Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 9 



places. The bottoms support a great variety of moisture-loving 

 grasses, except in the more poorly drained situations, where rushes 

 and sedges grow. Native trees, including elm, oak, cottonwood, ash, 

 hackberry, boxelder, and willow, occupy narrow strips adjacent to 

 the stream channels in all the larger valleys, and walnut was formerly 

 quite common as well. Trees are especially numerous on many of 

 the lower slopes of bluffs bordering the Missouri Eiver bottom lands. 



The Ponca territory is a pleasant land, and the many tourists who 

 annually visit Niobrara State Park, a small portion of the old Ponca 

 domain which has been set aside as a recreation center, can readily 

 appreciate the sorrow and bitterness of the Ponca when the Federal 

 Government announced that the tribe must leave their homeland 

 forever. 



The Ponca were never, apparently, a very large tribe. Population 

 figures vary greatly within a short span of time, probably because of 

 poor estimates on the part of early observers. Nevertheless, a rough 

 idea of Ponca population through the years can be gained from the 

 various sources. 



Will and Hyde write : "The traditions state that when they reached 

 the Niobrara the Ponkas numbered three thousand people and en- 

 camped in three large concentric circles" (1917, p. 39). Mooney 

 (1928, p. 7) gives 800 as the probable size of the tribe in 1788. The 

 earliest historical estimate known to me is contained in a letter 

 written by Esteban Rodriguez Miro, Governor General of Lou- 

 isiana, to Antonio Renzel, Commandant of the Interior Provinces of 

 Louisiana, in 1785. Miro states that the Ponca then had "not more 

 than eighty warriors" (Nasatir, 1952, vol. 1, p. 126). Pierre Tabeau 

 says that in 1804 they still had 80 men bearing arms, "but an invasion 

 of the Bois Brules has since destroyed more than half of them" 

 (Tabeau, 1939, p. 100). The "Bois Brules" mentioned by Tabeau 

 were undoubtedly members of the Brule subband of the Teton Dakota. 

 Lewis and Clark estimated only 200 total population for the Ponca 

 that same year, and this figure appears on Clark's map (Lewis, 

 1904-5) . 



Our next estimate comes from the explorer John Bradbury (1904, 

 vol. 5, p. 96), writing in 1819 but probably referring to about a decade 

 earlier. He states : "They now number about seven hundred." Ed- 

 win James (1905, p. 152), who accompanied S. H. Long's expedition 

 of 1819-20, gives their number as 200. In 1832 Prince Maximilian 

 of Wied, the famous Missouri explorer, visited the Ponca. He writes : 

 "According to Dr. Morse's report, they numbered, in 1822, 1,750 in all, 

 at present the total amount of their warriors is estimated at about 

 300" (Wied-Neuweid, 1906, vol. 22, p. 284). Gen. Henry Atkinson 

 (1922, p. 10) in a letter written to Colonel Hamilton in 1825, lists the 



