Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 51 



meetings, hand games, and other festivities mark Easter, Memorial 

 Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. 



MATEKIAL CULTUEE AND HOUSING 



Ponca material culture shows both the Woodland heritage of the 

 tribe and its later Prairie-Plains orientation. Thus the artifact in- 

 ventory of the 19th-century Ponca includes not only most of the items 

 common to the "classic" High Plains groups but also most of those 

 common to the Central Algonquians as well. The material culture 

 of the tribe was therefore rich and varied. 



Ponca woodworking could not be termed highly developed, though 

 many useful articles were made of wood. These included Woodland- 

 type corn mortars, the smaller perfume and medicine mortars, bows, 

 arrows, spears, war clubs, and quirt handles. The last mentioned, 

 particularly, were often beautifully carved and ornamented. Articles 

 were roughed out with an ax or knife, then finished by rubbing with 

 sandstone, scoria, or the scouring-rush, all of which served the Ponca 

 woodcarver in the same way as sandpaper does the contemporary 

 craftsman. 



Woodworking in the Indian style has all but disappeared among 

 the Northern Ponca, though PLC still makes fine carved Indian canes, 

 and in 1961 he made me an excellent carving of Indddinge, the Ponca 

 wood sprite. Among the Southern Ponca the Peyote religion has 

 prompted a revival of woodcarving, and the wooden boxes in which 

 the feathers, gourds, drumsticks, and other ritual objects are kept are 

 sometimes decorated with fine geometric and realistic designs m bas- 

 relief. The staffs and drumsticks also are beautifully worked. Often 

 white Indian paint is rubbed over the finished carvmg on these ob- 

 jects to bring out the design. Well-carved cradleboards of the com- 

 mon Central Algonquian and Southern Siouan type were made mitil 

 about 1915. Dance mirrors and batons also were beautifully done, 

 sometimes with lead or i^ewter inlay work. One common type of 

 dance mirror featured a horse's head as the mirror handle. 



Until about 1900 collapsible "lazy-backs" or backrests, for use in 

 the tipi, were made of willow rods threaded on sinew. These were 

 kept rigid with chokecherry braces when in use. The bracing rods 

 were unpeeled and were decorated with geometric designs cut into 

 the bark. When not in use such backrests could be rolled up for 

 storage or transport. 



The inner bark of the Tilia americana, as well as nettle and elm 

 bark fiber, was used for making cordage and ropes (Gilmore, 1919, 

 pp. 102, 77, 76). Basketry was moderately developed, and Gilmore 



