Ponca Indian Treaties and Dispossession in the 19th Century

Introduction: The Ponca at the Start of the Nineteenth Century

The history of interactions between the Ponca Indian tribe, the rapidly expanding United States, and other tribes in the region over the course of the nineteenth century is a history of misunderstanding, genocide, and tragedy. In response to U.S. expansion, the Ponca signed a number of treaties that served to gradually reduce their land base, undermine their sovereignty and autonomy, and ultimately result in forced removal from their ancestral lands and widespread death and disease. Using David J. Wishart's history of the Nebraska Indians, An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians, one may trace the evolution of the tribe over the course of the nineteenth century with a particular focus on the way in which four treaties between the Ponca and the United States, one treaty between the United States and the Dakota, and the conflict between tribes that arose as a result of U.S. expansion served to gradually reduce the Ponca's power and range until they were finally stripped of all autonomy in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

In order to understand the Ponca's gradual loss of land and sovereignty, one must chart the shifting relationships and alliances that characterized the Ponca's existence over the course of the nineteenth century. The first treaty between the United States and the Ponca was signed in 1817, but this treaty was only the most obvious event in a process of dispossession that had begun decades earlier. Having been decimated by smallpox at the end of the eighteenth century, by the time Lewis and Clark encountered the Ponca in 1804, they found only around 200 Ponca living in the area that would become Nebraska (Wishart 1994, 7 & 72). Because of their reduced size, especially in comparison to some neighboring tribes, the Ponca were forced to rely on alliances in order to maintain their land, and the 1817 treaty offered a means of negating the threat from one potential opponent, the United States.

In addition to their reduced numbers, the Ponca were at something of a disadvantage relative to other tribes because, unlike many of their neighbors, the Ponca subsisted heavily on agriculture, growing corn near the Niobrara River and claiming the surrounding land as their ancestral homeland (Wishart 1994, 133). Thus, while all of the Nebraska Indian tribes relied on the maintenance of their lands in order to survive, the Ponca had a particularly strong attachment to that specific region — both culturally and economically — because they had developed a society heavily based on agriculture that was only partially supplemented by hunting, which often could only be done with the acquiescence of other, more powerful tribes.

The tenuous relationship with the United States and a reliance on other, sometimes conflicting tribes characterized the Ponca's existence over the course of the nineteenth century, so that despite occasional brief periods of relative peace and prosperity, the Ponca and their power base were already in decline by the time the United States' western expansion finally necessitated their forced removal. In the early nineteenth century, the Ponca were most heavily affected by the Teton Dakota tribe (also known as the Lakota), the southern and westernmost branch of the Sioux nation, which had been gradually encroaching as a result of the United States' westward expansion. Like all of the Ponca's interactions with neighboring tribes, this relationship was marked by inconsistency and rapidly changing allegiances. One event in particular illustrates this clearly: in 1824, the Ponca suffered an especially devastating loss when "thirty Ponca, including all of their chiefs, had been returning from a friendly visit to the Oglala [a band of Teton Dakota Indians] when they were attacked by another band of Teton Dakota [and] the chiefs, all old men, were unable to flee and were easily killed" (Wishart 1994, 75). Despite the naming of a new chief, "in effect, Ponca society had been decapitated," and they were soon forced to abandon their traditional villages in favor of smaller, distant outposts, even after signing a new treaty intended to protect them from the Teton Dakota and other nearby tribes (Wishart 1994, 75).

The 1825 Treaty and the Erosion of Sovereignty

The loss of the Ponca chiefs in 1824 is likely one of the reasons for the treaty between the Ponca and the United States signed a year later, in June 1825. Among reaffirming the peace established by the earlier treaty and regulating trade within the Ponca's territory, the treaty also included a promise of protection by the United States in return for the Ponca's acquiescence to U.S. supremacy in regard to ultimate sovereignty. Whereas the first treaty merely formalized a peaceful relationship between the two parties, this second treaty marked the beginning of the Ponca's gradual loss of official sovereignty, and it seems reasonable to presume that this concession was at least partially made possible by the loss of the chiefs the previous year.

That the 1825 treaty was almost undoubtedly precipitated by the loss of the chiefs in 1824 is attested to by both the language of the treaty itself and the identity of the Ponca signatories. The treaty appears largely one-sided and, from the Ponca's perspective, beneficial due to their precarious situation relative to the more powerful tribes surrounding them — although it would ultimately serve to undermine them. The first article of the treaty states that "it is admitted by the Poncar tribe of Indians, that they reside within the territorial limits of the United States, acknowledge their supremacy, and claim their protection," and this protection is what the Ponca received in return for safeguarding the economic interests of the United States within their territory (Treaty with the Ponca 1825, Article I).

The treaty purports to be signed by the "Chiefs, Headmen, and Warriors, of the Poncar tribe of Indians, on behalf of said tribe," but a look at the signatories reveals that this treaty was likely signed out of desperation on the part of the remaining Ponca leadership. The first Ponca signature on the treaty is that of "Shu-de-gah-he, or He who makes Smoke." In reality, this could only have been the son of the former chief of the same name, because "among the dead [following the October 1824 attack] was the Ponca's principal chief, Smoke Maker (Shu-de-gah-he)" (Treaty with the Ponca 1825; Wishart 1994, 75). His son was appointed the new chief, but with the loss of the rest of the leadership, the authority of Smoke Maker's son and the rest of the signatories to the 1825 treaty remains in doubt.

While the 1825 treaty marked the gradual dissolution of Ponca autonomy in the eyes of the United States, the protection promised was not enough to shield the Ponca from the conflict around them. Although there were "an estimated one thousand Ponca at the village" where the 1825 treaty was signed, "increased hostilities with the Brule [a band of Teton Dakota Indians] and Pawnee, together with smallpox in 1831, made living in fixed villages precarious" (Wishart 1994, 75–76). The Ponca were forced to abandon their traditional villages near the mouth of the Niobrara and instead begin living transiently in tipis. The smallpox epidemic cut their numbers nearly in half, to the point that only five years after the promised protection failed to materialize, the Ponca began to ally themselves with the Teton Dakota as a whole, in order to forestall further attacks by different Dakota bands and to protect themselves from the broader conflict between the Dakota and the Pawnee (Wishart 1994, 76).

Alliance, Epidemic, and Instability: The 1830s and 1840s

This alliance with the Dakota brought a period of relative success for the Ponca. Although they were forced to abandon their traditional villages near the mouth of the Niobrara and the agriculture they had previously relied upon, "at least the Ponca, by virtue of their understanding with the Teton Dakota, still had relatively easy access to the bison, which remained abundant in the region north of the Niobrara and between the Missouri River and the Black Hills" (Wishart 1994, 76). Thus, while the Ponca population had dropped "to about five hundred people after the 1831 epidemic," the most detailed estimates of the Ponca population over the course of the 1830s showed that they had grown to around 800, "including 300 women, 240 men, and 260 children" (Wishart 1994, 76). This was considerably lower than the tribe's historical populations, but it does show that the tribe was able to rebound relatively quickly following the losses of the early 1830s, much as they had following the smallpox epidemic nearly three decades earlier.

The brief period of expansion and stabilization during the 1830s was short-lived, however, because the tenuous relationship between the Ponca and the Dakota remained as unstable as ever, especially given that "to be tolerated by one band did not necessarily mean acceptance by another" (Wishart 1994, 84). This had already been demonstrated in 1824, when the Ponca chiefs were killed by an unfriendly Dakota band while returning from a visit to a different, friendly band. In the 1840s, as American expansion continued unabated and the bison population began to show the effects of over-hunting, these tensions came to the fore once again. "At various times during the 1840s Ponca warriors joined Dakota parties to raid the Pawnee and Omaha; at other times the Ponca themselves were targets of Dakota aggression" (Wishart 1994, 84).

The precariousness of the Ponca's relationship with the Dakota was further evidenced in 1843, when "the Omaha and the Ponca were considering a union, 'to live together as one people' — no doubt as a defensive strategy against the Dakota" (Wishart 1994, 85). However, this union never came about, "and the Ponca again joined the Dakota to raid the Omaha," because "in the chaotic years of the 1840s when starvation confronted all the Indians, warfare became the primary means of spreading the subsistence base," and allying with the Dakota — one of the most powerful tribes in the region — made the most practical sense (Wishart 1994, 85).

Despite the Ponca's alliances with the Dakota, the latter group became increasingly hostile, resulting in the Ponca gradually returning to their ancestral base near the mouth of the Niobrara, "likely [because] the Dakota had cut them off from the bison range and forced them to turn back to corn farming for their food" (Wishart 1994, 84). Even this was short-lived, as "by the second half of the 1840s the Ponca were again spending more time in tipi encampments and earth-lodge villages" spread along the Niobrara, and once again they turned to the United States and its westward-moving settlers for assistance (Wishart 1994, 84–85). For example, in the winter of 1846 to 1847, the Ponca "persuaded two hundred Mormons to stay with them on the Niobrara," because "the Mormons provided a measure of protection against Dakota war parties [and] their possession of a small cannon seems to have been particularly influential in the Ponca's decision to extend the invitation" (Wishart 1994, 85). However, like before, this brief period of calm was overshadowed by the larger famine caused by inclement weather and the decimation of the bison herds, so that by the 1850s the Ponca were once again forced to surrender much of their autonomy in return for the protection offered by the United States government.

Conclusion: A Century of Dispossession

Although the eventual breakup of the Great Sioux Reservation in the waning years of the nineteenth century would see some Ponca eventually return to their ancestral land, the treaty of 1868 and the subsequent forced removal of the Ponca marked the beginning of the end for the tribe's sovereignty. After nearly a century of poverty and the selling of land in order to survive, "on September 5, 1962, in a period of renewed government assault on Indian societies, they were 'terminated' as a tribe" (Wishart 1994, 216).

While in general the dispossession of land and sovereignty — and the subsequent dissolution of culture — for any Native American nation was the result of American expansionism, the particular case of the Ponca demonstrates the crucial role played by the Dakota. Perhaps more than any other tribe, the Ponca were perpetually caught between the demands of the United States and the threat of the Dakota, ultimately resulting in the cessation of their lands through an agreement between those two parties. Examining the history of the Ponca over the course of the nineteenth century reveals how the Dakota repeatedly forced the Ponca into the arms of the United States, which greeted them with cynicism and condescension.

References

Wishart, David. An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

Treaty with the Ponca 1825. Accessed November 23, 2011. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/pon0225.htm.