It was the location of a village of the Kitkehahki band of the Pawnee people, in a region of the Republican River valley that they occupied intermittently from the 1770s to the 1820s.

[2] The remains of over 100 earth lodges lie on the terrace between the bank and hills to the south, which rise 125 feet (38 m) above the site.

[3] At the time of the village's occupation, springs in the western creek flowed year-round; these would have provided a more convenient source of water than the river, since access to the latter was hampered by the steep bank.

Spain received the territory west of the Mississippi, including New Orleans,[14] although they did not make their claim to that city effective until Governor Alejandro O'Reilly suppressed the Rebellion of 1768.

[15] Once in control of New Orleans, the Spanish imposed severe restrictions on trade up the Mississippi, cutting off the supply of arms to the Southern Pawnees and Wichitas.

[16] The neighboring Osages were not so affected, as they had access to arms smuggled by French traders from British territory in present-day Illinois.

However, the Kitkehahkis declined to follow the Chaui chiefs to their new settlements on the Platte; instead, they established themselves on the Republican River,[19] near what is now the Nebraska-Kansas border.

[30] During the height of their power in the late 1790s, bands of Omaha warriors frequently visited the Kitkehahkis to perform the calumet ceremony.

The Omahas descended upon the band's village, burned and plundered many of the lodges, and killed about one hundred Pawnees at the cost of about fifteen of their own men.

The remaining Kitkehahkis had withdrawn into four lodges, occupying a position too strong for the Omahas to reach them and massacre them without unacceptable losses.

The invading Omahas had camped on the Platte, undisturbed by the Chauis, on their way to the Kitkehahkis; this might indicate that the two Pawnee bands were on bad terms at the time.

They were told that the band had returned to the Republican about ten years before (that is, before the conflict with the Omahas), but had recently moved to the Platte under pressure from the Kanzas.

In June 1806, Lieutenant Facundo Melgares and 600 men were dispatched from the Spanish provincial capital of Santa Fe down the Red River and then northward into present-day Nebraska.

Although no Spanish records of the Melgares expedition are known to exist, it is believed that its purpose was to find and arrest the Lewis and Clark party, and to establish alliances with the Native Americans of the region, including the Pawnees.

[34] About a month later, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike left St. Louis with an American party of 23 men, and orders to negotiate peace between the Kanzas and Osages, to contact the Comanches of the high plains, and to explore the headwaters of the Red and Arkansas Rivers.

In the face of this opposition, and with no supply lines and a force too large to live off the country, Melgares returned to the Arkansas and thence to Santa Fe.

[39] Upon his arrival, he was greeted by the ranking chief, Sharitarish,[40] who invited him to eat in his lodge and told him of Melgares's recent visit.

[41] Pike's party established a camp fortified with rifle pits on a hill on the north bank of the Republican opposite the village.

He told the chief ... that the young warriors of his great American father were not women, to be turned back by words; that I should therefore proceed, and if he thought proper to stop me, he could attempt it; but that we were men, well armed, and would sell our lives at a dear rate to his nation; that we knew our great father would send his young warriors there to gather our bones and revenge our deaths on his people ...[46] The Pawnees relented, though unwillingly and with much dissent.

He ordered his party to stay in a compact body, with guns and bayonets and sabers at the ready; he estimated that "it would have cost them at least 100 men to have exterminated us".

[47] With no guides to the Comanches, he was forced to abandon that part of the mission; instead, he returned south into Kansas, where he attempted to follow Melgares's trail toward the Arkansas.

Although the exact situation is not known, it is thought that Sharitarish was trying to bring the Kitkehahkis back to the Platte, to support his faction in the Chaui village.

[5] In that year, the four Pawnee bands, treated as a single tribe by the U.S. government, signed a treaty in which they gave up their lands south of the Platte.

Because the surface had been altered by cultivation, they found little evidence of habitation, and Johnson was persuaded that the Republic County site was Pike's village.

[58] Johnson's claim was supported by Elliott Coues, who had edited Pike's journal; with his endorsement, it was accepted by the Kansas State Historical Society.

In 1901, Johnson donated the land to the state of Kansas, which built a 26-foot (7.9 m) granite monument commemorating Pike's symbolic triumph over Spain.

At the dedication of the monument, several of the speakers drew parallels between the Pike episode and the recent American victory in the Spanish–American War.

He visited the farm, and learned from DeWitt, the son of the original homesteader, that when the land was first plowed, it was covered with Native American relics.

In this account the epidemic, and not long habitation, explained the number of graves found by Hill; the medals had not been buried with their original owners, but had been treasured by the band for decades, until the time that the pestilence was blamed on "evil gifts from the whites" and they were cast away.

The Republic County site was not entirely pristine, due to surface collecting and possibly to amateur excavation;[72] but it was far better preserved.