Indigenous

…Years ago, before the Poncas moved south, there was a society called the He-thus-ka Society. Now there are many stories on how this came about. The one I liked to tell is about a young man who went out on a vision quest. He was out there for many days when he saw these two buffalos about to fight. One of them was an old buffalo, and one of them was a young buffalo was going to kill the old buffalo, but he didn’t. The old buffalo won. After he had killed the young buffalo, he started dancing and singing. He came to this young man and taught him these songs and the ways of this sacred dance. It came from this buffalo, He-thus-ka. He taught him for many days, then he said, go back and take it to your people and make your own songs to go with it. So the young man did. So that’s where we get He-thus-ka today. It was brought down by our elders from 1876 to 1877, when they were moved down to Oklahoma.

After the turn of the century, with the Wild West shows, they started calling this dance a pow-wow. It didn’t sound too exciting if you called it a Man Dance or He-thus-ka. It didn’t sound exciting enough because all these people were coming from the east by the trainloads to see the cowboys and the Indians. So, they said, War Dance, and that excited the people. They’d get out there and dance. And it was just a show then. But the Poncas still had their own. The called it He-thus-ka Society, and that dance they would do in a sacred way. They had a leader, and he had his committee, and he had whip men, he had water boys, and he had cooks and singers…This society was going on long before Christianity. We’ve had religion, and we’ve had sacred societies for many, many years, and this happened to be one of them. There were women societies, and there were different societies among the men… This happened to be the one that survived.