6 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 195 



Omaha on numerous occasions and its use was confirmed by my in- 

 formants. Tlie term means "The people of this group." 



According to Dave Little-cook, a Southern Ponca, certain Southern 

 Plains tribes refer to the Ponca as Pd-mase^ or 'Head-cutters.' 

 Little-cook knew no reason for the use of this term. The anthropolo- 

 gist Alanson Skinner (1915 c, p. 797) states, however: "Wlien an 

 enemy was killed, the Ponca scalped him, then cut off his head and 

 threw it away. The sign for Ponca in the sign language indicates this 

 custom." Apparently the Ponca, together with the Omaha and Osage, 

 retained the old Middle Mississippian custom of removing the entire 

 head from a slaughtered enemy. A common motif in Middle Missis- 

 sippi art is a dancing warrior carrying such a trophy head. 



The Pawnee names for the Ponca were Rihit and Dihit^ while the 

 Caddo term was Tsiaxosohus (Dorsey and Thomas, 1910, p. 279). 

 James O. Dorsey lists the Winnebago name as Kdnha in his vocabu- 

 lary, compiled in 1896 (ibid., p. 279). In his "Omaha Sociology," he 

 writes that from their custom of sometimes pitching their tipis in three 

 concentric circles, the Ponca were sometimes called Oydte-ydmni or 

 the 'three nations' by the Dakota ( 1884 a, p. 219) . 



Before the 1877 Removal split the tribe into Northern and Southern 

 Ponca, there were two important bands or village groups among the 

 Ponca in Nebraska. The first of these was the Walxude or "Gray- 

 blanket" band. This band maintained its winter village in the vicinity 

 of the present Northern Ponca Community Building, 2 miles west and 

 3 miles south of Niobrara, Nebr. The name "Gray-blanket" derived 

 from the fact that this group was once issued white blankets by the 

 Government. Worn in the dust of the prairies these blankets soon, 

 apparently, took on a grayish cast. 



The second band was the Hubdo or 'Fish-smell' village group, who 

 camped about 2 miles east of the present town of Verdel, Nebr. Their 

 name is said to refer to a year when dead fish, left behind by thawing 

 ice in the nearby river, created a stench in the village that was remark- 

 able even to the strong-stomached Ponca of that era. 



The dialect spoken by the Ponca is one of four in the 3'egiha lan- 

 guage (Dorsey, 1885 b, pp. 919-920) . The Ponca and Omaha dialects 

 are the same except for a few words of modern origin, such as those for 

 "cat" and "schoolhouse." The other three dialects in the language are 

 Kansa, Osage, and Quapaw. The ^egiha language is a member of the 

 widespread Siouan linguistic family. This language takes its name 

 from the well-known Dakota or "Sioux" tribe. The fact that a tribe 

 speaks a "Siouan" language, however, should not be taken to mean 

 that they were politically allied with the Dakota. As a matter of fact 

 most of the other members of the Siouan language family were bitter 

 enemies of the Sioux tribe. 



