#ponca

[frostedmagnolias]

Monsheeda (Dust Maker), and his wife Mehunga (Standing Buffalo), of the Indigenous Ponca tribe, posed together in their wedding photo

c. 1900

[littlefeather-wolf]

Ponca ... C. 1898 ... Standing studio portrait of a Native American (Ponca) man, Pete Mitchell (Dust Maker). He wears a single feather in his hair, a kerchief with a star medallion, a fur pelt decorated with coins, dark shirt, metal arm band, vest, breechcoth, leggings with a beaded band, below the knee garters with bells, and beaded moccasins. Over his wrist he holds an eagle fan with the eagle's head attached ... Hand-written on print, lower right corner: "No. 823"; Printed on front of mat board: "F. A. Rinehart, Official Photographer. Trans-Mississippi Exposition and Indian Congress, Omaha, Nebraska, 1898."; Title hand-written on front of print. Vintage photographic print. R7100321376

[blondebrainpowered]

Geronimo of the Bedonkohe band of the Apache driving a motor car, 1905

Beside him is Edward Le Clair Sr., a Ponca Indian. Geronimo liked his vest, and it was gifted to him later that day. Geronimo was buried in that vest.

[baebeylik]

Indifferent by Julie Buffalohead. 2016. Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. Raised in Minnesota.

Yale University Art Gallery. © Julie Buffalohead/Bockley Gallery.

[wigmund]

Old church on a hillside above the road running through Ponca, Arkansas on April 13, 2026

[mahtheyzhawey]

Look at all my wares. Trying to survive this capitalistic hellscape as a disabled indigenous artist. Please support my small business over on etsy and redbubble.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MahtheyzhaweyArts

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I'm also on ko-fi if you want to follow and support on there.

https://ko-fi.com/mahtheyzhawey

[legend-collection]

Deer Woman

Deer Woman, sometimes known as the Deer Lady, is a spirit in Native American mythology whose associations and qualities vary, depending on situation and relationships. Generally, however, to men who have harmed women and children, she is vengeful and murderous and known to lure these men to their deaths. She appears as either a beautiful young woman with deer feet or as a deer.

Deer Woman stories are found in multiple Indigenous American cultures, often told to young children or by young adults and preteens in the communities of the Lakota people (Oceti Sakowin), Ojibwe, Ponca, Omaha, Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Choctaw, Otoe, Osage, Pawnee, and the Haudenosaunee, and those are only the ones that have documented Deer Woman sightings.

Deer Woman is one of the Little People. Though they can be malevolent towards humans, their role in Indigenous culture is to uphold traditional society by keeping humans in line by discouraging harmful actions that have the potential to destroy the community. The legend of Deer Woman in particular pushes them away from actions like promiscuity and infidelity. The Little People also hold otherworldly knowledge that they can pass onto humans which is then transmitted through the generations; however, this power must be obtained, respected, and maintained in traditional, healthy ways. As an example of what happens when these spiritual rules are broken, the people who incur the wrath of Deer Woman and her uncle, Thunder, soon die.

Some stories describe the sighting of Deer Woman as a sign of personal transformation or as a warning. Deer Woman is said to be fond of dancing and will sometimes join a communal dance unnoticed, leaving only when the drum beating ceases.

Among Lakota people, Deer Woman is called Anukite. The daughter of the first man and first woman was a beautiful young woman named Ite (Face). Tate (Wind) fell in love with her. They married and had quadruplets, who were the Four Winds. Tate wished to become a god and enlisted the aid of Inktomi, the trickster spider, who caused the Sun to fall in love with Ite. At a celebration, Ite sat in the place of the Moon, the Sun's wife. To punish her disrespect, the Sky cast Ite down from heaven to the earth. Half of her face became ugly and her name became Anukite (Double Face Woman) or Winyan Numpa (Double Woman).

Anukite appears to men in dreams or visions, either as a single deer or two deer women: a white-tailed deer and a black-tailed deer. Her two different sides symbolize appropriate and inappropriate sexual relations. Men that have sex with her are believed to go insane while women that dream of her will have strong powers or sexual attraction or can gain artistic powers if they make a wise choice in the near future.

Deer Woman and the other Little People share similarities with some European supernatural beings such as the Gaelic Aos Sí and Tuatha Dé Danann, the Germanic elves, and the Slavic víle and rusalki in that they hold otherworldly knowledge that they can pass onto humans if they are treated with respect and said human(s) deemed worthy. Special care is also taken not to anger them and avoid breaking their rules as their vengeance is unpleasant and often deadly.

La Patasola, literally "single footed", is a somewhat similar figure from the Antioquia region of Colombia in that she brings harm to men who harm what she cares about, in this case the forest. She is a shapeshifter who takes the form of a beautiful woman to lure men with her cries of fear. When the men, who are often causing harm in one way or another to the rain forest, come to her, she drops her beautiful mask and slaughters them in an effort to protect the forest.

[crystallizedmoon]

What should have been

(CW: Anti-Indigenous themes mention, racism, genocide)

This is basically a ramble about the effects of how my grandmother did not grow up in the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma

We're doing a weaving project in my art class and I'm feeling this emotion that I can't describe-

It's a positive emotion, I know that, it comes whenever I'm beading, smudging, learning Ponca, or at Pow-Wow's.

I can only describe this emotion as a mix of euphoria and feeling like I'm floating.

Is this emotion positivity? Joy? Or happiness that I'm reconnecting with something that was stolen from me.

My grandmother and her brother, my uncle, could have grown up in the Ponca Tribe, could have been adopted by a family in the tribe, yet my grandmother was born a year before ICWA was passed, and my uncle two years before ICWA was passed, so they were adopted by a white family. They were a good family from what I heard, but that doesn't change that we were robbed from growing up in the Ponca Tribe, our tribe, our family.

My grandmother and uncle wouldn't know about their biological family until around 2018, when I was eleven.

My grandmother and my mother took DNA tests, and that's how we found out.

My grandmother had a Ponca father, and a white mother, and many siblings and cousins, all of whom were still alive.

We would be able to meet up with them, although my uncle only met them via video call.

At first, I thought this was normal, didn't think anything of it.

I realize now exactly how much was stolen from me.

I should have grown up with my culture. I should have been beading, and weaving, and learning the language, and attending Sundance, and going to Pow-Wow's, yet I didn't.

When I attended Sundance last year, I ended up crying. How couldn't I cry? After all, I was doing something I should have been doing my whole life.

I should be able to enroll in the Tribe, yet I can't, neither can my mother, because of blood quantums. My grandfather is a white man, so is my father. Although the elders are discussing letting people of lineal descent enroll.

... Then there's this other side of me.

Every time I wear my ribbon skirt, or smudge, I have this voice in my head, it says to me "You will never be indigenous enough. Look at your skin, you're too white, Rian. Your name is also too white. And look at your hair! You have your father's hair, and he's white! And that ribbon skirt, it's just cosplay! And you only bead because you just like the colors and textures!"

Would I still have that voice if I had grown up with my culture? Definitely not, this voice is the result of having the life I could have lived stolen from me.

The white people, the land stealers, they wanted the Indigenous Americans gone, so they took our children and tried to force us to be like them.

Of course, they failed.

... They can try to apologize for the things they done, but no amount of apologizing will change the fact that they stole from us, and how we are still digging up the bodies of children at residential schools.

When they say "America is the land of the free!" Don't forget the Indigenous Americans, and how we're still being oppressed, and never forget how what the white people did still affects the children that didn't grow up in their culture, and how it affects their children, and their grandchildren.

And don't forget, the genocide of Indigenous Americans is still going on.