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Echo Hawk. That's the English translation of the name given to my great-grandfather.

A Pawnee Indian who did not speak English. He was born in the mid-1800s in what we now know as Nebraska. Among the Pawnee, the hawk is a symbol of a warrior. My great-grandfather was known for his

bravery, but he was also known as a quiet man who did not speak of his own deeds. As

members of his tribe spoke of his good deeds, it was like an

echo, from one side of the village to the other, thus he was named Echo Hawk. According to accounts of

the first white men to account and counter Pawnee people, the Pawnee were estimated to number about 20,000.

Under the laws of the United States, they had the right to occupy 23 million acres of land

on the plains of Nebraska.

When my great-grandfather was 19 years of age, the Pawnee people were forced to give up their homeland along the Platte River to make way for white settlers.

In the winter of 1874, the Pawnee people were marched several hundred miles southward to a small reservation located near the

Cimarron River in the Oklahoma Indian Territory. Like so many other tribes before them,

the Pawnee had their trail of tears. Tears on that trail from the Platte to the Cimarron

were shed for the loss of a homeland, loss of the great

buffalo herds slaughtered for their tongues and hides and loss of a way of life. After arriving

at that small Oklahoma reservation, the Pawnee people did not number 20,000. They did not number 5,000, not even 1,000. Less than 700

Pawnee people survived. That is a painful history, but the pain was not limited to one generation.

In his childhood, my father was taken from his parents by the federal government and sent to a boarding school far distant from his home. There he was physically

beaten if he spoke his Pawnee language or in any way practice his culture or religion.

In my generation, my oldest sister was sent home from a public school

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