To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section; to each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; to each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and to each other person under eighteen years now living, one-sixteenth of a section. . . . And said Poncas shall be entitled to all other benefits under this act in the same manner and with the same conditions as if they were a part of the Sioux nation receiving rations at one of the agencies herein named."

The Sioux, however, refused to ratify this provision, and so it did not become effective. A provision for the same purpose was incorporated in the act of March 2, 1889, further dividing and curtailing the Sioux reservation; and it was accepted by the Sioux according to its conditions. By this act, each head of a Ponka family then occupying a part of the old Ponka reservation was granted three hundred and twenty acres of said reservation; each single person over eighteen years of age, one-fourth of a section; each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-fourth of a section; and each other person under eighteen years of age now living one-eighth of a section.33 Accordingly, 27,236 acres of the land in question were allotted to one hundred and sixty-eight Indians,34 and thereupon, on the 23d of October, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation which declared that "the Indian title is extinguished to all lands described in said act of March 28, 1882, not allotted to the Ponca Indians. In the proclamation the president reserved from entry "that tract of land now occupied by the agency and school buildings of the old Ponca agency, to-wit: the south half of the southeast quarter of section twenty-six, and the south half of the southwest quarter of section twenty-five, all in town

33 U. S. Statutes at Large, v. 25, pp. 99, 892.

34 Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1911, Interior Department, Administrative Reports, v. 2, p. 82.

ship thirty-two north, range seven west of the sixth principal meridian." 35 The act of 1889, cited above, provided for relinquishment by the Sioux.

This was the final act of the acquisition comedy, and also of the Ponka tragedy. Though the domains of the Ponka of Nebraska were greatly circumscribed by the white man's more urgent land-hunger and superior power, yet they received generous additional gifts in money and goods, and their selection of land is said to have been wise.

"The Ponca Indians located at this agency are fortunate in having good land. Nearly all the land taken by these Indians is situated along the Niobrara or Running Water river and Ponca creek, and lies mostly in broad and fertile valleys, just undulating enough to have good drainage." "They have received a large body of the choicest land on the reservation." 36

No longer harassed by Sioux ferocity or fear of rapine by their white fellow citizens, they are slowly increasing in numbers. Their aggregate in 1912 was three hundred.37

35 U. S. Statutes at Large v. 26, p. 1560.

36 Statements of the agent and of the teacher, Report of the Secretary of the Interior 1890, v. 2, pp. 146, 147.

37 Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1912, Interior Department, Administrative Reports, v. 2, p. 76.

ADDRESSES BY JAMES MOONEY

Of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C.

[Delivered at the annual meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society, January 10-11, 1911.]

LIFE AMONG THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE PLAINS

It has been announced that I am to speak of my life with the Indian tribes of the plains. That is a very large subject and could not be exhausted in an evening's talk. I shall not attempt to go into details, but try merely to suggest a few things of Indian life that may help to give you an impression that an Indian community is not a mere aggregation of individuals, but is an organization, and that Indian life runs along channels as definite as those of civilized life.

The Indian is more than an Indian; he is a member of a tribe; and each tribe is practically a small, distinct nation, usually with a distinct language. In North and South America we have nobody knows how many tribes, because they never have been counted. We have at least a thousand different languages: putting it in another shape, we may say there are a thousand ways to say the word “dog” in Indian. In Europe there are not more than fifty languages. In the United States we had over two hundred distinct Indian languages, each unintelligible to those speaking the others. Most of these languages are still in existence; but some of them have been wiped out.

I have been with tribes all the way from Dakota to central Mexico, and west into Arizona and Nevada; but the most of my work and acquaintance has been with the

tribes of the southern plains, more particularly with the Kiowa. After them I was, on the plains, chiefly with the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Sioux, Caddo, and Wichita. I have been with Navaho, Hopi, Piute, Pueblos, one or two tribes in Mexico and several remnant tribes; but of all I know best the Kiowa, having lived with them as a member of an Indian family for several years of my first western experience, and having visited them since every year, staying with them a large part of each year.

The Kiowa originally came from the north, somewhere near the head of the Missouri river, but within the historic period they have ranged along the plains from the Black Hills in Dakota southward. They are great riders and make long distances in traveling. I have known of one band of them starting from Kansas to go up into Montana for a couple of years, while another band went south into Mexico; and while there made a raid on the city of Durango. So their range must have been something like two thousand miles north and south. As a general rule they kept on the plains and did not go into timbered country.

To go into detail of Indian life, as I have seen it, would take a long time. I might give you one or two days of the winter camp, and one or two days of the summer camp. It was customary, years ago, for the roaming tribes to stay out on the open priairie throughout the summer season. They scattered about, but generally camped near some convenient spring in the neighborhood of grass and timber. There parties from other tribes would come and visit them, sometimes hundreds together, and they would have a dance. The Kiowa now live in southwestern Oklahoma. Anadarko, their agency, has now about six thousand people. When I first knew it, it had about fifty whitesagency employees, two or three traders, and a few missionaries-all the rest were Indians; but the Indians stayed there only a part of the time as a rule. Along late

in the fall they would come down, one camp after another, all within a week or so, setting up their tipis close to Anadarko, in the timber along the bottom lands on the south side of the Washita river. Some of you have read General Custer's work, "My Life On The Plains", and will remember that he tells about the battles which he fought with the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and other tribes in this part of the country.

In the winter camp the tipis were set up and strung out from five to eight miles along the river. Sometimes around the tipi they would build a windbreak, made of interwoven brush. If the timber was pretty close they did not need to make a windbreak. I first joined them in the winter camp and remember distinctly my first night there. The headman was presiding at the supper and dishing out soup, and he asked me if I did not think it was good; but I was wondering how it was possible for any one to eat it. The soup was made of jerked beef, cut into small pieces and cooked in salted water. With the soup they had bread, made by mixing flour with water and frying it in a pan over a hole in the ground. In the Indian sign language the sign for bread is this-(indicating the smoothing of the cake with the hands). They call coffee "black soup".

Our family had two tipis, each set up with twenty poles and with three beds around the circle inside. The old man had been one of the war chiefs in his best days, which gave him a reputation outside of his own tribe. He was known as one of their best story-tellers and master of ceremonies; and he was also a "beef chief" or distributor of the beef rations. He was the grandfather, and after we became acquainted he called me his son. He had three daughters and a son, all married, who with the husbands, wives and children made a family of sixteen, besides myself. The Indians were constantly visiting from one camp to another, so that we were not all together all the time; but we usually had one or two visitors to make up.