Howard, James H. & Le Claire, Peter "The Ponca Tribe," Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, No. 195 (1965), pp. 18, 75

"From these villages, they would go on Wah-ni-sa (Buffalo Hunt) up the Missouri River, way in the Rocky Mountains. They say where they step over the Nu-sho-day (Missouri River) they would follow the Rocky Mountains to Pikes Peak and they would come back to Nebraska and they would follow on the rivers back to Wah-ta where Fremont, Nebraska is. From Santee to Niobrara River, here they saw a Pa-snu-tah dead (an Elephant) ... PLC identified this animal as a "hairy elephant" ...

...

The Twin Buttes were the places for the medicine men to perform. There is a cave in the east one there is where they saw a prehistoric animal, the Pah-snu-tah ... According to PLC this "hairy elephant" was alive."

PLC [Peter Le Claire] ... in his "History" (p. 18) and in an interview, gives (and gave) the term Pásnuta (pa-snu-tah) for both the bones of extinct elephants and for the hairy mammoth allegedly seen by the Ponca near Butte, Nebr. He mentioned that this term was now used for circus elephants. Tales of "hairy elephants" are common in many Midwestern tribes, and I have personally secured them from Omaha, Ponca, Dakota, and Winnebago informants.

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