At a instance it foremost appeared inside written history, a Ponca lived around a mouth of the Niobrara River, Nebraska. Based on data from either tradition it moved there from an metropolitan area east of the Mississippi just before Columbus' arrival in the Americas. the Ponca come out in a 1701 map by Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, who stores a babies along the Missouri. Around 1789, fur trader Juan Baptiste Munier was given an exclusive licence to trade with a Ponca at a mouth of the Niobrara. He founded a general store at a point in which a Niobrara joins the Missouri & observed astir 800 Ponca living there. Shortly fallowing that, the tribe was hit by a devastating smallpox epidemic and in 1804, when it were visited per Lewis and Clark Expedition there were only astir 200 Ponca. Late in the 19th century, their number rose to astir 700. Unlike virtually all more Plains Indians, the Ponca grew maize and kept vegetable gardens.

Around 1858 the Poncthe signed a accord in which it gave higher area of their l& reciprocally for protection and a lasting at home on the Niobrara. Inside 1868 the lands of the Poncas were included in the Sioux Reservation by mistake. A Poncwhen became so infested sustaining predatory Sioux world health organization claimed a land as their have. Whilst Congress in 1876 decided to exile several of the northern tribes to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, the Ponca were on the names. When inspecting a lands which a United states government was offering for their fresh reservation & searching for it unsuitable for agriculture, the Poncthe chiefs decided against a move down to this Indian Territory. Hence, whilst governmental officials come around early 1877 to move a Ponca to their recently land, the chiefs refused, citing their their earliest pact. Virtually all of the tribecome refused & got to be moved by inflict. In their fresh location, a Ponca struggled by having malaria, a shortage of food & a hot climate, & 1 around quatern died in a 1st season.

Chief Standing Bear was among those world health organization experienced virtually all vehemently protested a tribe's removal. After his firstborn boy, Bear Shield, lay on his dying bed, Standing Bear promised to own him buried on the tribe's patrimonial lands. Sequentially to carry out his promise, Standing Bear left a reservation within Oklahoma & travelled back toward a Ponca motherland. He was therefore arrested for doing so forswearing government permission. This lead to the illustrious trial, in which it was established first that indigen Americans come "persons within the meaning of the law" of the United States & that it stand certain rights following.

Inside 1881, 26,236 acres (106 km²) of Knox County, Nebraska were returned to the Ponca & all about half of the tribe recede northwards. A tribe continued to decline & around 1966, it was officially terminated and its plus were dissolved. Even so, in the 1970s, efforts started to reinstate a tribe & in October 31, 1990, the Ponca Restoration Bill was signed into law. Presently, the Ponca come trying to rebuild a land base in their transmissible lands.