Standing Bear gets a statue, bridge and postage stamp!

NebraskaStudies.org is an educational website that is an excellent source for information about the life and times of Chief Standing Bear.

 

The legal decision issued in 1879 by U.S. District Court Judge Elmer Scipio Dundy “was an important development” in the history of America’s civil rights movement, according to the website’s study guide.

Standing Bear was freed to go home to Nebraska’s Niobrara River valley and bury the remains of his 16-year-old son on Ponca tribal grounds.

Title to the land was eventually returned to the Ponca people. The U.S. Congress admitted that government treaty makers erred when they included Ponca land within the territory set aside for the Sioux Nation Reservation in 1877. 

Furthermore, the government was wrong to forcefully remove the Ponca from their homeland in 1877 and send them 600 miles away to undesirable land within Oklahoma’s Indian Territory.

In 1881, Congress voted to compensate the Ponca people for their losses, and the Ponca were given individual land allotments along the Niobrara River. Standing Bear and his followers chose to stay and “make their new home on their old reservation.”

Similar land allotments were awarded to the members of the Ponca Tribe who moved their homes into Indian Territory. Today, the Ponca Tribe members are clustered mainly in Kay County, Okla., near the Arkansas River, just below the Kansas border.

 

Chief Standing Bear died in 1909 at age 79. He is remembered as a pioneer, hero and good-will ambassador.

A statue of Standing Bear is on display in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., a gift from the State of Nebraska.

 

Sculpted by Benjamin Victor of Boise, Idaho, the Standing Bear artwork is more than nine feet tall. It depicts the chief as a warrior, wearing a single eagle feather. “His necklace of bear claws represents the strength and healing power of that sacred animal, and his right arm is outstretched as he asserts that his hand and the judge’s hold blood of the same color.”

Additionally, the Chief Standing Bear Memorial Bridge was dedicated in 1998. It’s 2,950 feet long and spans the Missouri River at the Nebraska-South Dakota border. The bridge joins Nebraska Highway 14 to South Dakota Highway 37, linking Niobrara, Neb., to Running Water, S.D.

 

The U.S. Postal Service issued a Chief Standing Bear Forever in 2023 during public ceremonies conducted in Lincoln, Neb. The bright and colorful portrait painting of Standing Bear is the work of illustrator Thomas Blackshear II of Colorado Springs, Colo., who used a black-and-white photograph taken in 1877 as his model.

 

Anton G. Hajjar of Chevy Chase, Md., vice chair of the USPS Board of Governors, said: “Although the United States was founded on the principle that ‘all men are created equal,’ it took our country far too long to recognize the humanity in many of its people – including the American Indians who lived in these lands for thousands of years.”

Judi M. gaiashkibos of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, commented: “It’s remarkable that the story of Nebraska Native American civil rights leader Chief Standing Bear has progressed from a man being considered a ‘non-person by the U.S. government’ in 1879 to being recognized with a stamp honoring him as an American icon.”

Candace Schmidt, chair of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, said: “Chief Standing Bear is one of the pivotal civil rights leaders in American history. The Ponca Tribe is elated that this stamp will help illustrate his story of justice and triumph, which is also our story.”

Standing Bear Park, Museum & Education Center in Ponca City, Okla., honors Native Americans with a 22-foot bronze statue of Chief Standing Bear. 

A 63-acre park includes a walking trail among native grasses and wildflowers, a peaceful memorial grove, a pond and outdoor interpretive center. These elements come together to tell the history of American Indians in Oklahoma.