ae > 
222 Migrayons of Siouan Tribes. [ March, 
or more. If the Ponkas use the term in this sense, and are cor- 
rect in so doing, they may have had a tribal existence for about 
490 or 500 years. This would extend back as far as A. D. 1390 
or 1380. (It was told the writer in 1880.) Let us see how this 
agrees with the reports of early writers taken in connection with 
the period required for the migrations which have been described. 
We must remember that in those days firearms were unknown, 
and that therefore the destruction of game was not as rapid as it 
now is; that horses could not be had, rendering locomotion very 
slow ; that removals from permanent villages (such removals de- 
pending on the destruction and departure of game) need not have 
been at very short intervals, especially when the construction of 
of such villages was a work of great labor, owing to the primi- 
tive character of the tools employed, and has a religious signifi- 
cance, being accompanied with sundry mystic rites, some of 
which are still preserved among the Osages and Kansas. 
The director of the Bureau of Ethnology found a tradition 
among some of the civilized tribes in the Indian Territory, refer- 
ing to the ancestors of the Kwapas, etc., which agrees with what 
has been said, 2. e., that they dwelt east of the Mississippi prior to. 
A. D. 1700. In 1673 Marquette had heard of the Maha (Oma- 
has), Pana (Ponkas ?), Pahoutet (Iowas, Pagotce) and Otontantas 
(Otos), as inhabiting the country on the right bank of the Mis- 
souri river. The separation of the Iowas, Omahas and Ponkas, 
and therefore all previous migrations, must have occurred before 
1673. Furthermore, the separation of the Kwapas from the 
others, and the taking of these correlative names, Kwapa and 
Omaha, must have occurred prior to A. D. 1 540, as De Soto met 
the Kwapas in that year. 
Even at the present day, when horses have been available, the 
Omahas have remained in a permanent village for ten years at a: 
time, and have returned repeatedly to such an old village. We 
have no recorded tradition of similar returns to favorite villages 
in prehistoric times, yet such returns may have occurred, and if. 
known would tend to increase the duration of the period between 
the meeting of the white men and the time when the Indians 
~ In question were east of the Mississippi river. 
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