Chief Standing Bear gets his due place in U.S. history

Standing Bear, chief of the Ponca Native American people, was born in 1829 on tribal lands in northeastern Nebraska along the Niobrara River near its confluence with the Missouri River. 

He is regarded today as a great Nebraskan hero who rose up in 1879 to win a landmark U.S. civil rights lawsuit, against all odds.

The story begins in 1858, when the U.S. government and the Ponca Tribe entered into a treaty agreement that allowed the indigenous Ponca people to maintain their village and assume ownership of the lands they already occupied as a protected reservation.

Ten years later, a separate federal treaty signed in 1868 with the Sioux Nation created great havoc. 

It “mistakenly placed the Ponca Reservation within boundaries of The Great Sioux Reservation.”

Because of this “inadvertent error,” the Ponca were attacked by the Lakota, one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux Nation. The United States never intervened to return the Ponca land. 

Instead, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant chose to “resolve the situation” in 1876 by unilaterally ordering the Ponca removed from Nebraska and sent to “Indian Territory in Oklahoma.”

Most of the Ponca people didn’t want to go. A scouting party, including Standing Bear went to survey the situation in Oklahoma and found the land that was being offered to the Ponca was “unsuitable for relocation.” 

In response, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman ordered two companies of American soldiers to Ponca territory to force their compliance.

The forced removal of about 700 Ponca tribesmen, women and children, known as the “Ponca Trail of Tears,” began on May 16, 1877. The 600 mile, 54-day journey south was plagued by poor weather conditions and resulted in the death of nine Poncas, including Standing Bear’s daughter, Princess Prairie Flower, who was buried at Milford, in Seward County, Neb.

 On July 9, 1877, the Ponca arrived at Indian Territory where their hardships continued. Their new location was a swampy area in a tropical climate, which caused diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. In the first six months at their new location, 141 more Ponca died. Before long, the death toll exceeded 200.

In January 1879, Standing Bear’s son, Bear Shield, perished because of the poor conditions at their new reservation. Bear Shield’s dying wish was to be buried in the Ponca’s ancestral homeland near the Niobrara River in Nebraska, not in Oklahoma.

Chief Standing Bear’s request to leave the reservation to proceed with the burial was denied. He and a group of about 30 Ponca followers left anyway to return to Nebraska, enduring the brunt of a brutal winter season. (Chief White Eagle would look after the Ponca people remaining in Oklahoma.)

 

Nearing their homeplace in Nebraska, Chief Standing Bear’s party was taken in, given comfort and fed by friendly members of the Omaha Tribe on the Omaha Reservation, located about 75 miles north of the City of Omaha along the Missouri River.

 Gen. George Crook, the Army’s commander of The Department of the Platte (encompassing Iowa, Nebraska and territories in the Dakotas, Utah and a small portion of Idaho), received orders from Washington, D.C., to have Standing Bear arrested and detained at Fort Omaha in Omaha.

 

Thomas Henry Tibbles was serving as assistant editor of the Omaha Daily Herald at the time. He was “filled in” on the details surrounding Standing Bear’s arrest on March 27, 1879. Tibbles publicized the plight of Standing Bear and the Ponca people who had been forcibly relocated and now unnecessarily detained, which helped rally public support.

Soon, Standing Bear would have his day in court.