The Ponca people are part of the Dhegihan tribe, which belongs to the Siouan language, and they are Natives of Midwestern America. The name Ponca belongs to the Kansa, Ouapaws, and Osage clan, meaning ‘Cut Throat.’ The Ponca people are subdivided into two major tribes, namely the Nebraska Ponca tribe and the Indian tribe of Oklahoma. The Ponca people’s historical accounts show that they originated from east of the Mississippi River, then went to the Ohio Valley, and after that, migrated to the western side after the breakage of the Iroquois Wars. It’s said that the Ponca tribes first lived North of Nebraska near the Niobrara River, having migrated from East of Mississippi from the settlement of the Columbus people in America.
Later, they migrated out of Ohio River settlements together with the Osage, Omaha, and the Quapaw tribes as a result of the Iroquois War. It’s the Iroquois who gained control of the Ohio River area, where they made the ground their hunting area. According to Pierre Charles Le Sueur’s map of 1701, the Ponca tribe appear to have been present, having been placed on the upper side of the Missouri area. It was in 1789 that Juan Munier Baptiste got the license to perform trade with the Ponca people in their area of residence, the Niobrara River area. The Ponca people at the time were about 800 but later were hit by smallpox a deadly epidemic disease leaving on about 200 people by the time Clark Expedition and Lewis were visiting the place in 1804. However, the Ponca tribe had risen to a considerable number of about 700 people in the 19th century.
Their enemies constantly attacked the Ponca people, and around 1924, the Lakotas tribe, who were very hostile, attacked a large number of Ponca ranking leaders, including the famous smoke maker leader and only a few survived. The leaders were coming from a friendly Oglala Lakota camp at the time of the attack. Many Plain Indians were hunters, but the Ponca people mainly grew vegetables and maize, and their only known time to be hunting was way back in 1855 when they successfully hunted Buffalos. By 1817, the Ponca people agreed to sign a treaty with the United States, and in 1825, they signed another one, regulating trade and trying to settle intertribal clashes in the plains.
The Ponca people later signed another treaty and gave up part of their land to the United States in exchange for permanent residence in their Niobrara areas of residence and protection against hostile tribes that regularly attacked the Ponca people. The Ponca lastly signed another treaty known as the Fort Laramie of the Great Sioux Reservation with the United States in 1868, whereby the US mistakenly included it in the United reservation of the Sioux Lakota. They claimed all of the land, leaving Ponca without any land, thus forcing the US to force the Ponca people out of their ancestral land. The US offered another reservation, but the Ponca leaders found the land unfit to support agriculture, their primary source of livelihood, so they moved to the Indian territories. However, the government later came to force the Ponca people out, whereby the Ponca cited their treaty, which was revoked and forced out of the region.
The Ponca tribes faced a lot of problems, including the US government’s failure to honour their signed treaties dating back from 1817 to 1865. The Ponca tribe, just like other Nebraska tribes, were forcefully moved out of their land, witnessing their ancestral land shrinking down, and thus moved to the present US Oklahoma state. The US government signed four different treaties with the Ponca people, whereby the Ponca gave a large chunk of land to the government. Later, after being moved to the Indian territories, present Oklahoma state, they were only given a small piece of land as the residence with limited facilities, resulting in a significant number of deaths after the move to the Indian territories. Later a report by Indian commissioner would reveal that the objective for revoking the signed tries mainly was because there was plan to colonize and take away Ponca people’s land. Also, The Sioux tribe was very hostile towards the Ponca tribe, and they repeatedly attacked them from the western side of Niobrara.
