26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 195 



fear that the upriver tribes, such as the Arikara and Dakota, would 

 acquire guns which would later be turned on the Ponca. The traders, 

 of course, were anxious to deal directly with the upriver groups, since 

 the farther one got from the settlements the less common trade items 

 became, and the greater the number of furs that could be secured for 

 them. This Indian piracy, which was practiced by both the Omaha 

 and Ponca, as well as the various Dakota bands on the Missouri, delayed 

 for a considerable period the development of trade on the Upper 

 Missouri, not to mention the considerable financial loss to the com- 

 panies involved. For example, Zenon Trudeau, Lieutenant Governor 

 of Spanish Illinois and Commandant at St. Louis, reported that one 

 trading expedition moving up the Missouri was pillaged by the Ponca, 

 the loss involving a sum of 7,000 pesos (ibid., p. 374) . 



The Ponca were also, of course, securing many trade items through 

 legitimate chamiels, sometimes from British posts to the northeast. 

 Materials traded to the Ponca at this period, or stolen by them, 

 probably included guns, powder and ball, gunflints, wormscrews, large 

 and small knives, awls, hatchets, pickaxes, hammers, kettles, medals, 

 flags, tobacco, combs, vermillion, cloth, and blankets, as all of these 

 items are mentioned by J. B. Trudeau as items he carried with him 

 as stock in trade (ibid., pp. 259-294). Wood (1959, p. 15) reports 

 that of these items guns, hatchets, cooking kettles, and cloth were 

 represented from burials and other features of the Ponca Fort, which 

 was occupied by the Ponca at this time. 



Less welcome "gifts" from the Wd-ge or White man were the vari- 

 ous European diseases, to which the Ponca and other tribes of the 

 area had little resistance. In the winter of 1800-1801, for example, 

 a disastrous smallpox epidemic struck all of the tribes on the Missouri. 

 Hardest hit were the Omaha and Dakota, the Ponca being affected to 

 a lesser degree. So weakened by the disease were the Omaha that, 

 although they set out on their customary fall and winter bison hmit, 

 they were not able to hunt effectively, and starvation threatened the 

 lives of the survivors. It was at this point that the Omaha acciden- 

 tally encountered the Ponca, also engaged in their autumn hunt. 



The Ponca "tribal memory" or traditional history clearly pictures 

 this meeting — the initial shouts of friendly recognition which quickly 

 fade as the Omaha draw nearer and the Ponca perceive the faces and 

 bodies of the Omaha still covered with the hideous pustules and scurf 

 left by the dread disease. Fearing another outbreak of the disease, 

 the Ponca warned their Omaha kinsmen to come no closer. So 

 desperate for food were the Omaha, however, that with their last 

 strength they lamichecl an attack on the Ponca, driving them from 

 their camp and stores of dried meat. Fearing the disease more than 

 their human antagonists, the Ponca offered little resistance. 



