Guide Rock (hill)

Guide Rock
Pa-hur
Guide Rock, seen from the west. The bridge in the left foreground crosses Rankin Creek.
Highest point
Elevation	1,713 ft (522 m)
Coordinates	40°3′6″N 98°19′6″W / 40.05167°N 98.31833°W / 40.05167; -98.31833Coordinates: 40°3′6″N 98°19′6″W / 40.05167°N 98.31833°W / 40.05167; -98.31833
Geography
Guide Rock Location of Guide Rock in Nebraska
Location	Webster County, Nebraska, United States

Guide Rock, whose Pawnee name is Pa-hur or Pahur, is a hill in south central Nebraska in the United States. In the traditional Pawnee religion, it was one of five dwelling places of spirit animals with miraculous powers.

In 1806, separate expeditions led by Facundo Melgares and Zebulon Pike both journeyed to a large Pawnee village nearby; Pike persuaded the inhabitants to lower the recently received flag of Spain and replace it with that of the United States.

The hill's English name was given to the nearby village of Guide Rock, Nebraska.

Guide Rock is located in Webster County, Nebraska. It lies southeast of the town that bears its name, on the south side of the Republican River and just east of Rankin Creek.

Descriptions of the landform vary. The United States Geological Survey classifies it as a "pillar", which it defines as a "[v]ertical, standing, often spire-shaped, natural rock formation". A local writer described it as a "vast rocky bluff". However, the authors of Roadside Geology of Nebraska state that it is "not so much a rock as a loess bluff of modest size". The difference might be due to human action: in 1973, it was reported that of the five sacred places of the Pawnee, four, including this one, had been "extensively damaged or totally destroyed".

In the Pawnee traditional religion, the supreme being Tirawa allots supernatural powers to certain animals. These animals, the nahurac, act as Tirawa's servants and messengers, and intercede for the Pawnee with Tirawa.

The nahurac had five lodges. 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 near Glen Elder, Kansas; it is usually known today by its Kanza-derived name of Waconda Spring. It now lies beneath the waters of Waconda Reservoir.