Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 13 



and beans indicate that the Ponca of this era were gardeners or 

 farmers. 



A very curious find from the site is a fragment of a catlinite ban- 

 nerstone. These objects are usually regarded as weights or counter- 

 balances used in connection with the atlatl or spear thrower, a very 

 ancient American Indian weapon but one retained until the his- 

 toric period by some Southeastern groups. Could this object from 

 the Ponca Fort site represent a ceremonial retention of an old Middle 

 Mississippi weapon by the Ponca? Certainly the bow and arrow 

 was the principal weapon of war and the hunt at this period, and 

 the find of a gun part indicates that the villagers were beginning 

 to acquire a few firearms. 



From the large amount of European trade goods present. Wood 

 suggests that the occupation of the site by the Ponca occurred be- 

 tween 1790 and 1800, when the Ponca were acquiring huge quantities 

 of goods through trade and the pillage of boats ascending the Mis- 

 souri. In the last analysis, then, the Ponca Fort site not only tells 

 us little about Ponca archeology but also presents us with the problem 

 of accounting for the presence of Arikara pottery at a documented 

 Ponca site. "Wood suggests that this may indicate that some of the 

 Ponca had taken Arikara women for wives. As unlikely as this ex- 

 planation appears at first blush, it may have considerable merit, for 

 the total amount of pottery recovered was small. Finds of kettle han- 

 dles and brass kettle patches indicate that most of the women at the 

 site, even at this date, were using metal vessels for cooking and carry- 

 ing water. Furthermore, Peter Le Claire, the Ponca historian, states 

 (letter of February 23, 1962) that the earliest Ponca traditions tell 

 of friendly contacts and joint bison hunts with the "Sand Pawnee" or 

 Arikara. Apparently these friendly contacts resulted in some inter- 

 marriage. Perhaps the Arikara wives, coming from a tribe farther 

 upriver and hence a bit more removed from the influences of White 

 civilization, continued to practice the ceramic arts at a time when 

 they had been abandoned by their Ponca sisters-in-law. 



Other sites which may represent the prehistoric and early historic 

 Ponca are those of the Redbird Focus, recently described by Dr. 

 Wood (MS., 1956) . Here again, however, difficulties are encountered. 

 All of the pottery occurring in sites of this focus is markedly different 

 from that at the Ponca Fort site. These ceramics suggest that the 

 Redbird Focus is related to both the Lower Loup Focus of the Central 

 Plains, which is thought to represent the Pawnee of late prehistoric 

 and early historic times, and the La Roche Focus of the Middle Mis- 

 souri area, which seems to represent another Caddoan-speaking group, 

 the Arikara. 



We must say, then, that at the present time the prehistoric archeo- 

 logical remains of the Ponca tribe remain to be identified and that 



