The Removal of the Poncas
the Poncas to the Indian Territory, and providing them a home therein, with the consent of said band."
This is the first mention of the Indian Territory in connection with the Poncas. The only hope of these farmer Indians now lies in the provision for their consent. The worst that the Commissioner had hinted at as being in store for the Poncas was removal to the Omaha reservation,—in eastern Nebraska, not a great distance from their own. The Omahas were intermarried extensively with the Poncas, and a removal to that reservation would have entailed no extraordinary hardship.
But the Indian Territory! The graveyard of the northern Indian condemned to spend his days in exile there!
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, commenting in 1874 on removals to that country, says:
"It has heretofore been considered feasible eventually to domicile a large majority of the Indians in this Territory. Experience, however, shows that no effort is more unsuccessful with an Indian than that which proposes to remove him from the place of his birth and the graves of his fathers. Though a barren plain without wood or water, he will not voluntarily exchange it for any prairie or woodland, however inviting."
But in this year, 1876, what does the Commissioner say?
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