I was much interested in ascertaining the existence of certain facts which seemed to show analogies between these Pawnees and the race who under the name of Toltecs or Aztecs had migrated from some unknown country into Mexico. It has not hitherto been explained how it happened that this tribe who, as far as is known, have always lived in this region, placed in the centre of the continent, should possess a language which is absolutely different from that of any other race of North American Indians, and that they should have been, for a long period of time, surrounded by powerful tribes with whom they could never have held any spoken communications. Mr. Albert Gallatin, a learned American ethnologist, draws attention to their singularly isolated position. He states that “they speak a language altogether different from that of the Sioux tribes or of any other Indians known to us.”[37] They do not appear to have been a numerous race, for, when their territories were first explored, it was estimated that, including men, women and children, their numbers were under seven thousand. At the time that I passed through the ancient hunting grounds in Nebraska, their descendants (of whom there were said to be about three thousand) were gathered together in a reservation north of the Platte. I saw a few of them near the banks of that river, and some others who had committed a series of ferocious acts on the plains and had carried off several scalps. They were captured, imprisoned and condemned to death. These men were wild-looking savages who stalked restlessly round the cells in which they were confined like intractable and untameable animals. Those I saw wandering near the Platte had, for some unknown reason, dressed themselves in war paint. Their eyes were encircled by broad bands of red ochre. Their faces were covered with blue stripes which in their outlines resembled the tattoed lines of the Maoris in New Zealand. The natural colour of the Pawnees I met was rather darker than the skins of the Sioux and Chippewas. The men were of more than the ordinary stature and were powerfully built. Their heads were broad and massive and all of them had remarkably high cheek bones. The early explorers, sent by the Government towards the West, did not learn much about the superstitions of the native tribes, but it is mentioned in the Report of the Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819–20 that the Pawnees, then living near the forks of the river Loup in the valley of the Platte, had originally a custom, which was believed to be annual but was no longer followed, of offering a human sacrifice to the Great Star. The victim was always a prisoner that had been captured in war.