During this crisis in the mid nineteenth century, the arrival of missionaries in the Great Plain further influenced the Pawnee. Due to their inability to combat the new diseases introduced to the region, the Pawnee began to doubt their forms of medicine and healing, which shook their traditional beliefs and opened them up to the influences of Christianity. These missionaries brought Western medicine to help combat these diseases and would use them to try converting the populace to their beliefs presenting their healing ability as evidence for the power of Christian religion. The primary examples of this were the Quakers who served as missionaries to the Pawnee with the intentions to bring the Pawnee modern civilization, educate them in the
