Walks on the Ground: A Tribal History of the Ponca Nation by Louis V. Headman (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Walks on the Ground: A Tribal History of the Ponca Nation by Louis V. Headman Beth R. Ritter Walks on the Ground: A Tribal History of the Ponca Nation. By Louis V. Headman. Foreword by Sean O'Neill. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. vii + 510 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $90.00 cloth. Respected Southern Ponca elder Louis Headman has produced the most remarkable book I have ever encountered in more than three decades of research as a Ponca scholar. Just as Chris Eyre famously commented on the iconic film Atanarjuat, "this is an inside job." Walks on the Ground is a rare and precious addition to the scant historical and ethnographic literature on the Ponca, particularly the Southern Ponca Tribe. Intensely rooted in the language and worldview of the Ponca, Headman has been systematically collecting scraps of Ponca language and culture to weave into this narrative history for more than seventy years. As Sean O'Neill notes in his foreword, as a distinguished elder and one of the last fluent Ponca speakers, Louis Headman speaks with both authority and intimacy. Ponca scholars and scholars of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains will experience many "aha" moments! The treatment of the fraternal order of the Heđúškà society (whose songs and dances form the backbone of modern pan-Indian powwow culture), as well as the unique history of how the Southern Ponca adopted and adapted the Native American Church in the early twentieth century, are worth the price of admission alone. Headman's exploration of the Heđúškà society, songs, and dances are one of the true strengths of this volume. Headman explains that Poncas are singers and that their oral history is embedded in Heđúškà songs that include feats of bravery on the battlefield but also chronicle important events and even notable individuals who exemplified Ponca/Heđúškà values. This insight serves to highlight just how critical it is to revitalize the Ponca language. Sadly, this volume also reveals the intentional dismantling of Ponca culture and language, most especially through the Indian boarding school movement. The poignancy of forced removal (1877) and the resulting diaspora between the Northern and Southern Ponca peoples is striking. Culture is resilient and the Southern Poncas continued to sing the songs and tell the stories with the place-names of their former village sites and sacred sites in the north. Interestingly, they also sought to reproduce their traditional lifeways from the Niobrara-Missouri homeland by gravitating toward the Arkansas, Salt Fork, and Chikaskia Rivers, where they continued to celebrate their ceremonies and riverine adaptations. This is a true reference volume that Ponca scholars will return to time and again. There are important chapters on the Ponca giveaway, family structure and kinship system, clans, Ponca names, the spirit world, funeral rites, Ponca medicine, Ponca warriors and political governance. There are many audiences for this volume, [End Page 247] but, read in tandem with Headman's Dictionary of the Ponca People (2019), it speaks most powerfully to the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the Ponca people. Here are the embers left to rekindle Ponca culture and language! Beth R. Ritter Department of Sociology and Anthropology University of Nebraska Omaha Copyright © 2023 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln