Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 75 



mentions that the Ponca believed that if the "person in the moon" 

 appeared to a youth in a dream, this caused the youth to become a 

 homosexual. PLC and OK did not know of this belief. 



Concerning the solar eclipse, PLC remarked: "The old Poncas 

 thought that when an eclipse came the sun was dead. They called 

 an eclipse Mi-t'e, which means 'dead sun.' Today we know that 

 the sun never dies. It is just the moon coming between the sun 

 and the earth." 



AMC supplied the following: 



The old time Poncas paid a lot of attention to the stars, and had names for 

 many of the constellations. The Ponca HtlSuga or camping circle was based 

 upon the circles of stars in the sky. The Milky Way we call Wakq-ozige, or 

 "the holy path." Its movement was used for reckoning time. The North 

 star is called Mikd-skqAzi, or "the star that doesn't move." It was used by hunt- 

 ers and travelers to find their way. The old time Poncas watched the moon 

 too. In its last quarter the moon was called Ml-t'e or "dead moon." We look 

 for signs of storm at that time. 



J. O. Dorsey (1894, p. 379) writes: "That the Omaha and Ponka 

 regarded the stars as Wakandas [gods or spirits] seems probable from 

 the existence of Nikie- [a name referring to an ancestor] names and 

 the personal mystery decorations." 



A Ponca thunder god called Igdq is mentioned by Dorsey (1885 a, 

 p. 105), but he goes on to say "They have no theories about the 

 origin of earthquakes, rain, snow, or hail . . . ." I, too, was unable 

 to secure from Ponca informants many explanations of meteorological 

 phenomena which seemed to be of an aboriginal type. G. A. Dorsey 

 (1905, p. 69), however, in writing of the Ponca Sun dance pole, states: 

 "In the fork of the pole is the nest of the Thunder bird, sometimes 

 spoken of by the Ponca as an eagle, sometimes as a brant or loon. 

 This bird produces rain, thunder, and lightning." George Phillips, 

 an Omaha, said that the members of his tribe caU the nighthawk 

 (Chordeiks minor subsp.) "Thunderbird" and believe that when 

 they hear its cry a storm is near. They believe that the bird lives 

 underwater in a spring about 1 mile north of Macy, Nebr. Phillips 

 remarked: "We have seen them fly in there." 



PLC said that the members of the Nuxe clan "knew aU about water 

 and ice." He mentions this in his "History" (p. 19) as weU. The 

 Hisada clan are noted as "rainmakers" in the same source. He 

 described the rainmaking ceremony of this clan as follows: "They 

 make rains by rolling up bunches of redgrass, like is used in building 

 earth lodges, and making a fire and burning some. Then some more 

 is dampened, and this is put on top. This forms a gas and it explodes. 

 This brings rain. It never fails. All of this is done with prayers." 

 Fletcher and La Flesche (1911, p. 47), who mention the Hisada as a 

 subclan of the "Wathabe," state that this group had charge of the 



