When first encountered by Europeans the Poncas were living on the right bank of the Missouri by the Niobrara river in what is now northern Nebraska. By the time Lewis and Clark encountered them in 1804 they had already been reduced to two or three hundred by a massive epidemic of smallpox caught from earlier encounters with traders. This population increased over the next fifty years to about a thousand.

Although plains Indians, speaking a Siouxan language, they were not nomadic, but lived in earth lodges in settled villages. They hunted bison (buffalo) and deer but were also farmers and grew corn and squash.

In 1858 the Poncas surrendered some of their land to US officials in return for a guarantee of permanence of remaining on the Niobrara. However, probably more by blunder than malice, their land was awarded to the Lakota in the Sioux treaty of 1868. They then had to till their land with a rifle beside them to defend themselves from the Lakota for the next seven years.

Washington finally decided to honour their obligation to the Poncas, not by restoring their land but by granting them a small financial compensation for the thefts and murders carried out by the Lakota. The next year, 1876, after the Custer rout, it was decided to include the Poncas in the list of northern tribes to be exiled to Indian Territory. The Poncas had had nothing to do with The Battle of the Little Bighorn, had indeed never fought the United States at all, nevertheless the government allotted $25,000 for their removal and ‘providing them with a home there, with consent of the said band’.

The first the Poncas heard about this was when a US Indian inspector turned up and told them to prepare for the move. After some protest and consultation with Washington it was agreed that White eagle would go with ten other chiefs to see the country and then go on to Washington to discuss their findings.

Within two days of arriving in Indian Territory already two of the chiefs were ill. They saw nothing but barren land full of stones and rocks and the two tribes they visited there were in very poor straits. They therefore asked the agent to take them on to Washington. He refused unless they agreed to take part of the land they had seen. They then asked him to take them home. He said the only way they would get back to their villages was to walk. So they walked the 500 miles back with one blanket each and no spare moccasins despite that the plains of Kansas and Nebraska were covered in snow.

When they arrived back on the Niobrara, the agent was there before them. He told them that the whole tribe had to move back immediately. They refused. The agent went back to Washington, returning in the spring, now threatening the use of troops to move them if they would not go. Most, including all the chiefs, still refused but 170 agreed to move. The agent left with this small group after arresting Standing Bear and imprisoning him at Fort Randall.

Another agent arrived who after further objections brought in some cavalry. They were then forced on the long journey South in appalling weather during which many died including Standing Bear’s daughter Prarie Flower. They arrived at the Quapaw reservation that they were to share and were reunited with those that had travelled earlier. By the end of the year one quarter of the tribe had died.

In the spring of 1878 they were given a new reservation on the west bank of the Arkansas, to which the Poncas had to walk the 150 miles. This land was better, but many became sick and died. Amongst those who died were Standing Bear’s last surviving son, who had begged to be buried in their old homeland whilst he lay dying. Standing Bear and a funeral party of 66 others of his band set out north with a wagon carrying the coffin. They got as far as the Omaha reservation. Whilst staying there they were arrested and imprisoned in Fort Omaha.

General Crook, sent to deal with the return of the prisoners to Indian Territory, had fought indians from California to Arizona to Montana. From feeling a begrudging admiration for their courage he now had a real sympathy for their plight. He got the local paper to publicise the present circumstances of Standing Bear’s party; a local lawyer took up their case, later aided by the chief attorney of the Union Pacific Railroad. With Crook’s tacit agreement they served a writ of habeas corpus on him and initiated an early civil rights case Standing Bear v Crook in 1879. Contrary to the army’s lawyers the Judge found that Standing Bear was a ‘person within the meaning of the law’, the first time since the declaration of independence that an indian had been so found.

Standing Bear’s band were then set free and allowed to travel back to the Niobrara, where they settled on a few hundred acres of unclaimed land. The remainder of the tribe back in Indian Territory then made preparation to return also, but it was decreed that Standing Bear’s victory in court applied only to his own band and to no other indian. Big Snake, Standing Bear’s brother, tested the law by visiting the Southern Cheyenne reservation. He was arrested, return to the Ponca reservation and was accidentally shot in custody.

The soldiers came to the borders of the village 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. They drove us on in advance just as if we were a herd of ponies, and I said, ‘If I have to go, I will go to that land. Let the soldiers go away, our women are afraid of them.’ And so I reached the Warm Land¹. We found there the lands were bad and we were dying one after the other, and we said, ‘What man will take pity on us?’ And our animals died, Oh, it was very hot. ‘This land is truly sickly, and we’ll be apt to die here, and we hope the Great Father will take us back again.’ That is what we said. There were a hundred of us died there.
White Eagle.

You have driven me from the East to this place, and I have been here two thousand years or more. My friends, if you took me away from this land it would be very hard for me. I wish to die in this land. I wish to be an old man here. I have not wished to give even a part of it to the Great Father. Though he were to give me a million dollars I would not give him this land.
When people want to slaughter cattle they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us. My children have been exterminated. My brother has been killed.
Standing Bear.

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 prarie 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.
Standing Bear in court.

¹ Indian Territory, now part of Oklahoma.