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The Indian Dispossessed against the repeated incursions of the powerful Sioux on the north with a vigor and tenacity born of the Indian love of the land of his fathers.

The tide of white occupation that flowed to the Northwest during the early fifties was temporarily checked by the Sioux on the upper Mississippi, who at that time ruled supreme in the greater part of Minnesota and all of Dakota, and it then took the course of least resistance,—through Iowa, and into eastern Nebraska. This placed the Poncas between the hostile Sioux on the north and the white settlements on the south,—a situation well calculated, in the ordinary course of events, to hasten the day when Ponca Creek should become the monument of the tribe. But this circumstance really gave the Poncas a new lease of life. They met the advancing whites with the hand of friendship, while the high-strung Sioux (with the exception of the Yancton and one or two other small tribes of the Sioux nation) resisted the invasion with a ferocity that dismayed even the reckless frontiersmen. The keen settlers were quick to perceive the strategic value of a friendly tribe between themselves and the powerful hostiles:

"I cannot speak in too high terms of the uniform good conduct of this tribe. While many other Indians have been fighting the Government, and murdering the frontier settlers, this tribe and the Yancton Sioux have remained faithful to their 144