Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 21 



them, he said let them grow and get ripe as God has given us some liind of fruit, 

 we will move camp and when they are ripened we will come back. When they 

 came back there stood the stalks and still they didn't know what they were. 

 There was a man in the camp they called Mi-sah, this means "Smarty" or blow- 

 hard. He husked one of the ears and started a fire, he roasted it and ate some 

 of it and said it is good. We call it Wah-tan-zee. The head chief said pick it 

 all and pass it around camp, we will plant it in the Spring. There were four 

 colors of it, red, white, blue, and yellow. After they started to plant it the 

 Police were asked to watch it. No one is allowed to go near it, even the owners 

 are kept away, until it is ripe and ready to be prepared for winter use. 



The best dance is called Hay-thu-schka, known as the war dance; it is said 

 that any one that is not well and feeling bad and anyone that is mourning, the 

 sound of the drum will revive them and make them happy. 



Long time ago before there were any kind of cut beads and bells there was 

 another man they called Mi-sah (Smarty or blowhard) as he is known made 

 remarks that he is going to have shiny beads, bells, and nice blankets on some 

 day and all the girls will admire him while he is dancing. This dance ends up 

 in prayers. 



While the Ponca were living in their village near the town of Niobrara, there 

 came wagons drawn by oxen they called them Monmona.'" They were real 

 friendly people. They camped near the little channel on the west side of it,'" 

 and stayed one year 1846 and one day chief Wah-gah-sah-pi told them of a good 

 place out west part of his hunting ground, he told them that they might find a 

 place that will suit them. 



In the Spring of 1847 they moved on their way out west. All of the old people 

 hold this meeting of the Mormons as a sacred thing, even of the present day. 

 The younger ones feel the same.*' When the Great Sioux Treaty of 1868 was 

 made at Fort Laramie by some blunder that no one has ever been able to explain, 

 the whole Ponca reservation which has been guaranteed to the tribe over and over 

 again in repeated treaties with the National Government was given to their 

 deadly enemies the Brule and Ogalala Sioux. Soon their enemies understood 

 that the Ponca Territory had been given them by this treaty, their raids became 

 more fierce and frequent. The seven years that followed this treaty were years 

 when the Poncas were obliged to work their gardens and cornfields as did the 

 Pilgrims in New England or the early settlers of Kentucky with hoe in one hand 

 and rifles in the other. In 1876 Congress passed an act providing for the 

 removal of the Poncas to Indian Territory in Oklahoma without their consent. 



In the Spring of 1877 the Poncas were busy putting away their crops, many 

 put in their corn and were engaged in gardening. A force of soldiers arrived 

 and orders were sent out for all the Indians to prepare to move at once to Indian 

 Territory but they were taken to Baxter Springs, Kansas where there was 

 nothing but rocks and the Poncas didn't like the place at all. There were heart- 

 breaking scenes in the little tribe. The Niobrara and Ponca had been their home 

 for so long they knew no other. The graves of a dozen generations were there. 

 The little fields were to be left. There were tears in the teepees and hot words 

 in the councils. The cooler heads prevented an outbreak and so the long march 

 to the South began. Arriving at their new home, the warm moist climate, so 

 different from the dry bracing air of their Nebraska home, brought on sickness. 

 Out of seven himdred and ten, one hundred and fifty-eight died the first year. 



^ The term "Monmona" is the Ponca pronunciation of the English name "Mormon." 

 ^ "It" refers to the Gray-blanket village, which was located approximately 2 miles west 



and 3 miles south of the present Niobrara, Nebr. 

 ^' From this point on, PLC seems to have borrowed heavily from some historical account 



of the Ponca Removal. 



m8-071— '65 3 



