Howard] THE PONCA TRIBE 153 



part you aren't using, back in the hole. Then sprinkle tobacco in the hole, pray- 

 ing again. This is to thank Mother Earth for her gift. After you have dug the 

 root, scrape it very carefully, and thread it on a string to dry. 



PLC remarked that dried Mayflies and the bladder of a young 

 rabbit had been used by Whiteshirt, the Northern Ponca chief and 

 shaman, in his "doctoring way." PLC had learned this when he was 

 a young man, from a chance remark made by Whiteshirt, but had 

 failed to ask for fmi:her information. Had he done so, Whiteshirt 

 would have taught him their uses. "I was foolish not to ask him when 

 I had the chance." 



Adam Le Claire, a Southern Ponca, is known as a "bleeding doctor." 

 Persons who are not feeling well go to him to have their blood "thin- 

 ned." He taps a vein in the arm with a small steel lancet (formerly a 

 flint knife was used) and removes a quantity of blood. May Kimball, 

 also a Southern Ponca, stated that when she was a girl she had been 

 doctored in this way by having cuts made in her temples. It is not 

 known whether "bleeding" of this sort is an aboriginal practice or, 

 one acquired from the major "White" culture where it was extensively 

 practiced until about one hundred years ago and is still used today for 

 the treatment of high blood pressure and certain heart ailments. At 

 any rate it was, and is, practiced by a number of American Indian 

 tribes of the Prairie and Plains region as far north as the Plains-Ojibwa. 



Some Ponca ideas concerning death are recorded by J. O. Dorsey 

 (1894, p. 374), who writes: 



About eighteen years ago, the author was told by the Ponka, . . . that they 

 believed death to be caused by certain malevolent spirits, whom they feared. In 

 order to prevent future visits of such spirits, the survivors gave away all their 

 property, hoping that as they were in such a wretched plight the spirits would 

 not think it worth while to make them more unhappy. 



Here we have an excellent explanation of the Prairie and Plains 

 custom of the "give-away." 



Whitman (1939, p. 184) notes that: "Xubes were said to have short 

 lives. They were also liable to lose their children." He (1937, p. 

 97) also records the Ponca beHef that a medicine man could prevent 

 sickness, so that when it came time to die, he suddenly dropped dead. 



After a person died, his spirit continued to exist. Dorsey (1894, 

 p. 419) writes: 



They have a very crude belief. Each person is thought to have a wandxe or 

 spirit, which does not perish at death. According to Joseph La Fleche and Two 

 Crows, the old men used to say to the people . . . i.e. "If you are good, you will 

 go to the good ghosts. If you are bad, you will go to the bad ghosts." Nothing 

 was ever said of going to dwell with Wakanda, or with demons. 



Also (p. 421) : 



There has been no belief in the resurrection of the body, but simply one in the 

 continued existence of the ghost or spirit. 



