Description
In the 1700s the Ponca Indians separated from the Omaha tribe and established villages along the Niobrara River and Ponca Creek in present Nebraska and South Dakota. There they subsisted on horticulture and bison hunts. Until the arrival of the Teton Sioux circa 1750, the Poncas' territory stretched from the Missouri River to the Black Hills. Smallpox and other diseases in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reduced their numbers. Sioux warfare forced their withdrawal to an area near the mouth of the Niobrara River. The Ponca never warred with the United States, with whom they signed their first peace treaty in 1817. A trade agreement followed in 1825. In 1858 and 1865 the Ponca also signed land cession treaties in return for military protection and economic assistance.
Language
Omaha–Ponca is a Siouan language
Culture
Poncas were organized around the horticultural calendar: planting gardens in the spring and harvesting in the fall, bison hunts in the summer and winter seasons. Hunting and horticulture were supplemented by gathering wild plants and herbs for food and healing. The Poncas utilized a vast area of the Central Great Plains for trading, hunting, horse raiding, and visiting. In all, they claimed an area extending from the Missouri River on the east to the Black Hills and foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the west, and from the White River in the north to the Platte River in the south.