The Removal of the Poncas
It may be interesting to learn which of the Black Hills Chiefs succeeded to the ancient home of the Poncas,—Red Cloud or Spotted Tail? Two months later the Honorable Commissioner of Indian Affairs, with this full Ponca record before him, reported to the Honorable Secretary of the Interior the selection of a location for Red Cloud farther up the Missouri. Then he says:
"For the latter [Spotted Tail], the old Ponca reserve was decided upon, where the agency dwellings, store-houses, one hundred and fifty Indian houses, and five hundred acres of cultivated fields, left vacant by the Poncas, offer special advantages for present quarters."
And with the Sioux it is the same old story of the Indian attachment to the soil. In his next sentence the Commissioner complains that "the Spotted Tail and Red Cloud Indians persisted in making strenuous objection to such removal,"—but they were removed, and Spotted Tail soon dwelt, an exile, in the home of the Poncas.
What is home? Four walls? A palace? It may be high mountains and a green valley; rocks and a stream; or a sea of brown grass waving in the wind. It is the one spot in nature that entwines our earliest thoughts, which ripen with maturing years into tender memories. And those who dwell nearest nature know best the ties of home.
171
