on the Sionx for raiding off their horses and stock, because they hope "that the Government will keep its faith with them," and that snitable renuneration for these losses will be made them, according to the treaty stipulations.

For the next two years they worked industriously and well; three schools were established; a chapel copal mission; the village began to assume the appearance of permanence and thrift; but misfortune had not yet parted company with the Poncas. In the sammer of 1873 the Missouri River suddenly overflowed, washed away its banks hundreds of yards back, and entirely ruined the Ponea village. By working night and day for two wecks the Indians saved nost of the buildings, carrying them half a mile inland to be sure of safety. The site of their village became the bed of the main channel of the river; their cornfields were ruined, and the lands for miles in every direction washed and torn up by

was built by the Epis- the floods.

For nearly two wecks," the agent writes, " the work of sal- vage from the ever-threatening destrnction occupied our whole available force night and day We succceded in carrying from the river bank to near half a mile inland the whole of the agency buildings, mechanics' houses, stabling, and sheds more than twenty honses--nearly every panel of fencing The Poncas worked well and long, often through the night and the fact that the disaster did not cost us ten dollars of act- ual loss is to be attributed to their labor, continuous and per severing-working sometimes over the swiftly-flowing waters, terrible and turbid, on the edge of the newly-formed current but a few inches below them, and into which a fall wonld have been certain death, even for an Indian."

In one year after this disaster they had recovered themselves marvellously; built twenty new houses; owned over a hundred head of cattle and fifty wagons, and put three hundred acres of land under cnltivation (about three acres to cach male in the