Annual Ponca Celebration

148th Annual Ponca Celebration

Fancy Dance World Championships

The Annual Ponca Celebration is free and open to the public. Visitors are reminded that brush arbors, benches and chairs surrounding the circle are for dancers and their families and not to enter the circle. Bring your folding chairs or score a seat in the original bleachers of White Eagle Park and enjoy the food and craft vendors and dance.

Ponca Creates the Fancy Dance

Not a historical dance tradition of any tribe, the Fancy Dance was created by members of the Ponca tribe in the 1920s and 1930s, in an attempt to preserve their culture and religion. At this time, Native American religious dances were outlawed by the United States and Canadian governments.

Traditional dances went “underground,” to avoid government detection. However, this dance, loosely based on the traditional War Dance, was considered appropriate to be performed for visitors on reservations and at “Wild West” shows. Two young Ponca boys are specifically credited with developing the fast-paced dance that the audiences loved and the Ponca Tribe soon built their own dance arena in White Eagle, Oklahoma. Within no time, other tribes continued the practice and created new dances that could legally be danced in public. In the 1930s, the Kiowa and Comanche created new styles of dance regalia that was incorporated into the Fancy Dance.

Even before the Fancy Dance was established, an intertribal Pow Wow circuit had already been organized where various tribes held dance contests. These became an important source of revenue during the Great Depression. In the late 1930s, women also began to perform in the Fancy Dance. The dance is fast paced, colorful, and highly energetic, often including tricks and extremely athletic movements. Dancing regalia includes brightly colored feather bustles and headwear, beaded bodices, leggings, shawls, and moccasins. Clothes are also decorated with fringe, feathers, embroidery or ribbon work, and other rich designs. Beaded cuffs, chokers, earrings, bracelets, and eagle plumes are also worn.

First Intertribal Powwow

When the Ponca People arrived in Indian Territory, they were surrounded by other tribes with whom they had no history. They invited their neighbors to join them for a cultural exchange, the very first intertribal powwow, around 1879. Members of the Omaha, Kaw, Osage, Pawnee and Otoe-Missouria tribes joined them, with some traveling by horse as far as 100 miles.

First Oklahoma Property Listed on National Register of Historic Places

White Eagle Park is the first property in Oklahoma to be nominated and listed as a traditional cultural place on the National Register of Historic Places. It is located five and one-half miles south of Ponca City in the White Eagle community of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. Located on lands assigned to the Ponca People as a reservation after their removal from Nebraska in 1877, the park is a roughly triangular area of 26 acres lying just north of the Ponca community of White Eagle.