Dhegihan History: A Personal Journey

Abstract

During a time of growing cooperation between anthropologists and Native Americans, this Native author uses his anthropological training to shed light on the history and prehistory of his tribe. Family history, ethnohistory, linguistics, archaeology, and inferences are woven together to demonstrate that, despite some two hundred fifty years of contact with Europeans and Euro-Americans and forced assimilation policies by the United States government, Ponca families have preserved some key features of aboriginal culture. Some of these features derive from practices that took place before the Ponca and their Dhegihan cognate tribes left their Woodland homes to live on the eastern fringes of the Great Plains.

Keywords:

• Ponca family history
• Omaha culture
• Dhegihan Siouan origins
• Oneota
• Iconography.