Ponca

“ The agent reports:
"The Ponca Indians are in no way addicted to drinking or gambling, neither will they spend their money for whisky. They fully understand the use of money, and will use it to the very best possible advantage. I am fully of the opinion that if their annuity were paid to them in money, they would use it more judiciously for their comfort than it could possibly be used for them in the purchase of goods. The Poncas are the most peaceable and law-abiding of any of the tribes of Indians. ”

“ The buck, on the other hand, was a rough-looking specimen of a Ponca.
“Speakin’ free an’ free, as between men an’ feller [42] sports,” observed Nomad, “I kain’t blame ther gal none fer runnin’ erway.”
“Me know um Pa-c-has-ka,” said Big Thunder calmly. “Him friend of Poncas, and him got good heart. Him no let squaw get away from Ponca brave.”
“What is your name?” asked the scout of the girl.
“Wah-coo-tah,” was the answer. ”

“ About the first of October the Ponca chief came to Brother Miller, and informed him that they were about to start for their winter hunting ground, to hunt buffalo, elk and deer, to get robes and meat, and wished to have a few of our young men accompany them. He mentioned me, stating that I was good and kind to his people, mending bullet pouches, etc., for them. That same evening, after several of our young men had proposed to go with the Indians on their hunt, Bishop Miller said, calling me by name, "I would like you to go with them if you had not those fearful sores on your legs. ”

“ In the village of Quarequá was found much needed food, and some gold. So toilsome had been the march that eighteen days had passed since leaving Careta's town. And here Vasco Nuñez rested for the night, nursing his wounded, and cheering the sick and down-hearted. The guides whom Ponca had furnished, and who had proved of incalculable service to the explorers, were dismissed to their home with presents, and with hearts made glad by the destruction of Porque. So rolls round the planet inexorable nature, detested death giving hourly joy to universal life. ”

“ That besotted Ponca promptly accepts the Gray Wolf challenge for a second contest.
The day arrives. The race is to be run on the Osage course—a quarter of a mile, straight-away—at the Pauhauska agency. Two thousand Osages and Poncas are gathered together. There is no laughter, no uproar, no loud talk; all is gravity, dignity and decorum. The stakes are one thousand dollars a side, for Gray Wolf and Dull Ox are opulent pagans.
The ponies are brought up and looked over. The fires of a thousand racing ancestors burn in the eyes of the Spirit ”

“ With all his savage and terrific qualities, he was sensible of the power of female beauty, and capable of love. A war party of the Poncas had made a foray into the lands of the Omahas, and carried off a number of women and horses. The Blackbird was roused to fury, and took the field with all his braves, swearing to "eat up the Ponca nation"—the Indian threat of exterminating war. ”

“ The details of the case did not come clearly to my knowledge until the Ponca chiefs arrived in Washington and told their story. I concluded that they had suffered great hardship in losing the reservation originally conferred upon them by treaty, after a so-called consent which appeared not to have been a free expression of their will. They had also endured many disasters on their way to the Indian Territory, and after their arrival there were greatly afflicted by disease and lost a large number of their people by death. ”

“ I at once employed from the young men of the tribe a suitable number for the purpose, and at five o'clock p. m. had the entire tribe with their effects across the river, off the reservation, and in camp in Nebraska."
Twenty-five soldiers had been in service at the Ponca agency while the "consent" of the one hundred and seventy was being secured; they seem to have furnished the necessary showing of force. Confronted with the choice of going either "peaceably or by force," these unarmed people naturally concluded to go peaceably. ”

“ The Santee agent's report for the ensuing year takes notice of them:
"In my report last year I spoke of a number of Ponca Indians who had come among the Santees. Since then they have nearly all left, and they are now living on an island, about three miles above Niobrara, adjoining their old reservation. I visited them a short time ago and found they numbered 103 souls. They have considerable corn; are making hay and building houses for the winter. They have been and are now receiving some assistance from an organization at Omaha which has been created for their relief." ”

“ J. Owen Dorsey, who has made such prolonged and careful studies of the manners and myths of the tribes of the Siouan stock, is authority for the statement that the worst insult that one Ponca can give another is to say, “You are an eater of dog-dung;” and it is noticeable that the words of the expression are rarely used in the language of every-day life. ”

“ Having been a man of military training, he may have been rather inclined to summary methods; moreover it is probable that as the Ponca reserve had been ceded to the Sioux by the treaty of 1868, and as Congress had provided also that the Sioux should be removed to the Missouri River, and the Sioux were the same year to occupy that part of the country, the removal of the Poncas may have appeared to Mr. Kemble a necessity, in order to prevent a collision between them and the Sioux which would have been highly detrimental to both. ”

“ The public attention has frequently been called to the injustice and wrong which the Ponca tribe of Indians has suffered at the hands of the Government of the United States. This subject was first brought before Congress and the country by the Secretary of the Interior in his annual report for the year 1877, in which he said:
The case of the Poncas seems entitled to especial consideration at the hands of Congress. They have always been friendly to the whites. It is said, and, as far as I have been able to learn, truthfully, that no Ponca ever killed a white man. ”

“ It will make a fitting conclusion to this sketch of the history of the Ponca tribe. The name of this agent was E. A. Howard. He calls the report “Journal of the March.”
“May 21st. Broke camp at seven o’clock and marched to Crayton, a distance of thirteen miles. Roads very heavy. The child that died yesterday was here buried by the Indians, they preferring to bury it than to have it buried by the white people.
“May 22d. Broke camp at seven o'clock and marched to Neligh, a distance of about twenty-five miles. ”

“ White Eagle, one of the Ponca chiefs, who had lost his wife and four children, and who was himself fast sinking under disease developed by the malarial Indian Territory, came to Washington and gave eloquent testimony in behalf of his tribe. The physicians there predicted that he had not three months to live, A bill was introdueed into Congress for restoring to the Poncas their old reservation in Dakota, and putting their houses, farms, etc., in the same good condition they were at the time of their removal. ”

“ You might lose your house. If you ever want a home come to me or my tribe. You shall never want as long as we have anything. All the tribe in the Indian Territory will soon know what you have done. While there is one Ponca alive you will never be without a friend." [1]
But freedom did not bring with it the restoration of a single right to their goods and lands. They were destitute, and without a home. The members of the Omaha Committee, with substantial aid from many other friends of the Indian, succeeded in gathering about one hundred of the refugee Poncas near their old reservation. ”

“ The most miserable of all the official excuses put forward was based upon an incomprehensible blunder of the Government. It will be remembered that in 1858 the Poncas had their home guaranteed to them by solemn treaty. In 1868 a treaty was entered into with the Sioux, and, in loosely defining the bounds of their reservation as the Missouri River on the east and Nebraska on the south, the entire Ponca reservation, lying just north of the Nebraska line, was unwittingly included in that allotted to the Sioux. ”

“ Had we then proposed to Congress the return of the Poncas, and obtained authority and money for that purpose, and a new Indian war had ensued, which was not only possible, but, from the information we received from that quarter, appeared probable, the folly of such a step would have been more seriously and more generally condemned than all the wrongs done to the Poncas are now. ”

“ The Indian ring sought eagerly for some especially favored spot for the powerful chiefs, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud; something to serve up to them as a token of kindly regard.
There, at the southeast corner of the great reserve, was the land of the Poncas,—a prize for any Indian chief. And why not? One hundred and fifty houses, five hundred acres of growing crops,—just the place to teach the astute Spotted Tail, or Red Cloud, the warrior, the gentle arts of the white man.
The Poncas? Some eight hundred of them—what were they compared to the recovery of the Black Hills? The treaty? ”

“ The story of this journey and of its results is best told in the words of one of the Ponca chiefs, Standing Bear. No official document, no other man's narrative—no, not if a second Horner should arise to sing it—could tell the story so well as he tells it:
“We lived on our land as long as we can remember. No one knows how long ago we came there. The land was owned by our tribe as far back as memory of men goes.
“We were living quietly on our farms. All of a sudden one white man came. We had no idea what for. This was the inspector. He cane to our tribe with Rev. Mr. ”

“ One Secretary of the Interior at the point of the bayonet had caused all the Poncas Indians to be driven from northern Nebraska down to Indian Territory, depriving them of lands to which they held government deeds. They were left in the new country for months without rations, and more than one third of them died. Among these was the son of Standing Bear. The old chief refused to have the boy buried in the strange country, and, gathering about thirty members of his tribe together, he started for their ancient hunting-grounds, intending to bury his boy where generations of the Poncas chiefs lay. ”

“ A second and a third flight of arrows, and the rushing Poncas were thrown into confusion. Those in the rear were thrown by the floundering bodies of the wounded ponies in the front, the fury of their momentum hurling them pellmell into the valley below. Then the Omahas swept down the valley, as the eagle sweeps, with the battle cry upon their lips, and the remnant of the attacking Poncas turned and fled up the steep hillside to their village. ”

“ Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas and Osages.
The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska.
When the captains, Lewis and Clark, met some of them, the tribe had been cut by the small-pox to only some two hundred people. They never have been a big people. Their number today, about eight hundred and fifty, is as large as ever in their history. ”

“ A year after their removal to the Indian Territory, the Poncas, again removed one hundred and eighty-five miles farther west, were still living in tents; their agent says:
"Their sufferings have greatly discouraged and made them dissatisfied with this location, and they express a strong desire to go back to their old reservation in Dakota. ”

“ The only hope of these farmer Indians now lies in the provision for their consent. The worst that the Commissioner had hinted at as being in store for the Poncas was removal to the Omaha reservation,—in eastern Nebraska, not a great distance from their own. The Omahas were intermarried extensively with the Poncas, and a removal to that reservation would have entailed no extraordinary hardship. ”

“ A rich proprietor in the cordilleras is often seen with such a poncho, and the quality of the garment, the length of time it will turn rain, etcetera, are favourite subjects of conversation with the wearers of them. Of course everybody in those parts possesses one, as everybody in England or the United States must have a great coat; but the ponchos of the poorer classes of Peruvians—the Indian labourers, shepherds, and miners—are usually manufactured out of the coarse wool of the llama. Only the ‘ricos’ can afford the beautiful fabric of the vicuña’s fleece. ”

“ Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between those inexorable knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts ”

“ Or, if it be autumn or winter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice at once gruff and feeble, an old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right and left, in potato or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble—but now his sight is dim and wavering, and his touch trembles on the trigger. The covey whirrs off, unharmed in a single feather—and poor Ponto, remembering better days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's heel, and will range no more. Out, as usual, comes the brandy-bottle—he is still a good shot when his mouth is the mark ”