Copyright © 2000 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Ponça Chief Standing Bear: Catalyst for Indian Policy Reform Valerie Sherer Mathes On 31 March 1879, Ponca chief Standing Bear, resplendent in a red blanket trimmed with blue stripes, blue flannel leg- gings, beaded belt, and grizzly bear-claw necklace, stood before Brigadier General George Crook in Crook's Fort Omaha office. Also in attendance were other military officers. Ponca Indians, and Thomas Henry Tibbies, assistant editor of the Omaha Daily Herald. Standing Bear told the assembled group of his tribe's forced retnoval from their reservation on the South Dakota-Nebraska border to the Quapaw Indian Reservation in northeastern Indian Territory and of the many deaths that occurred along the way, including that of his son, who had begged to be buried in the land of his birth.' "I could not refuse the dying request of my boy," confessed the chief. "I have attempted to keep my word. His bones are in that trunk."- The promise of the bereaved father ultimately led to a prece- dent-setting legal case, a lecture tour of eastern cities, and the formation of various groups to aid the Indians. It also changed the lives and careers of the principal actors in the drama of Ponca removal: Susette La Flesche, the Omaha Indian woman The aiLiiior would like to tiiank tlie American Philusopliical Association for a grant from the Phillips Native American Fund. This article is part of a work in progress coauthored by Valerie Sherer Mathe.s and Richard Lowitt. 1. James T. King, "'A Better Way': General George Crook and the Ponca Indian.s," .Wehras- ka Hi'iloiy SO (Fall 1969): 245; James A, Lake, Sr., •'St;inding Bear! Wlio?," Nebraska Law 2. Standinfí Bear, cjuoied in Tilomas Henry Tibbies, The Poitca Chiefs: An Account of the Trial ofSiandin^ Bear, ed. Kay Gral.ier (Lincoln: university of Nebra.ska Pre.s.s, 1972X p. 25. See also Thomas Henry Tibbies, Buckskin and Blanket Days: Memoirs oja Friend of ¡he Indi- ans (Linciúrw [iniversit> of Nebra.ska Press, 1969). p. 197. Copyright © 2000 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. 250 South Dakota History Vol. 30, no. 3 who served as Standing Bear's interpreter; Tibbies, who took on tlie Ponca's cause and organized the tours; Massachusetts senator Henry L. Dawes, who found his calling in Indian poli- cy reform; Helen Hunt Jackson, who went on to expose the government's mistreatment of the Ponca and other tribes; and Interior Secretary Carl Schurz, whose refusal to stop the Pon- cas' removal unleashed a flood of criticism for his Indian poli- cy. Beyond the personal tragedies and triumphs involved, the forced removal of the Ponca Indians engaged the sympathies of the American public and galvanized reformers into power- ful lobby groups intent on changing Indian policy.' By the early 1700s, the Ponças had established themselves in the drainage area of the Niobrara River in present-day southern South Dakota and noitliern Nebraska. Their extensive territory was bounded on the north by the White River, on the east by the Missouri River, on the south by the Platte River, and on the west by the Black Hills. Near the junction of the Niobrara and Missouri rivers, they built earthen lodges protected by stockades of cottonwood logs. Here they grew corn, beans, squash, and pumpkins, hunted buffalo, fished, and traded with the neigh- boring Omahas and, later, with Europeans and Americans.' Although the Ponças signed treaties of peace and friendship 3. For studies of Ponca removal, see Earl W. Hayter, "The Pont-a Removal," North Dakota Historical Qiiarterty 6 (July 1932): 202-75; Stanley Clark, "Ponca Pulilicity," Mississifpi Valley Historical Rei'ieu' 29 (Mar. 1943); 495016; Robert W. Mardock. Tbt' Reformers and tbe Amer- ican Indian (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), pp. I(i8-91; Roben W. Mard<Kk, "Standing lîear and thü Reformers," in Indian Leaders: Oklahoma s First Statesmen, ed. H. Gienn Jordan und Thomas M. llolm (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1979), pp. 102-3; and Kennt-ih R. Jacob.s, "A HLsior>' of the Ponca Indians to 1882" (Ph.D. diss., Texas Tech University. 1977», pp. 117-52. For discus.sion of Indian policy reform, see Helen Maria lîannan. -Refonners and tiie 'Indian Problem,' 1878-1887, 1922-34" (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse Uni- versity, 1976). pp. 12-80; Gregory Coyne Thompson, "The Origins and Impiementaiion of the American Indian Reform Movement. 1867-1912" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1981), pp. 131-47; and Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformen and the Indian. 1865-1900 iNarm-¿n: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976). pp. 113-19. 4. Along with [he Omahas, Osages, Kansas, and Quapaws, the Ponças make up the Dhegiha division of the Siouan lingui.stic family. According to tradition, all five tribes came from the Southeast, possibly Soutli Carolina and Virginia. Migrating north and west, the tribes spiit. with the Ponca and Omaha separating last, Joseph H. Cash and Gerald W. Wolff, 'fbe Ponca People (Phoenix, Ariz.: Indian Trihal Series, 1975), pp. 1-3. For more on Ponca eth- nology. st?c'James H. Howard. The Ponca Tribe, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin no. 195 (Wa.shington, D.C.: Govermneni Printing Office, 1965), pp. !-6. 10-12; Jo.seph Jablow, Ponca Indians; HthnohLitorv of the Ponca (New York: Garland Pubiishing, 1974), pp. 8-49; and Jacobs, '"Hi.siorv- of die Ponca Indians," pp. 1-10, Copyright © 2000 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Fall 2000 Standing Bear 251 with the United States in 1817 and 1825, their own villages were not peaceful havens but were often the targets of raids by their more aggressive neighbors, the Teton Lakota, or western Sioux, especially the Brûlé. By mid-century, the Ponças' prosperity had declined along with the numbers of buffalo, and in March 1858, in return for schools, mills, houses, and thirty years of annuities, they ceded their lands to the government and accepted a reser- vation along the Missouri River north of the Niobrara River in what would become Dakota Territory. In 18Ó5, they signed another treaty, giving up an additional thirty thousand acres in return for their old burial grounds and some farmlands.^ The nine Ponca bands settled down on their ninety-six-thou- sand-acre reservation, built log houses, sent their children to the three reservation schools, and attended church in the Epis- copal mission chapel. Meanwhile, continued Sioux raids, locust plagues, floods, and, most importantly, the accidental inclusion of their land in the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868 threatened their very existence. The Brûlé initially demanded the Ponças" removal from the area, and the Ponças themselves had agreed to join their kinsmen on the Omaha reservation. When the commissioner of Indian affairs took no further action, the Pon- cas initiated a peace council with the Brûlé in February 1876, and the two tribes agreed to coexist peacefully. Neverthe]es.s, in August 1876 Congress appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars to remove the Ponças to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, a solution proposed by Interior Secretary Zachari- ah Chandler and compatil'jle with President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy, which called for concentrating western tribes on a few large resei'vations.'' When Special Indian Inspector Edward C. Kemble informed the Ponças in late January 1877 that they had to leave their home, the Indians resisted. Under pressure, head chief White Eagle, second-ranking chief Standing Bear, and eight other lead- ers accompanied Kemble, Reverend Samuel D. Hinman, Episco- pal minister at the neighboring Santee Sioux agency in Nebras- 5, Jacobs. "HLsinry of ihe Ponta Indians," pp. 79-«(>. H5-85. 97-101, 11(1-11. 6. I.IS,, Departmenl of the interior, Ofñce of Indian Affain., Aiiiiiicil Refxirl of ¡he Com- missioner of Indkin .Affairs to the Secreiari- of the Interior foriLie Vcrtr/S/Ci (Wasliingion, D.C.; Government Printing Office, 1Ö76), p. xvii; Jacobs, "History' of the Ponca Indians,' pp. 101-16. Copyright © 2000 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. 252 South Dakota History Vol. 30, no. 3 ka, and Ponca agent James Lawrence to Indian Territory in early Febmary. Kemble showed the Ponca leaders three tracts of land, the last one near Arkansas City, Kansas, demanding that they accept one or he would abandon them. Dissatisfied with the land and disgusted with Kemble's refusal to honor an earlier promise to take them either home or to Washington, D.C., to confer with President Rutherford B. Hayes, Standing Bear and seven others balked, setting out from Arkansas City with eight dollars among them. Michel Cerre, or Cera, and Antoine, or Lone Chief, were eiderly and unable to endure the bng walk home. They remained behind and accompanied the officials as they looked at other possible relocation sites.' "He left us right there," Standing Bear later said of Kemble. "It was winter. We started for home on foot. At night we slept in hay-stacks. We barely lived till morning, it was so cold."" When the chiefs account appeared in print in late 1879, the inspector described it as fictitious, "invented to cover [the Ponças'] bad faith and shortcomings."" In rebuttal. Standing Bear accused Kemble of attempting to force them to sign a treaty giving up their Dakota lands.'" After a grueling fifty-day journey, the Ponças finally arrived at the Otoe Indian Reservation in southern Nebraska. Follow- ing railroad tracks whenever possible, they had endured bit- terly cold weather with only thin blankets for protection and raw com for sustenance.