NO. 10 NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG 21 



contradictory. According to Dorsey it occurred as far back as 1390; 

 McGee thinks it probably took place about the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century ; and Fletcher and La Flesche imply that it was rela- 

 tively late, though they are not specific* Jean Baptiste Monier is 

 said to have "discovered" the Ponca in 1789 (Shine, 1914, p. 21), 

 but the name " Puncas " appears on Le Sueur's map of 1701, though 

 the location there given as south of the Platte between the Oto and 

 Kansa seems open to question. As previously mentioned, Le Raye 

 reported bands of the Ponca in the region about the headwaters of 

 the Cheyenne River in 1801. In 1802 Perrin du Lac locates them on 

 Ponca Creek in northeastern Nebraska, and the subsequent maps of 

 Lewis and Clark and Long do the same. The traditional accounts of 

 the Ponca migration to the north, on the west side of Missouri, are 

 supplemented by the Rev. A. L. Riggs, who was told by members of 

 the tribe that their ancestors formerly dwelt east of the Mississippi 

 and that subsequently they inhabited the country on the north side 

 of the Missouri near its mouth, later following up that river to the 

 north in company with the Omaha. (Dorsey, 1886, pp. 214-215.) 

 History therefore records the Ponca as a Nebraska tribe from the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century (map, fig. 2), but the time of their 

 separation from the Omaha, their actual locations, and the authen- 

 ticity of their migration legends must be determined by future his- 

 torical and archeological research. 



Of the Chiwere tribes the Oto are the most closely affiliated with 

 Nebraska, though they were a wandering group as the following quo- 

 tation from McGee indicates : > 



According to Winnebago tradition, the [Chiwere] tribes separated from 

 that " People of the parent speech " long ago, the Iowa being the first and the 

 Oto the last to leave, hi 1673 the Oto were located by Marquette west of the 

 Missouri River [sic] between the fortieth and forty-first parallels ; in 1680 they 

 were 130 leagues from the Illinois, ahnost opposite the mouth of the Miskoncing 

 (Wisconsin), and in 1687 they were on Osage river. According to La Hontan 

 they were, in 1690, on Otontas (Osage) river; and in 1698 Hennepin placed 

 them ten days journey from Fort Creve Coeur. Iberville in 1700 located the 

 Iowa and Oto with the Omaha, between Wisconsin and Missouri rivers, about 

 100 leagues from the Illinois tribe; and Charlevoix, in 1721, fixed the Oto 

 habitat as below that of the Iowa and above that of the Kansa on the western 

 side of the Missouri. Dupratz mentions the Oto as a small nation on the 

 Missouri river in 1758, and Jefiferys (1761) described them as occupying the 

 southern bank of the Panis (Platte) between its mouth and the Pawnee 

 territory; according to Porter, they occupied the same position in 1829. The 

 Oto claimed the land bordering the Platte from their village to the mouth of the 



'Dorsey, 1886, p. 219; McGee, 1897, p. 191; Fletcher and La Flesche, 191 1, 

 p. 78. 



