University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 2002 Piecing Together The Ponca Past Reconstructing Degiha Migrations To The Great Plains Beth R. Ritter University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Ritter, Beth R., "Piecing Together The Ponca Past Reconstructing Degiha Migrations To The Great Plains" (2002). Great Plains Quarterly. 2307. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2307 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. PIECING TOGETHER THE PONCA PAST RECONSTRUCTING DEGIHA MIGRATIONS TO THE GREAT PLAINS BETH R. RITTER The twenty-first century presents opportu­ chronically underfunded annual appropria­ nities, as well as limitations, for the American tions for Native American health, housing, Indian Nations of the Great Plains. Oppor­ and social service programs. tunities include enhanced economic devel­ The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, terminated opment activities (e.g., casino gambling, in 1965 and restored to federally recognized telecommunications, and high-tech industries) status in 1990,1 embraces these challenges by and innovative tribal programming such as exploring the limits of self-governance, eco­ language immersion programs made possible nomic development opportunities, and cul­ through enhanced self-governance initiatives. tural revitalization initiatives. The Ponca Limitations include familiar scripts that per­ recognize they have experienced profound petually threaten tribal sovereignty and cultural loss over the past three centuries. Yet the definition of what it "means" to be Ponca has never been lost. Tribal termination was the culmination of generations of federal Indian policy that ad­ versely affected the Ponca.2 Historically, the KEY WORDS: Blood Run, Degiha, ethnohistory, migrations, Oneota, oral history, Ponca Ponca were a small tribe who suffered consid­ erably as a result of treaties of cession, forced Beth R. Ritter is Assistant Professor of Anthropology removal to Indian Territory, the subsequent and Native American Studies at the University of division of the tribe into "Northern" and Nebraska at Omaha. She has worked with the Ponca "Southern" entities, allotment, and the even­ Tribe of Nebraska since 1989 and has published on tual dispossession of all but 834 acres of their their history, culture, and experience as a terminated/ original estate.3 By the time the government res tored Tribe. enacted its termination policy in the 1950s, there was little left of the former estate of the [GPQ 22 (Fall 2002): 271-84l Northern Ponca to fight for. 271 272 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2002 Sou t h D a k 0 O'Neill. Io wa N e br as k a o Service Area * Headquarters • Field Office .\1. Doole ' FIG. 1. Map of service delivery areas of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska . The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska was restored settlement history of the tribe in order to make to federally recognized status on 31 October more informed policy decisions governing all 1990. The language of their restoration legis­ fifteen service delivery areas. This article syn­ lation specifically prohibits the tribe from ever thesizes tribal oral histories (recovered from seeking a residential reservation.4 Rather, it is legal and ethnographic sources), as well as allowed to deliver services (e.g., health, hous­ ethnohistorical and archeological evidence for ing, and social services) to their widely dis­ Ponca migration to and settlement in the Great persed membership who reside in fifteen Plains. counties in Nebraska, Iowa, and South Da­ kota (Fig. O. These counties include the cit­ DEGIHA MIGRATIONS ies of Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, and Norfolk in Nebraska, as well as Council Bluffs Many of the tribes historically and currently and Sioux City in Iowa. Tribal headquarters associated with the Great Plains originated are located in Niobrara, Nebraska. Field of­ from regions outside the Plains, particularly fices are located in Omaha, Lincoln, Norfolk, from the Eastern Woodlands. The Ponca and and Sioux City. The tribe is allowed to ac­ their close linguistic and cultural relatives, the quire trust land and deliver a full range of Omaha, Kaw (also known as Kansa), Quapaw, services in all of the fifteen counties that com­ and Osage, are one such example. Together, prise their service areas. the five cognate tribes are referred to as In 1998 the Tribal Council identified a need "Degiha-speakers" of Siouan linguistic stock. to better understand the early migration and The Degiha-speakers are also related lin- PIECING TOGETHER THE PONCA PAST 273 Proto-Siouan Southeastern (Biloxin, Ofo, Tutelo) Mississippi Valley \ Crow Hidatsa Chiwere /\ Dheglha Mandan Winnebago loway J\ Oto Ponca \ \ Yanktonai Missouri Quapaw Yankton Stoney Teton Assiniboin Santee Kansa Osage FIG. 2. Siouan language family. [Adapted from Hollow and Parks: Robert C. Hollow and Douglas R. Parks, "Studies in Plains Linguistics: A Review," Anthropology on the Great Plains, ed. Margot Liberty and W. Raymond Wood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), Fig. 1, p. 76.] guistically and culturally to the Chiwere divi­ speakers who originated from the vicinity of sion of Siouan-speakers, the Ioway, Otoe, the Great Lakes or Ohio River valley.5 The Missouria, and Winnebago (Fig. 2). cognate Degiha tribes contend they were once The story of how the· Degiha-speakers and a single tribe-before the migration. Accord­ Chiwere-speakers came to inhabit the Great ing to Dorsey, the Degiha-speakers, when one Plains from their woodland homelands is nation, were known as the "Arkansa" or known primarily through tribal oral histories "Alkansa" by the Illinois tribes when they still supported by ethnohistoric accounts. From dwelt within the Ohio River valley (Fig. 3).6 these texts, we can begin to flesh out an epic Fletcher and LaFlesche posit the original tribal narrative of a large-scale migration of Indian name was Hon'nga, a hypothesis that is well nations to the Great Plains. supported by linguistic evidence.7 The precise location of the "pre migration" We can only speculate why the Ponca an­ homeland of the Degiha-speakers is not known. cestors and their relatives may have chosen Tribal oral histories suggest the Ponca were to migrate to the Great Plains, but we know one contingent of a large migration of Degiha- that their migration was an event of great 274 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2002 • Ponca Village Site .- Migration Route Cultural Hearth ~! Dooln /\ i1t'r Dor>'\'v. "ISS6 FIG. 3. Map of Degiha migration routes and Ponca village or occupation sites. [Adapted from James Owen Dorsey (note 6), Plate X, and James H. Howard (note 42), p. 111.] magnitude that has left vivid, yet varied ac­ horticulture while simultaneously favoring the counts among each of the cognate tribes. One expansion of western bison range. II Other trig­ plausible explanation is that the Degiha-speak­ gering factors may have been the spread of ers once comprised a highly organized epidemic disease and/or intensified intertribal chiefdom of village horticulturalists in the warfare associated with the early Contact pe­ Ohio River valley.s Depending on the timeline riod.12 In this context, we can imagine a sce­ selected, many factors may have contributed nario whereby either part or all of the to their apparent decision to abandon their Degiha-speakers eventually sought refuge on ancestral homeland. the Great Plains. I3 If one favors a relatively "early" exodus, The tribal designations of "Quapaw" and the collapse of complex chiefdoms associated "Omaha" may be of more recent origin than with the Middle Mississippian cultures (e.g., the tribal names of "Ponca," "Osage," and Cahokia or the American Bottoms) in the four­ "Kaw." According to Degihan traditions, the teenth century may be directly implicated.9 term "Omaha" refers to those going against Moreover, global climate change may have the wind or current and "Quapaw" refers to initiated a push-pull effect. Beginning as early the opposite phenomenon. The terms harken as A.D. 1200 and culminating in the "Little back to the initial event that split the Ice Age" or N eo-Boreal, 10 a general pattern of Degihas, dividing those who traveled upstream cooler, drier conditions may have seriously from those who traveled downstream when curtailed the number of frost-free days for maize the original group reached the Mississippi PIECING TOGETHER THE PONCA PAST 275 River early in the course of their migration Ioway) in the following passage: "At all events odyssey. the traditions agree in this: the people built From the Ponca perspective, the migration earth lodges (permanent villages), theyJarmed commenced with all five cognate tribes trav­ and hunted the buffalo and other animals. eling down the Ohio River from their original When the game became scarce in their neigh­ homeland.14 Upon reaching the confluence of borhood, they abandoned their villages and the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, one group went north-west."19 Dorsey's assertion that the separated and traveled down the Mississippi tribes built earth lodges is at odds with the River. This group came to be known as the oral traditions of both the Ponca and Omaha, "downstream" or Quapaw. 1S The "upstream" who believe they learned to build earth lodges people-the Omaha, Osage, Ponca, and Kaw­ from the Arikara (or "Sand Pawnee") after followed the Mississippi upstream until they they arrived in northwestern Iowa. 20 reached the mouth of the Missouri and even­ All accounts concur that the Omaha, tually drifted into the contemporary state of Ponca, and Ioway proceeded northward and Missouri (Fig. 3). eventually reached the sacred Pipestone James Owen Dorsey, a missionary and eth­ Quarry.