106 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 195 



Because the recipient of the pipe was always obliged to give the 

 donor a large number of valuable gifts, certain unscrupulous persons, 

 in the early reservation period, used the Pipe dance to live by the 

 industry of others. Although in theory a man might refuse the gift 

 of tobacco, most were in fact too proud to do so, even when they 

 knew the donor was a rascal and they were too poor to accept. This 

 fact was cited by EBC as one reason for the decline of the ceremony. 

 It has not been performed since the 1890's in the Niobrara area. It 

 persisted until about 1920 in Oklahoma. Though certain Southern 

 Ponca talk of reviving the Wd-wq as a powwow attraction, it is un- 

 likely that this will take place, as the fear of "doing something wrong" 

 and thus incurring supernatural punishment is still strong among the 

 older men, the only ones capable of reviving the ritual. 



A very interesting fact not noted by the various writers who have 

 discussed the Ponca Wd-wq is that the drum used to accompany the 

 dance was a hollow-log water drum, of the type used by the Ojibwa 

 and other Central Algonquian tribes in their Medicine Lodge rites. 

 Parrish Williams, who mentioned this to me, stated that this type of 

 drum was not used by the Ponca in any other dance or ceremony. 

 Their use of the drum in this dance indicates either a considerable 

 antiquity for the Ponca ceremony or that it was a more recent 

 borrowing from some tribe in the Eastern Woodland area. 



The last of the three Ponca dances which PLC considers most 

 important is the Heduska or "War" dance. In his "History" (p. 21) 

 he writes: "The best dance is caUed Hay-thu-schka, known as the 

 war dance; it is said that anyone that is not well and feeling bad and 

 anyone that is mourning, the sound of the drum will revive them and 

 make them happy." Skinner (1915 c, pp. 784-785), in his discussion 

 of Ponca societies, gives an excellent description of the dance. 



This dance, which was at one time merely one of several "owned" 

 by Ponca warrior societies, was apparently borrowed from the Pawnee 

 at an early date. It has now been a part of Ponca culture for so 

 long, however, that they consider it their own, and even have an 

 origin legend which explains its introduction. Skinner (ibid., p. 

 784) writes: "According to Charlie CoUins, this society originated 

 among the Ponca, and was founded by a woman who dreamed she 

 went to another world where she saw Indians dancing," My own 

 informant, Sylvester Warrior, was quite indignant when I suggested 

 that the Ponca had borrowed the dance from some other tribe, 

 saying: "There are too many songs in the dance which tell of Ponca 

 being blessed by Wakdnda." 



As mentioned above, the Heduska was originally a warrior's dancing 

 society. Like other societies of this type, it had a roster of officers, 

 including a drumkeeper, eight dance leaders, and two whip men who 

 started each dance episode and who whipped reluctant dancers across 



