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The Ponca Trail of Tears was unlawful the forced removal of the Ponca people in 1877 by the United States to the Indian Territory from their ancestral territory in the Dakota Territory that resulted in over 200 deaths and the outright extinction of 24 families.

The removal was illegally executed in direct violation of a treaty and federal law. Led by Chief White Eagle and Chief Standing Bear, the Ponca successfully influenced American public opinion in the aftermath of the removal by utilizing the media to bring national attention to the inhumane Native American policy of the United States. Their efforts generated unprecedented outrage at the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government, paving the way for two significant reforms in 1879:


 * 1) The termination of the United States' Indian removal policy began half a century earlier under President Andrew Jackson's notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830
 * 2) The landmark civil rights decision in Standing Bear v. Crook which legally recognized Native Americans as "persons" under the Constitution of the United States and granted civil rights to Native Americans.

The Standing Bear decision was the first ever federal court ruling that race did not justify the United States from denying Native Americans the same rights under the law as American citizens.

The United States government opposed the Standing Bear decision and President Rutherford B. Hayes immediately ordered the Attorney General of the United States to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of the United States. American social reformers, mostly former abolitionists, quickly seized the Ponca case as an ideal vehicle to obtain a Supreme Court ruling granting Native Americans the same universal citizenship and constitutional rights provided to African Americans after the Civil War with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

The ensuing Ponca removal controversy became a national scandal and the mounting criticism forced the United States Senate to launch a special investigation into the circumstances of the Ponca removal following the murder of Standing Bear's brother, Big Snake, by the United States Army on October 29, 1879. Less than a month after the Senate investigation began, however, the Hayes administration dismissed the government's Supreme Court appeal of the Standing Bear decision on January 5, 1880. By dismissing the appeal before the Supreme Court could issue a ruling, the United States government effectively precluded any possibility of a Supreme Court decision granting Native Americans universal citizenship and constitutional rights.

Five months later, the Senate completed the Ponca investigation and published a lengthy report published on May 30, 1880 detailing the findings. The Senate investigation determined that the Ponca removal was undertaken without authority of law by an incompetent federal official appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant named Edward Kemble and further recommended the appropriation of monetary reparations to end the controversy.

American social reformers aggressively promoted the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 after the effort to obtain Native American citizenship in the Supreme Court failed. The reformers declared the Dawes Act a reform bill in the best interests of Native Americans. Although the law purported to offer a delayed path to citizenship for Native Americans in exchange for land but ultimately resulted in a further 44 year denial of universal citizenship for Native Americans, cultural destruction through forced assimilation of Native Americans, the outright abolition of Native American governments, and a significant dispossession of land.

Background
The geopolitical situation between the Ponca and the regional nations remained fairly consistent for the following century. Each established foreign trade relations with one another and participated in the international fur trade with Great Britain, France, and the Kingdom of Spain with the Missouri River being the sole economic waterway. By 1776, the Omaha achieved political hegemony in the region under the ambitious Blackbird, a shrewd leader who seized sole access to the European trade route from his seat of power in a large, newly established community known as Tonwantonga. The Omaha exploited this strategic location to dictate trade on his terms by denying European trade vessels access from the lucrative fur network further upstream. Blackbird's shrewd leadership allowed him to deal with the Europeans from a position of economic superiority and reduce the military threat from militaristic upstream nations like the Lakota Sioux by denying them access to weapons manufactured in Europe.

Blackbird viewed the European traders as dogs and treated them like such. He regularly played the British against the Spanish, exploiting both. He demanded an exorbitant tribute from the King of Spain in exchange for his permission to access Omaha territory to engage in trade. A high ranking Spanish official described him as "arbitrary, despotic, cruel, and implacable" with the leading Spanish trader declaring “Blackbird is more despotic than any European prince.” The Ponca were strongly pulled into the Omaha sphere of influence as the two nations shared a common border and a common ancestry. It was at this time my family history begins with the birth of my maternal great great great great great grandfather Little Bear who came of age when Blackbird was at the height of power, trading Omaha and Ponca fur to distant Native American nations along the Mississippi River in exchange for English trade goods which Blackbird found superior to the goods brought into the region by Spain.

A cataclysmic epidemic of smallpox struck the region in 1801 with a mortality rate so devastating that it nearly exterminated the Omaha outright, laying waste to 90 percent of their population, sparing fewer than 300 survivors. Included among the 3,500 victims was Blackbird who contracted the virus while trading with Europeans near Council Bluffs. The mortality rate was also high among the Ponca, reducing the population to several hundred by 1804. Incredibly, my grandfather Little Bear and his newly born son Iron Whip (my great great great great grandfather) were among them. The epidemic abruptly ended the Omaha hegemony and created a power vacuum in the region as the few remaining survivors faced an unprecedented crisis due to the disruption of their social, religious, and political structures. The traditional Ponca form of government was an oligarchy in which the full sovereign power of the Ponca people was vested in one hereditary chief sovereign who was counseled by thirteen chiefs—six senior chiefs and seven junior chiefs—who represented the interests of the Ponca citizenry. The chief sovereign served as the head of state and ranking senior chief. The position was a dynastic succession based on male primogeniture. The reason I can identify Little Bear as my progenitor is because dynastic rule was vested in my family line when Little Bear assumed power from the traditional sovereign by heroic feat around the time the militaristic Lakota Sioux, largely spared from the brunt of the epidemic, filled the regional power vacuum and set about attacking and raiding the surviving Ponca. At the turn of the 20th century, Little Bear's grandson and my great great great grandfather White Eagle provided ethnographers at the Smithsonian Institute the oral history of how he became hereditary chief sovereign:

"A chief by the name of Little Chief (Zhingagahige) of the Warrior clan (Washabe) had a son who went on the warpath. Little Chief sat in his tent weeping because he had heard that his son was killed, for the young man did not return. As he wept he thought of various persons in the tribe whom he might call on to avenge the death of his son. As he cast about, he recalled a young man who belonged to a poor family and had no notable relations. The young man's name was Little Bear (Wasabezhinga).

Little Chief remembered that this young man dressed and painted himself in a peculiar manner, and thought that he did so that he might act in accordance with a dream, and therefore it was probable that he possessed more than ordinary power and courage. So Little Chief said to himself, “I will call on him and see what he can do.” Then Little Chief called together all the other subchiefs and when they were assembled he sent for Little Bear. On the arrival of the young man Little Chief addressed him, saying, “My son went on the warpath and has never returned. I do not know where his bones lie. I have only heard he has been killed. I wish you to go and find the land where he was killed. If you return successful four times, then I shall resign my place in your favor.” Little Bear accepted the offer. He had a sacred headdress that had on it a ball of human hair; he obtained the hair in this manner: Whenever men and women of his acquaintance combed their hair and any of the hair fell out, Little Bear asked to have the combings given to him. By and by he accumulated enough hair to make his peculiar headdress. This was a close-fitting skull cap of skin; on the front part was fastened the ball of human hair; on the back part were tied a downy eagle feather and one of the sharp-pointed feathers from the wing of that bird. He had another sacred article, a buffalo horn, which he fastened at his belt.

Little Bear called a few warriors together and asked them to go with him, and they consented. Putting on his headdress and buffalo horn, he and his companions started. They met a party of Sioux, hunting. One of the Sioux made a charge at Little Bear, who fell over a bluff. The Sioux stood above him and shot arrows at him; one struck the headdress and the other the buffalo horn. After he had shot these two arrows the Sioux turned and fled. Little Bear, who was uninjured, climbed up the bluff, and, seeing the Sioux, drew his bow and shot the man through the head. Besides this scalp Little Bear and his party captured some ponies. On the return of the party Little Bear gave his share of the booty to the chief who had lost his son. Little Bear went on three other expeditions and always returned successful, and each time he gave his share of the spoils to the chief. When Little Bear came back the fourth time the chief kept his word and resigned his office in favor of the young man. Little Bear was my grandfather. When he died he was succeeded by his eldest son, Two Bulls. At his death his brother, Iron Whip (Wegasapi) who was my father, became chief, and I succeeded him.”

Right around the time Little Bear assumed the hereditary chieftaincy, American diplomats on the Lewis and Clark Expedition entered Ponca territory from the east on September 4, 1804. President Thomas Jefferson had dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark the year prior to establish diplomatic relations with the Ponca and the other nations on the Great Plains. When they arrived at the Ponca community known as Poncaries about two miles inland, they observed a community without people as the Ponca were on a hunting expedition, denying the Americans the chance to establish relations with the Ponca. Not until 1817 were relations formalized between the Ponca and the Americans when the nations entered into a treaty of peace and friendship on June 25, 1817 known as the Ponca Treaty of 1817. The treaty affirmed peace and friendship between the Ponca Nation and the United States and placed the countries upon the same footing upon which they stood before the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, promising "perpetual peace and friendship between all the citizens of the United States of America" and all the citizens of the Ponca Nation. The United States was fearful of European influence in North America and the Ponca were well acquainted with Great Britain, Spain, and France. The Ponca agreed to be a protectorate of the United States "and of no other nation, power, sovereign," meaning Great Britain, Spain, or France.

Ultimately, the power vacuum created by smallpox would be filled by the Sioux who waged constant warfare upon the Ponca who they outnumbered 50:1. Despite the existential threat posed by unrelenting Sioux aggression, half a century later, the Ponca were still there and even saw a population boom, with a citizenry of nearly 1,000 people by 1840. As the Ponca were so small that they posed no military or strategic threat to the United States, the Ponca leadership maintained friendly foreign relations with the Americans and were eager to expand trade relations with the United States. Unlike neighboring nations, the Ponca were farmers and raised corn and kept vegetable gardens. This brought them a measure of prosperity and as a result they owned many horses and engaged in the horse trade. Their prosperity also encouraged frequent attacks from Sioux to their north.

In 1858, American officials began traveling through the Great Plains setting up boundaries on the land for different Native American nations. The Ponca sold a large portion of their territory to the United States in exchange for American promises to guarantee them a permanent home on their ancestral homeland on the Niobrara and to guarantee their protection from the Sioux.

Prior to this, all the nations in the region had established foreign trade relations with Great Britain, France, and Spain with the Missouri River being the only network to the international fur trade. By 1780, the Omaha acquired political hegemony over the Great Plains region under the leadership of Blackbird who commanded sole access to the Missouri River trade route from the Omaha population center Tonwantonga. The Omaha hegemony abruptly ended in 1801 an epidemic of smallpox struck the region l. The mortality rate was also high among the Ponca, reducing their population to several hundred. The power vacuum created by the destruction of the Omaha governance to the east was filled by the militaristic Lakota Sioux who commanded vast territories to the north and west and the Pawnee to the South. Unlike the Ponca and Omaha, the Sioux were spared the full onslaught of the epidemic because they were a nomadic people who developed power upon acquiring the horse from the Omaha.

1868-1877: American violations of the Ponca Treaty
In 1868, the United States broke the Ponca Treaty during treaty negotiatons with the Lakota Sioux. The Ponca were not a party to these negotiations nor were they informed beforehand unlawfully sold the entirety of Ponca land to the Sioux in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Ponca leaders were neither a party to that treaty nor did the Americans ever inform them that their land was sold. The Sioux were well aware of what happened. Instead of rectifying the error or entering into an agreement with the Ponca to return the land, the Sioux increased their attacks against the Ponca by deploying large war parties demanding horses as tribute and threatening to forcibly remove Ponca off land which the Sioux now claimed as their own despite knowing the illicit manner in which the Sioux obtained Ponca land from the Americans who cheated the Ponca.

From 1868 to 1875, Ponca farmers were forced to work their fields with one hand holding the handles of a plow and the other holding a rifle due to the relentless and unjustified Sioux warfare. Although the Ponca government made repeated formal protests to Washington, the Americans took no action, and continued violating other sections of the Ponca Treaty of 1865 which forbade both Americans and foreign persons to settle on Ponca territory. Instead, the number of American and foreign immigrant settlers had been intruding Ponca lands, lusting after the Ponca's rich alluvial fields on which grew the finest corn on the Great Plains.

Not until 1875 did the United States Congress finally acknowledge American treaty obligations to protect the Ponca. Rather than restoring to the Ponca all the land the United States illegally sold to the Sioux, however, Congress appropriated an insignificant amount of money to indemnify the Ponca “for losses by thefts and murders committed by the Sioux.”

In 1876, the region was further destabilized following the Sioux victory over the United States Army and George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The Americans blamed the regional instability on the Sioux for resisting the United States. Accordingly, the Congress sought to obtain the pacification of the Sioux by exiling the Ponca and other regional nations to the Indian Territory. Congress unilaterally included the Ponca in a list of northern Native American nations to be removed to Indian Territory despite the fact the Ponca did not participate in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and had in fact never engaged in warfare with the United States. In 1876, Congress appropriated $25,000 “for the removal of the Ponca to the Indian Territory, and providing them a home therein, with consent” of the Ponca. That last phrase was as conveniently overlooked as were the promises of the treaty which forbade white persons to settle on Ponca territory; for ten years white settlers had been intruding on Ponca lands, and their eyes were greedy for the rich alluvial fields on which grew the finest Indian corn on the Plains.

Prelude to removal
In January of 1877, unbeknownst to the Ponca, President Ulysses S. Grant had ordered a federal agent named Edward Cleveland Kemble to inform them of their impending removal. A few years earlier, Grant had nominated Kemble as a United States Indian Inspector. Kemble arrived on January 21, 1877. White Eagle's narrative provides the best rendition of the injustice that followed:In January of 1877, unbeknownst to the Ponca, President Ulysses S. Grant had ordered a federal agent named Edward Cleveland Kemble to inform them of their impending removal. A few years earlier, Grant had nominated Kemble as a United States Indian Inspector. White Eagle's narrative provides the best rendition of the injustice that followed:The chiefs were united, however, in their determination to hold the government to its treaty obligations, and Kemble decided to return to Washington to report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The commissioner took the problem to Secretary of the Interior Schurz, who in turn passed it to the Great Warrior Sherman. Sherman recommended the use of troops to force the Poncas to move, and as usual Big Eyes Schurz concurred. In April Kemble returned to the Niobrara, and by using the threat of troops persuaded 170 members of the tribe to start with him for Indian Territory. None of the leading chiefs would go with him. Standing Bear protested so strongly that he was ordered arrested and taken to Fort Randall. “They fastened me and made a prisoner of me and carried me to the fort,” he said. 5 A few days later the government sent a new agent, E. A. Howard, to deal with the remaining three-fourths of the tribe, and Standing Bear was released. White Eagle, Standing Bear, and the other chiefs continued to insist that the government had no right to move them from their land. Howard replied that he had nothing to do with the government’s decision; he had been sent there to go with them to their new home. After a four-hour council on April 15, Howard ended it by demanding a final answer: “Will you go peaceably or by force?”

The chiefs remained silent, but before they returned to their homes, a young Ponca hurried to warn them. “The soldiers have come to the lodges.” The chiefs knew then that there would be no more councils. They would have to leave their homeland and go to Indian Territory. “The soldiers came with their guns and bayonets,” Standing Bear said. “They aimed their guns at us, and our people and our children were crying.”

Forced removal
They started on May 21, 1877.

“The soldiers came to the borders of the village,” White Eagle said, “and forced us across the Niobrara to the other side, just as one would drive a herd of ponies; and the soldiers pushed us on until we came to the Platte River.” 7 Agent Howard methodically kept a diary of that fifty-day overland journey. On the morning they started, a heavy thunderstorm caused a sudden flooding of the Niobrara, sweeping several of the soldiers off their horses; instead of watching them drown, the Poncas plunged in and rescued them. The next day a child died, and they had to stop for a burial on the prairie. On May 23 a two-hour thunderstorm caught them in the open, drenching everyone throughout the day. A second child died; several Poncas fell ill during the night. Next day they had to ford flooded streams because of washed-out bridges. The weather turned cold. On May 26 rain fell all day and there was no wood for fires. On May 27 sickness from exposure was affecting most of the Poncas. Standing Bear’s daughter, Prairie Flower, was very ill with pneumonia. Next day thunderstorms and heavy rain made progress almost impossible in the deep mud of the road. Now it was the Hot Weather Begins Moon, with showers falling almost every day. On June 6, 1877, Prairie Flower died outside of Milford, Nebraska. That night a tornado struck the Ponca camp, demolishing tents, overturning wagons, and hurling people hundreds of feet, seriously injuring several of them. Next day another child died. On June 14 they reached the Otoe reservation. The Otoes, taking-pity on the Poncas, gave them ten ponies to aid in the completion of their journey. For three days they waited for high waters to subside; illnesses continued to increase; the first male adult, Little Cottonwood, died. Howard had a coffin made for him and arranged a Christian burial near Bluewater, Kansas. On June 24 illness was so prevalent that Howard employed a physician at Manhattan, Kansas, to attend the Poncas. Next day two women died on the march. Howard saw that they received Christian burials. Now it was the Middle of the Summer Moon. A child of Buffalo Chief died and received a Christian burial at Burlington, Kansas. A Ponca named Buffalo Track went berserk and tried to kill Chief White Eagle, blaming him for the tribe’s miseries. Agent Howard banished Buffalo Track from the caravan and sent him back north to the Omaha reservation. The Poncas envied him for his punishment. Summer heat and biting flies plagued them for another week, and then at last, on July 9, after a severe drenching in a thunderstorm, they reached the Quapaw reservation, their new home, and found the small group of Poncas who had preceded them living wretchedly in tents.{ "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [ {     "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "LineString", "coordinates": [ [           -97.96852245926858,            42.80396532175696          ],          [            -97.82203629612924,            42.21004104530556          ],          [            -97.23609969019893,            41.64697683128553          ],          [            -96.7966465651989,            40.35730029954458          ],          [            -95.96656724810603,            39.439551236119364          ],          [            -95.60035720467569,            38.06881570496381          ],          [            -94.7702778875828,            36.84793990687488          ],          [            -97.04078659415245,            36.80885715330717          ]        ]      }    }  ] }

Political prisoners in the Indian Territory
“I am of the opinion that the removal of the Poncas from the northern climate of Dakota to the southern climate of the Indian Territory,” agent Howard wrote his superiors, “will prove a mistake, and that a great mortality will surely follow among the people when they shall have been here for a time and become poisoned with the malaria of the climate.” 8 Howard’s ominous prediction proved to be all too accurate. Like the Modocs, the Nez Percés, and the Northern Cheyennes, the Poncas died so rapidly that by the end of their first year in Indian Territory almost one-fourth of them had received Christian burials. In the spring of 1878 Washington officials decided to give them a new reservation on the west bank of the Arkansas, but failed to allot funds for their transfer. The Poncas walked 150 miles to their new land, but for several weeks they had no agent to issue them provisions or medicines. “The land was good,” White Eagle said, “but in the summer we were sick again. We were as grass that is trodden down; we and our stock. Then came the cold weather, and how many died we did not know.” 9

Standing Bear v. Crook
One of those who died was the oldest son of Standing Bear. “At last I had only one son left; then he sickened. When he was dying he asked me to promise him one thing. He begged me to take him, when he was dead, back to our old burying ground by the Swift Running Water, the Niobrara. I promised. When he died, I and those with me put his body into a box and then in a wagon and we started north.” 10 Sixty-six Poncas made up the burial party, all of Standing Bear’s clan, following the old wagon drawn by two gaunt horses. It was the Snow Thaws Moon, January, 1879. (Ironically, far away to the north, Dull Knife’s Cheyennes were making their last desperate fight for freedom at Fort Robinson.) For Standing Bear this was a second winter journey home. He led his people over trails away from settlements and soldiers, and they reached the Omaha reservation before the soldiers could find them. Big Eyes Schurz meanwhile had made several attempts through his agents to arrange for the return of Standing Bear’s Poncas to Indian Territory. Finally in March he asked the War Department to telegraph Three Stars Crook’s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, ordering him to arrest the runaways without delay and return them to Indian Territory. In response, Crook sent a company of soldiers up to the Omaha reservation; they arrested Standing Bear and his Poncas and brought them back to Fort Omaha, where they were placed under guard, awaiting arrangements for shipment to Indian Territory. For more than a decade Three Stars had been fighting Indians, meeting them in councils, making them promises which he could not keep. Grudgingly at first, he admitted admiration for Indian courage; since the surrenders of 1877 he was beginning to feel both respect and sympathy for his old enemies. The treatment of Cheyennes at Fort Robinson during the last few weeks had outraged him. “A very unnecessary act of power to insist upon this particular portion of the band going back to their former reservation,” he bluntly stated in his official report. 11 When Crook went to see the Poncas in the guardhouse at Fort Omaha, he was appalled by the pitiable conditions of the Indians. He was impressed by Standing Bear’s simple statements of why he had come back north, his stoic acceptance of conditions over which he had lost control. “I thought God intended us to live,” Standing Bear told Crook, “but I was mistaken. God intends to give the country to the white people, and we are to die. It may be well; it may be well.”

Crook was so moved by what he saw and heard that he promised Standing Bear he would do all he could to countermand the orders for the return of the Poncas to Indian Territory. At this time Crook took action to support his promise. He went to see an Omaha newspaper editor, Thomas Henry Tibbies, and enlisted the power of the press. While Crook held up orders for transfer of the Poncas, Tibbies spread their story across the city, the state, and then by telegraph across the nation. The churches of Omaha sent an appeal to Secretary Schurz to order the Poncas released, but Mah-hah Ich-hon—Big Eyes—did not bother to reply. A young Omaha lawyer, John L. Webster, then volunteered his services without a fee, and he was soon supported by the chief attorney of the Union Pacific Railroad, Andrew Poppleton. The lawyers had to work quickly to build a case for the Poncas; any day, General Crook could receive orders from Washington compelling him to start the Indians southward, and then nothing could be done for them. All efforts were bent toward obtaining the cooperation of Judge Elmer S. Dundy, a rugged frontiersman with four main interests in life—good literature, horses, hunting, and the administration of justice. It so happened that Dundy was away on a bear hunt, and the Ponca supporters spent several anxious hours before messengers could find and bring the judge back to Omaha. With Crook’s tacit agreement, Judge Dundy issued a writ of habeas corpus upon the general, requiring him to bring the Ponca prisoners into court and show by what authority he held them. Crook obeyed the writ by presenting his military orders from Washington, and the district attorney for the United States appeared before the judge to deny the Poncas’ right to the writ on the ground that Indians were “not persons within the meaning of the law.” Thus began on April 18, 1879, the now almost forgotten civil-rights case of Standing Bear v. Crook. The Poncas’ lawyers, Webster and Poppleton, argued that an Indian was as much a “person” as any white man and could avail himself of the rights of freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. When the United States attorney stated that Standing Bear and his people were subject to the rules and regulations which the government had made for tribal Indians, Webster and Poppleton replied that Standing Bear and any other Indian had the right to separate themselves from their tribes and live under protection of United States laws like any other citizens. The climax of the case came when Standing Bear was given permission to speak for his people: “I am now with the soldiers and officers. I want to go back to my old place north. I want to save myself and my tribe. My brothers, it seems to me as if I stood in front of a great prairie fire. I would take up my children and run to save their lives; or if I stood on the bank of an overflowing river, I would take my people and fly to higher ground. Oh, my brothers, the Almighty looks down on me, and knows what I am, and hears my words. May the Almighty send a good spirit to brood over you, my brothers, to move you to help me. If a white man had land, and someone should swindle him, that man would try to get it back, and you would not blame him. Look on me. Take pity on me, and help me to save the lives of the women and children. My brothers, a power, which I cannot resist, crowds me down to the ground. I need help. I have done.” 13 Judge Dundy ruled that an Indian was a “person” within the meaning of the habeas corpus act, that the right of expatriation was a natural, inherent, and inalienable right of the Indian as well as the white race, and that in time of peace no authority, civil or military, existed for transporting Indians from one section of the country to another without the consent of the Indians or to confine them to any particular reservation against their will.

“I have never been called upon to hear or decide a case that appealed so strongly to my sympathy,” he said. “The Poncas are amongst the most peaceable and friendly of all the Indian tribes. … If they could be removed to the Indian Territory by force, and kept there in the same way, I can see no good reason why they might not be taken and kept by force in the penitentiary at Lincoln, or Leavenworth, or Jefferson City, or any other place which the commander of the forces might, in his judgment, see proper to designate. I cannot think that any such arbitrary authority exists in this country.” 14 When Judge Dundy concluded the proceedings by ordering Standing Bear and his Ponca band released from custody, the audience in the courtroom rose to its feet and, according to a newspaper reporter, “such a shout went up as was never heard in a courtroom.” General Crook was the first to reach Standing Bear to congratulate him. 15 At first the United States district attorney considered appealing the decision, but after studying Judge Dundy’s written opinion (a brilliant essay on human rights), he made no appeal to the Supreme Court. The United States government assigned Standing Bear and his band a few hundred acres of unclaimed land near the mouth of the Niobrara, and they were back home again. As soon as the surviving 530 Poncas in Indian Territory learned of this astonishing turn of events, most of them began preparations to join their relatives in Nebraska. The Indian Bureau, however, was not sympathetic. Through its agents the bureau informed the Ponca chiefs that only the Great Council in Washington could decide if and when the tribe might return. The bureaucrats and politicians (the Indian Ring) recognized Judge Dundy’s decision as a strong threat to the reservation system; it would endanger the small army of entrepreneurs who were making fortunes funneling bad food, shoddy blankets, and poisonous whiskey to the thousands of Indians trapped on reservations. If the Poncas were permitted to leave their new reservation in Indian Territory and walk away as free American citizens, this would set a precedent which might well destroy the entire military-political-reservation complex. In his annual report, Big Eyes Schurz admitted that the Poncas in Indian Territory “had a serious grievance,” but he strongly opposed permitting them to return to their homeland because it would make other Indians “restless with a desire to follow their example” and thereby cause a breakup of the territorial reservation system. 16 At the same time, William H. Whiteman, who headed the lucrative Ponca agency, tried to discredit Standing Bear’s band by describing them as “certain renegade members of the tribe,” and then he wrote in glowing terms of his considerable expenditures for materials and tools to develop the reservation in Indian Territory. Whiteman made no mention of the discontent prevalent among the Poncas, their constant petitions to return to their homeland, or of his feud with Big Snake. Big Snake was Standing Bear’s brother, a giant with hands like hams and shoulders as big as a buffalo’s. Like many huge men, Big Snake was quiet and gentle of manner (the Poncas called him the Peacemaker), but when he saw that White Eagle and the other head men were being intimidated by agent Whiteman, he decided to take action on his own. After all, he was the brother of Standing Bear, the Ponca who had won freedom for his people. Determined to test the new law, Big Snake requested permission to leave the reservation and go north to join his brother. As he expected, permission to leave was refused by agent Whiteman. Big Snake’s next move was not to leave Indian Territory, but to travel only a hundred miles to the Cheyenne reservation. With him went thirty other Poncas, making what they believed to be a gentle testing of the law which said that an Indian was a person and could not be confined to any particular reservation against his will. Whiteman’s reaction was that of any enentrenched bureaucrat whose authority is threatened. On May 21, 1879, he telegraphed the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, reporting the defection of Big Snake and his party to the Cheyenne reservation, and requesting that they be arrested and detained at Fort Reno “until the tribe has recovered from the demoralizing effects of the decision recently made by the United States district court in Nebraska, in the case of Standing Bear.” 17 Big Eyes Schurz agreed to the arrest, but evidently fearing another challenge in the courts, he asked the Great Warrior Sherman to transport Big Snake and his “renegades” back to the Ponca reservation as quickly and quietly as possible. In his usual blunt manner, Sherman telegraphed General Sheridan on May 22: “The honorable Secretary of the Interior requests that the Poncas arrested and held at Fort Reno, in the Indian Territory … be sent to the agency of the Poncas. You may order this to be done.” And then, as if anticipating Sheridan’s apprehensions about flying in the face of Judge Dundy’s recent decision, Sherman decreed: “The release under writ of habeas corpus of the Poncas in Nebraska does not apply to any other than that specific case.” 18 For the Great Warrior Sherman it was easier to unmake laws than it was for the courts of the land to interpret them.

Murder of Big Snake by the United States Army
10/29/79And so Big Snake lost his first test of his brother’s victory at law, and he never had a chance to try again. After being brought back to the Ponca agency in the Corn Is in Silk Moon, Big Snake was marked for destruction. Agent Whiteman reported to Washington that Big Snake had “a very demoralizing effect upon the other Indians … extremely sullen and morose.” In one paragraph Whiteman charged that Big Snake had repeatedly threatened to kill him, and in another complained that the Ponca had never spoken to him since his return. The agent became so furious that he begged the Commissioner of Indian Affairs “to arrest Big Snake and convey him to Fort Reno and there confine him for the remainder of his natural life.” 19 Finally, on October 25, Whiteman obtained authorization from Sherman to arrest Big Snake and imprison him in the agency guardhouse. To make the arrest, Whiteman requested a detail of soldiers. Five days later, Lieutenant Stanton A. Mason and thirteen soldiers arrived at the agency. Whiteman told Mason that he would send out a notice to the Poncas, ordering those who had money coming to them for special work to report to his office the next day. Big Snake would be among them, and as soon as he entered the office, Mason was to make the arrest. On October 31 Big Snake entered Whiteman’s office about noon and was told to take a chair. Lieutenant Mason and eight armed men then surrounded him, Mason informing him that he was under arrest. Big Snake wanted to know why he was being arrested. Whiteman spoke up then and said one charge against him was threatening his (Whiteman’s) life. Big Snake calmly denied this. According to the post trader, J. S. Sherburne, Big Snake then stood up and threw off his blanket to show he was not armed. Hairy Bear’s statement: “The officer told Big Snake to come along, to get up and come. Big Snake would not get up, and told the officer he wanted him to tell him what he had done. He said he had killed no one, stolen no horses, and that he had done nothing wrong. After Big Snake said that, the officer spoke to the agent, and then told Big Snake he had tried to kill two men, and had been pretty mean. Big Snake denied it. The agent then told him he had better go, and would then learn all about it down there. Big Snake said he had done nothing wrong, and that he would die before he would go. I then went up to Big Snake and told him this man [the officer] was not going to arrest him for nothing, and that he had better go along, and that perhaps he would come back all right; I coaxed all I could to get him to go; told him that he had a wife and children, and to remember them and not get killed. Big Snake then got up and told me that he did not want to go, and that if they wanted to kill him they could do it, right there. Big Snake was very cool. Then the officer told him to get up, and told him that if he did not go, there might something happen. He said there was no use in talking; I came to arrest you, and want you to go. The officer went for the handcuffs, which a soldier had, and brought them in. The officer and a soldier then tried to put them on, but Big Snake pushed them both away. Then the officer spoke to the soldiers, and four of them tried to put them on, but Big Snake pushed them all off. One soldier, who had stripes on his arms, also tried to put them on, but Big Snake pushed them all off. They tried several times, all of them, to get hold of Big Snake and hold him. Big Snake was sitting down, when six soldiers got hold of him. He raised up and threw them off. Just then one of the soldiers, who was in front of him, struck Big Snake in the face with his gun, another soldier struck him alongside the head with the barrel of his gun. It knocked him back to the wall. He straightened up again. The blood was running down his face. I saw the gun pointed at him, and was scared, and did not want to see him killed. So I turned away. Then the gun was fired and Big Snake fell down dead on the floor.” 20 The Interior Department first issued a statement that Standing Bear’s brother “Big Snake, a bad man” had been “shot accidentally.” 21 The American press, however, growing more sensisensitive to treatment of Indians since the Standing Bear case, demanded an investigation in Congress. This time the military-political-reservation complex was operating in the familiar climate of Washington, and nothing came of the investigation. The Poncas of Indian Territory had learned a bitter lesson. The white man’s law was an illusion; it did not apply to them. And so, like the Cheyennes, the diminishing Ponca tribe was split in two—Standing Bear’s band free in the north, the others prisoners in the Indian Territory.

Impact on the Native American policy of the United States
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