Pawnee River, also called the Pawnee fork of the Arkansas river, rises in the northwest corner of Gray county. For the first 15 or 20 miles its course is almost due north. Near the little village of Eminence, Finney county, it turns abruptly eastward; crosses the line between Finney and Hodgeman counties about 8 miles south of the northern boundary of those counties; flows thence northeast into Ness county; thence southeast across the corner of Hodgeman county, and thence by a somewhat sinuous course eastward through Pawnee county, empties its waters into the Arkansas river at Larned. Its principal tributary is Buckner creek. A number of interesting events occurred in the valley of this stream in early days. In 1854, soon after Kansas was organized as a territory, about 1,500 Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Osage Indians gathered on the Pawnee to make war on the whites. They started eastward toward the settlements, but about 100 miles west of Fort Riley were met by a hunting party of about 100 Sacs and Foxes and were driven back with heavy loss.