88 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 77 
buffaloe in the village itself.” (Lewis and Clark, (1), I, pp. 66-67.) 
The “river Poncara,” later to be known as Ponca Creek, enters the 
right bank of the Missouri in the western part of the present Knox 
County, Nebraska. Here they continued to live for some years, and 
during the spring of 1833 Maximilian said they “ dwell on both sides 
of Running-water River, and on Ponca Creek, which Lewis and 
Clark call Poncara.” Running-water River was the earlher name 
of the Niobrara. “The band of them, which we met with here, has 
set up eight or nine leather tents, at the mouth of Basi] Creek, on a 
fine forest.” On May 12, 1833, appears this note in the narrative: 
Arrived “opposite the huts of the Punca Indians. They lay in the 
shade of a forest, like white cones, and, in front of them, a sand bank 
extended into the river, which was separated from the land by a 
narrow channel. The whole troop was assembled on the edge of the 
bank, and it was amusing to see how the motley group crowded to- 
gether, wrapped in brown buffalo skins, white and red blankets— 
some naked, of a deep brown colour.” (Maximilian, (1), pp. 137— 
139.) A sketch made at that time by Bodmer and reproduced by 
Maximilian is here shown in plate 29. It bears the legend “ Punka 
Indians Encamped on the Banks of the Missouri.” 
Although at that time living in the typical skin tipi, Maximilian 
stated (p. 187), “They formerly lived, like the Omahas, in clay huts 
at the mouth of the river, but their powerful enemies, the Sioux and 
the Pawnees, destroyed their villages, and they have since adopted 
the mode of life of the former, living more generally in tents made 
of skins, and changing their place from time to time.” The village 
visited by members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, September 5, 
1804, when they “killed a buffaloe in the village itself,” was probably 
composed of earth-covered lodges. 
When discovering a trail, or rather tracks made by a number 
of Indians crossing the prairie, it was often possible to determine 
the nature of the party. The Ponca, who often moved from place to 
place, setting up their tipis in various localities during the course of 
the year, could have been held in mind by Gregg when he wrote: 
“These lodges are always pitched or set up by the squaws, and with 
such expedition, that, upon the stopping of an itinerant band, a town 
springs up in a desert valley in a few minutes, as if by enchantment. 
The lodge-poles are often neatly prepared, and carried along from 
camp to camp. In conveying them one end frequently drags on the 
eround, whereby the trail is known to be that of a band with 
families, as war parties never carry lodge-poles.” (Gregg, (1), HU, 
pp. 286-288.) The rapidity and skill with which the squaws set up 
and arranged the tipis, when the site of the camp had been selected, 
was commented on by many writers, and what an interesting and 
animated scene it must have been. 
