STANDING BEAR SEEKS A HOME (1877-1880)
THE INDIAN WHO WON THE WHITE MAN'S VERDICT
The Ponca Indians were members of the large Siouan family. They had
not always been a separate tribe. In the old days they and the Omahas
and the Kansas and the Osages had lived together as Omahas, near the
mouth of the Osage River in eastern Nebraska.
Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas
and Osages.
The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by
themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska.
When the captains, Lewis and Clark, met some of them, the tribe had
been cut by the small-pox to only some two hundred people. They never
have been a big people. Their number today, about eight hundred and
fifty, is as large as ever in their history.
[Illustration: Standing Bear. Courtesy of The American Bureau of
Ethnology.]
They and the Omahas warred with the Sioux, but they never warred with
the white men. They have always been friendly to the white men, except
once; and that once brings up the story of Standing Bear.
Back in 1817 the Poncas made a treaty of friendship with the United
States; and in 1825 they made another treaty, allowing white traders to
live among them, and agreeing to let their own bad men (if any) be
punished by the United States; and in 1859 they made another treaty,
selling their hunting grounds to the United States, and keeping a tract
on the Niobrara River for their own homes.
None of these treaties did they break. They were at peace with even
the Sioux. They had good farms, and were prospering.
But in 1868 the United States laid out a new reservation for the Sioux.
By a mistake this took in the Ponca reservation in Nebraska, and the
Poncas were not told. The way they found out, was this: The Sioux
began to come in and claim the land.
"That is not right," said the Poncas. "You do not belong here. All
this country is ours. Go back. We do not want you."
So there was fighting, every little while, and the Poncas lost many
warriors. This continued for nine years, until, by the raids of the
Sioux, one fourth of the Poncas had been killed or captured.
Still they had not been told by the United States that these lands were
theirs no longer; but, suddenly, in 1877, they were told that they must
get out.
At this time they had three villages, on the lower Niobrara River, and
eight bands, each under a chief. The chiefs were Standing Bear, White
Eagle, Big Soldier, Traveling Buffalo, Black Crow, Over-the-land,
Woodpecker, and Big-Hoofed Buffalo.
The United States informed the eight chiefs that they must remove their
people to the Indian Territory, but did not say why.
Standing Bear had been born in 1829, so he was forty-eight years old.
He stood high among the Poncas, because of his clan, the Wa-zha-zhe--a
clan that could cure rattle-snake bites and work other wonders.
He strongly opposed giving up the Ponca home-land, upon which the tribe
had lived for almost one hundred years, and which the United States had
agreed, on paper, to give them in exchange for their hunting grounds.
The other chiefs thought the same. They could not understand why they
all should be thrown off, when they had done nothing wrong.
But the white men paid no attention. One of them, who was the United
States Indian Inspector, only answered:
"The President says that you must sell this land. He will buy it and
pay you money, and give you new land in the Indian Territory."
"We do not know your authority," argued Standing Bear. "You have no
right to move us until we have held a council with the President."
"If you like the new land, then you can see the President and tell him
so," offered the inspector. "If you don't like it, then you can see
him and tell him so."
So Standing Bear and nine other chiefs went; but they were dubious.
The inspector showed the three pieces of land, and told them to choose.
All the pieces were bad pieces. It was a hot country and a bare
country, and not suited to the Poncas, who had good corn-fields and
houses in their own country of the Niobrara.
Besides, now the white man said that they were to have no pay for their
Niobrara laud. He told the chiefs, according to Standing Bear:
"If you do not accept what land is offered you here, I will leave you
here alone. You are one thousand miles from home. You have no money.
You cannot speak the language."
Then he slammed the door.
"But we do not like this land," explained Standing Bear. "We could not
make a living. The water is bad. Now send us to the President, as you
promised."
The man would not send them. He would not take them home. He would
not give them any of the Indian money, for buying food. He would not
give them a paper, to show to the people along the way. He would not
give them the interpreter, to talk for them. He would not take them to
a railroad.
"He left us right here," said Standing Bear. "It was winter. We
started for home on foot. At night we slept in hay-stacks. We barely
lived till morning, it was so cold. We had nothing but our blankets.
We took the ears of corn that had dried in the fields; we ate it raw.
The soles of our moccasins wore out. We were barefoot in the snow. We
were nearly dead when we reached the Oto reservation. It had been
fifty days."
Their feet made bloody marks on the Oto reservation. The Otos and the
Oto agent treated them kindly. They stayed ten days, to rest; then the
Otos gave them each a pony, and in two more weeks they were home.
It had been a cold, hungry journey, of five hundred miles, and their
relatives and friends were glad to see them again.
But the United States inspector was waiting for them. He was angry.
He said that the Great Father had ordered the Poncas to change homes.
It did not seem to matter whether or not they liked the new home. And
he called for soldiers, and all the Poncas were bundled out of their
villages and taken to the hot country of the south. On the way women
and children died. Standing Bear's daughter died.
Just as Standing Bear and the other chiefs had tried to explain, the
new country was not a good country for the Poncas. It was humid and
hot; their Niobrara country had been dry and bracing. Within one year
a third of them were dead from sickness; the rest were weak and
miserable. They pined for the villages that they had built and loved,
and that they had lost without any known reason.
After a year and a half Standing Bear's boy died, as so many others had
died; and the heart of Standing Bear was heavy. He did not sleep, by
thinking that his son's bones must lie here in this unfriendly country.
His medicine demanded that the boy should rest with their ancestors, in
the Ponca ground along the dear Niobrara.
Therefore, in January, 1879, he placed the bones in a sack, and tied
the sack to his neck, and taking his people who could travel, he set
out to walk to Ponca land.
That was hard work. They made their way as best they could, but had
been over three months on it when, in May, they arrived at the
reservation of their friends the Omahas, near the Missouri River in
northeastern Nebraska.
Chief Standing Bear asked the Omahas if they might rest, and plant a
few acres of ground, so as to get food. The Omahas gave them seed and
ground. Standing Bear still had the bones of his son, in the bag.
When he had started a crop, he was going on with the bones, and bury
them at the Niobrara, where the Poncas of happier years had been buried.
Before the crop was in, soldiers appeared, and arrested him and all his
party, to take them back to the hot country.
This much alarmed the Omahas. They had heard how the Poncas had been
moved off without warning and without reason. Standing Bear was not
being allowed to stay; he had lost his country forever. The same thing
might happen to the Omahas.
They had a similar treaty with the United States. They thought that
they owned their lands. They had been improving them and living on
them for years. They had spent much money of the tribe, for tools and
buildings, and were becoming like white men. The Government had issued
papers to them, showing which land each man possessed.
Now they were liable to lose their lands, as the Poncas had lost.
The Omahas hastened to ask white lawyers about it. They were told that
the papers did not show that they owned the land; the papers only
showed which lands each man had a right to farm.
The Omahas were Indians, and not white citizens, and could not own
lands, man by man. When a man died, his land might be given to
somebody else.
Now dread fastened upon the Omaha tribe. They hastened to draw up a
petition to Congress, asking that the lands which their men owned or
thought they owned be put down on paper forever. They wanted titles
such as the white men had, so the lands could be recorded.
Miss Alice Fletcher, from Washington, had been sent to study the Omaha
people; and they appealed to her. She helped them. The petition went
to Washington, but the months passed without an answer.
Meanwhile Standing Bear and his bag of bones and his party were being
taken south, by the soldiers from Fort Crook, Omaha, to the sickly hot
country. When they camped on their way, near Omaha, a newspaper man
talked with them. His name was Mr. T. H. Tibbles.
The story was printed in the Omaha papers, and at once Standing Bear
had many white allies.
The Omaha City people invited him to come in and talk to them; and so
he did, in a church that was crowded with listeners. Two lawyers, Mr.
Poppleton and Mr. Webster, adopted him as a client; and before the
soldiers had started on with him, the lawyers asked the court for a
writ of habeas corpus--a challenge to the United States to surrender
him, as a person who had been unlawfully arrested.
The United States argued that Standing Bear was an Indian, and that an
Indian was not a "person," under the laws of the United States; he did
not have any rights, in court.
Standing Bear had left his tribe, and was nobody, until he returned;
and even then, he would be only an Indian.
Standing Bear's lawyers brought witnesses into court, to state that the
Standing Bear party had traveled peacefully, like good citizens; had
not even begged along the way.
Standing Bear was told to arise and repeat his story. Part of it is
contained in this chapter. It was a remarkable speech. The people in
the court-room believed it. Standing Bear's heart warmed. He was no
Indian; he was a man.
The judge decided. He said that an Indian was a person, and had a
right to the courts, and to liberty when he had not done wrong. The
Poncas had been unjustly removed by force from their lands, and
Standing Bear's party had been unjustly arrested. Therefore they
should be released.
When this word was carried to Standing Bear by his lawyers, he was so
pleased that he almost wept.
"Before this," he said, "when we have been wronged we went to war to
get back our rights and avenge our wrongs. We took the tomahawk. We
had no law to punish those who did us wrong, and we went out to kill.
If they had guns and could kill us first, it was the fate of war. But
you have found us a better way. You have gone into court for us, and I
find that our wrongs can be righted there. Now I have no more use for
the tomahawk. I want to lay it down forever." So he put it on the
floor. "I lay it down. I have found a better way. I can now seek the
ways of peace."
He gave the tomahawk to Attorney Webster, "to keep in remembrance of
the great victory."
And a great victory it was, not only for the Poncas, but for all the
Indians. Standing Bear's trip with the bones had gained him many new
friends.
Now he traveled straight to the Niobrara, and nobody dared to stop him.
The next winter he made a tour of the East, with interpreters, and with
Mr. Tibbles the newspaper ally. He spoke from many platforms, telling
of the wrongs of the Indians. The newspapers everywhere spread his
talk wider. Soon letters from white people and their societies began
to pour into Washington, for the President and for the Congressmen.
As a result, in the spring of 1880 the Senate of the United States sent
a commission into the West, to find out if Standing Bear's stories were
really true.
They were true. Therefore the Poncas were told that they might go back
to the Niobrara, if they wished. Some did so. They were called the
Cold Country Band. Those who were willing to stay in the Indian
Territory were granted better lands, and they were paid for the lands
that they had lost in the north. They were called the Hot Country Band.
Each band was given titles to the lands held by it. The Omahas, too,
won out, and were given titles. They and the Poncas secured the rights
of citizens of the United States.
As for Standing Bear, he died, well satisfied and much honored, in
1908, aged seventy-nine, and was buried there near the Niobrara, in
ancient Ponca country, where his ancestors slept. He had saved his
tribe.