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thumb|Symbol representing the goddess [[Atira (goddess)|Atira in the Pawnee Hako (or Calumet) The Skidis were "the great star specialists", The South Bands acknowledged the creative powers of some celestial objects and meteorological phenomena, but largely counted upon animals for support and guidance.
Deities and spirit animals
Atías Tirawa, which means "Our Father Above" in the Pawnee language (often translated, inaccurately, as "Great Spirit"), was the creator god. Another variant, perhaps most used, is Tirawahat. He was believed to have taught the Pawnee people tattooing, fire-building, hunting, agriculture, speech and clothing, religious rituals (including the use of tobacco and sacred bundles), and sacrifices. He was associated with most natural phenomena, including stars and planets, wind, lightning, rain, and thunder. The wife of Tirawa was Atira, goddess of the Earth. Atira (literally, Mother Corn) was associated with corn.
The male Morning Star in the East was believed to be created first. Being the war god
- The foremost among them was Pahuk, usually translated "hill island", a bluff on the south side of the Platte River, near the town of Cedar Bluffs in present-day Saunders County, Nebraska.
- Lalawakohtito, or "dark island", was an island in the Platte near Central City, Nebraska.
- Ahkawitakol, or "white bank", was on the Loup River opposite the mouth of the Cedar River in what is now Nance County, Nebraska.
- Kitzawitzuk, translated "water on a bank", also known to the Pawnee as Pahowa, was a spring on the Solomon River
- The fifth lodge of the nahurac was known to the Pawnee as Pahur (/pa'hur/, translated as "hill that points the way" or "guide rock").
The lodge also represented the universe in a more practical way. The physical construction of the house required setting up four posts to represent the four cardinal directions, "aligned almost exactly with the north–south, east–west axis."
A Pawnee observatory-lodge also required an unobstructed view of the eastern sky. The lodge's axis would be oriented east–west in such a way that the sunrise of vernal equinox would cast light on the altar. The dimensions of the lodge's smoke hole and door would be designed to allow observation of the sky, e.g. with the smoke-hole aligned to enable observation of the Pleiades.
According to one Skidi-band Pawnee man at the beginning of the twentieth century, "The Skidi were organized by the stars; these powers above made them into families and villages, and taught them how to live and how to perform their ceremonies. The shrines of the four leading villages were given by the four leading stars and represent those stars which guide and rule the people."
Regular ceremonies were performed before major events, such as semi-annual buffalo hunts. Kawaha, an often-besought god of good luck, was closely connected to buffalo hunts.
Morning Star ceremony
thumb|400px|Photograph of a miniature diorama's depiction of the ceremony, published in 1922 on behalf of the [[Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago]]
The Morning Star ceremony was a religious ceremony occasionally involving a ritual human sacrifice of a young girl, performed only by a single village (Village Across a Hill) However, two members of the Long Expedition in 1820 believed that the young Pawnee man Petalesharo had rescued the Comanche girl and urged an end to the Morning Star ritual. Edwin James gave the year for this action as 1817, while John R. Bell placed it around 1815. and major leaders, such as Knife Chief and his relative Petalesharo or Man Chief, Indian Agent John Dougherty and some influential Pawnees tried without luck to save the life of a Cheyenne girl before mid-April 1827. (A later stated 1833 sacrifice was confused with the one in April 1827).
The identity of the Morning Star
The identity of the Morning Star is not clear. "The earliest accounts specified Venus as Morning Star, while most ethnographers favored Mars", given it was said to be red.
Returning to the village, the captured girl would be handed over to the servant (priest) of the Morning Star. The people in contact with the girl treated her with respect, but kept her isolated from the rest of the tribe. When it was time for the spring sacrifice, she was ritually cleansed. A five-day ceremony then began with the priest singing songs describing the advancing stages in the rite, and the girl was symbolically transformed from human to celestial form, as the ritual representation of the Evening Star. On the final day of the ceremony, a procession of men, boys and male infants carried by their mothers accompanied the girl outside the village to a scaffold.
Anthropologist Ralph Linton reported that evidence indicated the practice "was carried out somewhat unwillingly" by Pawnee religious leaders, who regarded it as an obligation or duty and took no pleasure from the practice. The priests removed her clothing and she was left alone on the scaffold at the moment of the rising of the Morning Star (Mars). Symbolizing the Morning Star and his fireballs, two men would come from the east and touch flaming branches to her armpits and groin. She would then be touched with war clubs by four other men. A sacred arrow from the Skull bundle was shot through her heart by the man who captured her while simultaneously another man struck her over the head with the war club from the Morning Star bundle. The dead girl's chest would then be cut open by the priest with a flint knife while her captor caught her blood on dried meat. ("A very small cut is made ... The heart is not exposed or removed.")
By shooting arrows into her body, the village men, as embodiments of Morning Star, were symbolically mating with her. Her blood would drip down from the scaffolding and onto the ground which had been made to represent the Evening Star's garden of all plant and animal life. They took her body and laid the girl face down on the prairie, where her blood would enter the earth and fertilize the ground. The spirit of the Evening Star was understood to be released and the ceremony supposedly ensured the success of the crops, the continuation of all life on the Plains, and the perpetuation of the Universe.