Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 29 



Sioux as bison hunters" (Report of Pilcher and Dougherty, Aug. 

 27, 1935). 



At times the Ponca were even forced by their Dakota overlords to 

 join the latter tribe in raids on the Omaha, close linguistic and 

 cultural relatives of the Ponca. Thus Thos. H. Harvey, writing to 

 Wm. Medill, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, notes : 



The Omahas are a poor dispirited people. They have for some years been 

 living about eighty miles above Council Bluffs near the Missouri River. Owing 

 to the frequent attacks of the Sioux and Poncas they have for several years 

 made but little corn, and have consequently been exceedingly poor and desti- 

 tute. [Letter of Harvey to Medill, Sept. 5, 1846.] 



In this incessant raiding by the Dakota we see a pattern which 

 was to become well-established in the latter half of the 19th century. 

 The semisedentary village tribes, attached to their earth-lodge villages 

 and cornfields, were no match for the well-mounted and well-armed 

 Dakota, who always knew both the exact strength and the precise 

 location of their victims. Yoimg Dakota warriors, eager for war 

 honors, would snipe at the settlements of the village tribes from a 

 safe distance, or try to pick off isolated hunters or farmers. When 

 pursuit was organized by their victims, they simply retreated to the 

 Plains, where their pursuers feared to follow them because of the 

 danger of ambush. 



All of the village tribes were exposed to this harassment : Pawnee, 

 Omaha, Ponca, Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa. These raids on the 

 Ponca began shortly before midcentury and continued unabated un- 

 til the time of the Ponca Removal in 1877. In his autobiography, 

 Luther Standing Bear, a Teton Dakota chief, tells of his participa- 

 tion, as a small boy, in one of the last of such raids. Like most of the 

 raids the Teton launched against the Ponca, this raid was motivated 

 only by a "dislike" of the Ponca. However, all but two members of 

 this particular raiding party were turned back before they reached 

 the Ponca country by an aged Dakota chief bearing a peace pipe 

 (Standing Bear, 1928, pp. 75-77) . 



In the autumn of 1846 a small group of Mormon settlers arrived 

 in the Ponca country. This band of immigrants had been invited 

 to the Niobrara villages by a group of Ponca who had found them 

 camped near the Pawnee village at Genoa, Nebr. The Mormons had 

 with them a small cannon, and it may have been the thought of how 

 useful this item would be against the Dakota that prompted the Ponca 

 invitation. The Mormons, called "Momnona" by the Ponca, were 

 given some provisions to tide them over and assigned a camping spot 

 near the "Gray blanket" village. In 1908 an impressive granite shaft 

 was erected at this site. 



