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Ponca Trail of Tears
Native American forced removal Part of Trail of Tears and American Indian Wars
Date	1877-81
Location	Great Plains Dakota Territory Nebraska Kansas Indian Territory
Caused by	American violations of the Ponca Treaty of 1865
Goals	United States: Pacify the Lakota Sioux resistance in order to seize the Black Hills Ponca: Restoration of territory and reform of Native American policy
Resulted in	1. Monetary reparations to the Ponca and a partial restoration of territory in Nebraska 2. Recognition of Native Americans as persons under the Constitution 3. Termination of the Indian removal policy in the United States
Parties
Ponca Nation United States
Lead figures
White Eagle Standing Bear Big Snake† Iron Whip† Susette LaFlesche Helen Hunt Jackson Thomas Tibbles Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes Edward Kemble Carl Schurz William Tecumseh Sherman George Crook
Casualties
Death(s)	Over 200

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.

Ponca Trail of Tears (1877)

Prelude to removal

Inspector Edward Kemble (1827-1886) undertook the removal without authority of law in the first part of 1877

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 the spring of 1877 we were all living quietly on our farms and at work. We have been working on our farms for the last three years, and we had laid plans to work harder than ever during the year of 1877, when suddenly there came to our reserve a white man who professed to have come from President Ulysses S. Grant. His name was Edward Cleveland Kemble. He called us all to the church, and we went. We had seen this man before, and he had appeared to be a good friend of ours. He said to us, “The President has sent me with a message to you. He has sent me to tell you that you must pack up and move to Indian Territory.” I answered him by saying, “Friend, I thought that when the President desired to transact business with people he usually consulted with them first, and then transacted his business with them afterward. This is the first that I have heard of his desire to remove us. Here are some men from the Yankton, Santee, and Omaha nations, and here are also some American soldiers who are friends of ours; I ask them if they have heard of this before. They have not. This has come on us suddenly. Give us time to think about it. Although I am an Indian, I want to tell the Great Spirit all about this before I do anything more. I want to know and see for myself what I had better do. I want to ask Great Spirit to help me to decide.”

I continued, “Now friends, if what you have told us from the President is true, raise your hands.” Kemble, the leading man, refused to raise his hands. Reverend Samuel Dutton Hinman, who was with him, raised his hand, not up towards God, but low down toward the ground. Kemble then jumped to his feet and said, “The President told me to take you to the Indian Territory, and I have both hands full of the money which it will require to move you down there. When the President says anything, it must be done. Everything is settled, and it is just the same as though you were there already.” I answered, “I have never broken any of my treaties with the government. What does the President want to take my land away from me for? The President told me to work, and I have done it. He told me to not go on the warpath, even if the white men took away my horses and cattle or killed my people. I promised I would not, and I have performed my promise. Although other people often move from place to place, yet I have always stayed on our land. It is ours. My people have lived and died on this land as far back as we can remember. I have sown wheat and planted corn and have performed all my promises to the President. I have raised enough on my farm to support myself, and now it seems just as though the government were trying to drown me when he takes my land away from me. We have always been peaceful. The land is our own. We do not want to part with it. I have broken no treaties, and the President has no right to take it from me.”

Kemble arose and said, “Stop your talking; don't say any more. The President told me to remove you as soon as I got here. The President is going to send all the Indians to the Indian Territory. He intends you to move first, so that you can have your choice of the best lands there. You can do nothing. What the President has said will be done. I do not want to say any more on this subject. The President says you must move; get ready.” I answered, “When people want to do anything, they think about it first, talk about it with others, and then, after deliberation, they decide. I want to think about it. I want to see the President and talk the whole matter over with him, and then I will do what I think best. I know it will not be to give up our land. You have no right to move us in this way without our consent or will.” Kemble then said, “You must go right away. The President intends to move the Sioux also, and I shall start tomorrow to tell them so.”

The next day he started for the Sioux and returned. I again talked with him. I said, “It will cost a great deal of money to remove us. Let the President keep his money. We do not want it. It might hurt him to part with it. Take the money, which you said you brought, back to him. We do not want to use it, and we do not want to part with our land.”

Kemble said, “The President has plenty of money and he will not miss it.” I said, “God made me and He also made you. Perhaps He made you long before He did me, and that may be the reason that you, as a nation, are more enterprising and powerful than we are. But God made me. I was born here. He gave me this land, and it is mine. When your people first came here and asked for our land our forefathers sold you some. When our fathers sold you this land they made a treaty with your government, which I now hold in my hand, and it is stated here how much was sold to you and how much remained to us; and it is also stated here that the land that we did not sell was ours. It belongs to none but us until we choose to sell it. The government has no right to it. It is ours and we do not wish to part with it.”

Kemble answered by saying, “The President says that the treaty is worthless. It will not do you any good. The President does not count it as anything. When you get to the new country the President will give you a new treaty, and you shall have a good title to your land there. As you do not believe the President's message I will send a telegram to him.” The next day he brought the return telegram, and said, “I will read it to you. You will see for yourselves whether what I have told you is true or not. The President says in this telegram that he wants ten of your chiefs to go to Washington, but he wants me first to take you to the Indian Territory and see for yourselves, so that you may select a piece of land there, and then go on to Washington afterwards to talk it over.” I answered, “We will go with you. If we are satisfied with the land we will tell the President so, but if we are not satisfied we will say so also.”

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:

He then took us ten chiefs down there, and left us in Indian Territory without money, pass, or interpreter, in a strange country, among a strange people, because we would not select a piece of land. He wished us to sign a paper saying that we would take that piece of land, and because we would not and asked to be taken to Washington as he had promised, he left us to find our way back alone on foot. We could not believe that he had been authorized to treat us with such indignity, and we could not believe that the white people of the country would let such a wrong done in their name pass unnoticed; so, on our return to the Omaha Reservation, after enduring great hardship on the way, we made a statement of all the facts, requesting a friend to see that it was published in a paper. We also sent a telegram to the President, asking him if he has authorized these men to treat us in this manner; but we never received any answer.

After we had left the Omaha Reservation and had nearly reached home, we found Kemble and some soldiers already there. They had frightened our people and forced them to move in our absence, and they were just starting from the reserve. When we met our people we said to them, “Stop. Do not go on. When a man owns anything, it is his until he gives it or sells it. This land is ours. We have not given or sold it to the President. He has no right to it. When we were left in the Indian Territory we believed that the government had left us alone for good; and now we find that this man has come back here, bringing the soldiers, and forcing you to move in our absence. Do not go any further.” They obeyed us.

Two days after our return home Kemble sent for us again. When we reached the place, we found the soldiers there, all armed, and Kemble sitting by the side of an officer. I gave the treaty to the officer to examine. I said to him, “I have never done anything wrong against the white people. I have never broken any treaties. Now what have I done that your soldiers stand here all armed against me? I have been working on my land. I have done that which I thought my duty. I believed that your soldiers were stationed here to protect me against all wrong and injury. Now show me what I have done that you stand here with your soldiers in arms against me? I have helped your soldiers. I have helped the white people who live around here. I have always been peaceful. When the Sioux carried off your cattle and horses and property, I have had it returned to you when in my power. I thought that you, at least, would help me in my time of trouble. Why do I find you here now armed against me? We had always believed that your government had ordered your soldiers to protect those who were peaceful and doing their duty, and to punish and bear arms only against those who had committed crimes. A short time ago I was here at work on my land. I was taken and left in the Indian Territory to find my way back alone. I thought that after being treated in the manner we were by this man, that when I came home I would find a protection from my enemy in you. And now, instead, I find you armed against me.” I then turned to Kemble and said, “You profess to be a Christian, and to love God; and yet you would love to see bloodshed. Have you no pity on the tears of these helpless women and children? We would rather die here on our land than be forced to go. Kill us all here on our land now, so that in the future when men will ask, ‘Why have these died?’ it shall be answered, ‘They died rather than be forced to leave their land. They died to maintain their rights. And perhaps there will be found some who will pity us and say, ‘They only did what was right.’”

Kemble answered, “If blood is shed you only will be in fault. You only will be the cause. You have exceeded the time in which the President gave you to move by a good many days.”

White Swan then spoke to Kemble, and said, “You have been here several times before. You professed to be a great Christian and one of the chief ministers among your people. You preached to us and told us about God. You told me to give myself to him and join his people. I was willing, and you baptized my family and myself. You held me by the hand and said you were my friend, and I looked on you as such. I never thought that you would ever try to lead me into the great fire, the hell of your people. You told me that God loved us all; that he had made laws which he wanted us to keep, and I promised that I would try to keep them. When you asked me to keep these laws, I said to myself, ‘He is a good friend; he tells me good things and wants me to do right and to walk the god road.’ I did not think then that you would ever try to lead me into a bad road. You told me that God saw everything we did. If so, He has seen the wrong and wickedness in this matter. When I was baptized and promised God that I would do as He wanted me to, I meant it, and now (raising his hand to heaven) I call on God to witness that I have tried to keep my promise; but you have lied to him. He is the judge that I speak the truth. When you left us in Indian Territory I thought that you had gone to tell the President that we refused to give up our land; and now I come home to find that you have not. You said you wanted to save my soul from hell when I should die; but now I find that you wish to send my soul to hell while I am yet living, and I wish to keep out of it. You professed to be our friend. Could you not so much as have said to the President, ‘These people do not want to part with their land. You are powerful, and they are weak. Have mercy on them and do not make them go.’ Could you not have done this much after all your professions of friendship? I would like to see you go to a white man yonder, who is living on his farm, and say to him, 'Get off from here, the President wants this land and you must move on and go somewhere else.’ What do you suppose he would answer? The President has no more right to take our land from us than he has that of the white man.”

Kemble answered, “What you have said about God is all right; but this business I have come to tend to has nothing to do with God or anything of the kind. It is another subject altogether. You had better not say that I want to lead you into hell. I want to lead you into the good road. It is you who want to take the bad road. You ought to be on the road to the Indian Territory by this time. The President will get out of patience; so, I want you to start tomorrow. The President wanted me to do this errand as soon as I got here, but you have kept me waiting this long. The President has sent me word that if you refuse to go I must push you out. Your head chief, White Eagle, has talked of the shedding of blood rather than go. I did not want you to let God hear you say such a thing, but he has heard you. This is all I have to say, and now I give you in charge of this officer and his soldiers.”

Then the Ponca Chief of Police arose and said: “Our chiefs here have appointed me captain of our police, but they did not appoint me to bear arms against the weak and innocent, but that I might help and protect them. Your officer has brought his soldiers armed against my tribe. I shall not resist him. If he chooses to kill us, unarmed as we are, he can do it. You say your President has sent the money by you which is to take us to the Indian Territory. Take it back to your President. We will not leave our land, and we are afraid of the land in the Indian Territory. Take your money home. When you took our chiefs to the Indian Territory, you took some money to pay for their fare there. If the money belonged to the President, we want you to give it back to him from our own fund. This fund is the money which we received in payment for our land which we sold.” The man who made this speech was one of the first to die when we reached the Indian Territory.

The next morning after this council the soldiers, some on horses and some in wagons, went around to the houses, and where they found the doors locked (for some of the people had shut up their houses and fled to the woods), kicked or broke them open, and put their household goods, such as could be carried with ease, into the wagons. In this way Kemble started off with a party composed of about ten families, while the soldiers remained behind with the rest of us. After this first party had been carried off, I took an interpreter with me to Niobrara City, and there found a lawyer, to whom I stated all these facts, and telling him that I thought the whole thing had been done unlawfully; asked him to help us maintain our rights. I wanted him to send a telegram to the President, asking him whether he knew of what had been done in his name. The lawyer said, “I will do so if you give me the money to pay for it.” I answered that I had no money, but that I had a horse which I could sell to pay for the telegram. The lawyer sent a telegram, but he never received an answer.

Meanwhile the first party, which Kemble had taken, had been left by him on the other side of Niobrara, while he himself went to Washington. I then collected those of us who were yet on the reserve together and, gathering thirty-four of our horses, we sold them to pay the lawyer’s expenses to Washington. When the lawyer got to Washington and went to see the President, he found Kemble sitting and talking with him. While we were awaiting the lawyer’s return, we almost starved, as Campbell had taken the provisions which belonged to us and carried them away with the first party. After some time, the lawyer sent a telegram saying that he had been unable to do anything for us, except to keep them from fulfilling threat of starving and treating us with indignity on the way down because of our refusal to go.

Before the lawyer had time to return, a new agent by the name of Howard was sent to take us down. He remained on the other side of the river and sent for us to come down, but we refused to go. He sent again and went to him. The place where we met him was in a wild place by the river side. He spoke kindly to us and was the first and only who did so of those who had been sent from Washington. He said: “Friends, although I am white, and you are Indians, I am a man just as you are, and have a heart just the same as yours. I know you have been treated unjustly, and I feel sorry for you; but I cannot help you. The President has sent me to take you down. I will do all in my power to make the journey comfortable for you so that you may not suffer.” I said to him, “Friend, it is good when men meet as friends and talk kindly to each other. You have spoken the first kind word we have heard for a long time. We had made up our minds to resist and die on our own land rather than go to a strange one to die; but, now you have come, we do not know what we will do.”

We then separated, and calling all the men of our tribe together, I said to them, “My people, we, your chiefs, have worked hard to save you from this. We have resisted until we are worn out, and now we know not what more we can do. We leave the matter into your hands to decide. If you say that we fight and die on our lands, so be it.” There was utter silence. Not a word was spoken. We all arose and started for our homes, and there we found that in our absence the soldiers had collected all our women and children together and were standing guard over them. The soldiers got on their horses, went to all the houses, broke open the doors, took our household utensils, put them in their wagons, and pointing their bayonets at our people, ordered them to move. They took all our plows, mowers, hay-forks, grindstones, farming implements of all kind, and everything too heavy to be taken on a journey and locked them up in a large house. We never knew what became of them afterwards. Many of these things of which we were robbed we had bought with money earned by the work of our hands.

White Eagle on May 20, 1879

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.

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

Ponca removal controversy (1879-1881)

Standing Bear v. Crook

Standing Bear v. Crook
Court	United States District Court for Nebraska
Full case name	United States ex rel. Machunahzha (Standing Bear) et al. v. George Crook, a Brigadier General of the Army of the United States and Commander of the Department of the Platte
Decided	May 14, 1879
Docket nos.	No. 136E
Defendants	Gen. George R. Crook, U.S. Army on behalf of the United States government
Counsel for plaintiffs	Andrew Poppleton, John Webster
Plaintiffs	Standing Bear and 29 other illegally detained Ponca nationals
Citation	25 F. Cas. 695 (D. Neb. 1879)
Case history
Subsequent action	The U.S. Attorney General appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in 1879 but voluntarily dismissed the appeal on January 5, 1880 before the case could be heard
Holding
1. That a Native American is a "person" within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States and has the right to legal redress whenever restrained of liberty in violation of the Constitution of the United States.
Court membership
Judge sitting	Elmer Scipio Dundy
Keywords
Habeas corpus in the United States,Fourteenth Amendment

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.

Senate investigation

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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Gallery

• 
  Rutherford B. Hayes
• 
  Carl Schurz