_, "water on a bank;" it is called _Pa´howa_ sometimes. This is a mound, shaped like a dirt lodge. At the top of the mound, in the middle, is a round hole, in which, down below, can be seen water. At certain times, the people gather there, and throw into this hole their offerings to _Ti-ra´-wa_, blankets and robes, blue beads, tobacco, eagle feathers and moccasins. Sometimes, when they are gathered there, the water rises to the top of the hole, and flows out, running down the side of the mound into the river. Then the mothers take their little children and sprinkle the water over them, and pray to _Ti-ra´-wa_ to bless them. The water running out of the hole often carries with it the offerings, and the ground is covered with the old rotten things that have been thrown in. The fifth place is a hard, smooth, flinty rock, sticking up out of the ground. They call it _Pa-hûr´_, "hill that points the way." In the side of the hill there is a great hole, where the _Nahu´rac_ hold councils. This hill is in Kansas, and can be seen from the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad. It is known to the whites as Guide Rock.