HASTINGS, Neb. (AP) — When the Pawnee Nation was forced from its homeland in Nebraska to a reservation in Oklahoma in the 1870s, they lost a lot more than their home and their lives.

"There were 12,000 and once they got to Oklahoma, the count was 684," said Pawnee woman Deb Echo-Hawk. "Then whole families and keepers perished and there was nobody there to know what to do with those bundles."

The bundles Echo-Hawk speaks of were the sacred bundles of important items to the Pawnee that included precious kernels of Pawnee corn.

"It's sacred. It's religious," she said of the corn. "It's part of ev...