654 



NEBRASKA. 



them by the Government, in consideration of 

 the cession. On this reserved tract the Poncas 

 were peaceably living three years ago, when 

 the United States Government determined to 

 remove them to a place eleven hundred miles 

 distant in the Indian Territory. In the gen- 

 eral Indian appropriation bill passed by Con- 

 gress on August 15, 1876, there is a provision 

 authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to 

 use $25,000 for the removal of the Poncas to 

 the Indian Territory, and providing them a 

 home therein, with the consent of the tribe. 

 This consent they persistently refused to give; 

 whereupon the Government removed them 

 from their homes by force, and, under guard 

 of United States troops, they were transported 

 to the Indian Territory. During the long march 

 a great number of the Poncas died, and were 

 buried along the route. The new place also 

 proved so malarious and unhealthy that out of 

 581 Indians whom the Government had taken 

 away from their reservation in Dakota, 158 died 

 within about a year, i. e., at the rate of one in 

 every three and a half. A large proportion of 

 the survivors also were sick and disabled. It was 

 probably on account of this unexampled mor- 

 tality that in 1878 the Government took mea- 

 sures to remove the Poncas from that place and 

 locate them elsewhere; as in the Indian appro- 

 priation bill passed by Congress on May 27, 

 1878, a provision authorizes the Secretary of 

 the Interior to expend the sum of $30,000 for 

 the purpose of removing and locating the 

 Ponca Indians on a new reservation near the 

 Kaw River. This second reservation is said 

 to be no less unhealthy than the first. Under 

 these circumstances one of the Ponca chiefs, 

 Standing Bear by name, " to save himself and 

 the survivors of his family, and the remnant 

 of his little band of followers, determined to 

 leave the Indian Territory and return to his old 

 home in Dakota, where he might live and die in 

 peace and be buried with his fathers." He in- 

 formed the agent of their fixed purpose to leave, 

 never to return, and that he and his followers 

 had finally, fully, and for ever severed his and 

 their connection with the Ponca tribe of Indians, 

 and resolved to cut loose from the Government, 

 go to work, become self-sustaining, and adopt 

 the habits and customs of a higher civiliza- 

 tion. In execution of this determination, Stand- 

 ing Bear with his family and followers left the 

 reservation in the Indian Territory at the be- 

 ginning of January, 1879, and, after sixty days' 

 travel across strange lands for fifteen hundred 

 miles in midwinter, reached the reservation of 

 the Omaha Indians in Nebraska. The Omahas, 

 who speak the same language and have been 

 long connected with the Poncas by intermar- 

 riage, welcomed the wayfarers and bade them 

 remain, offering them land at their choice to 

 cultivate for their support. While thus stay- 

 ing at the Omaha reservation, Standing Bear 

 and his followers were arrested by Brigadier- 

 General Crook, commander of the military de- 

 partment of the Platte, and detained under his 



charge, for the purpose of being taken back to 

 the reservation in the Indian Territory, which 

 they were alleged to have left without permis- 

 sion of the Government. General Crook acted 

 in this matter upon express orders issued to 

 him by his superior officer, the General of the 

 Army, at the request of the Secretary of the 

 Interior. 



On April 8, 1879, when these prisoners were 

 on the point of being marched back to the 

 reservation in the Indian Territory, Mr. H. 

 Tibbies, assistant editor of the " Omaha Her- 

 ald," applied to the Judge of the United States 

 District Court, then in session at Lincoln, for 

 a writ of habeas corpus in their behalf, to be 

 served on General Crook. The writ was is- 

 sued the same day, and made returnable on 

 the 18th. It was duly returned, and an answer 

 filed by General Crook as respondent, stating 

 the authority on which he acted in the arrest 

 and detention of the relators. The case was 

 argued on the first two days of May, G. M. 

 Lambertson, United States District Attorney, 

 appearing for the Government, and A. J. Pop- 

 pleton and Jonathan L. "Webster, two eminent 

 lawyers of Omaha, for the prisoners, whose 

 defense they assumed gratuitously. The main 

 point in question before the Court was not the 

 justice or injustice of the treatment met with 

 by these Indians at the hand of the United 

 States Government concerning their forcible 

 removal from their lands in Dakota to the In- 

 dian Territory, but whether the United States 

 District Court had the power to issue the writ 

 of habeas corpus in behalf of the prisoners, and 

 hear and determine the case made therein. 

 The District Attorney maintained the nega- 

 tive on the grounds, among others, that an In- 

 dian can not appear in Court, is not entitled 

 to the writ of habeas corpus, and is not a citi- 

 zen, and that Indian tribes are not indepen- 

 dent, but dependent communities. Tlie pris- 

 oners' counsel showed, on the contrary, that 

 the petition of their clients, besides being just, 

 was perfectly legal ; that, whether they were 

 considered as still belonging to the Ponca tribe 

 of Indians, an independent community, or as In- 

 dians individually, severed from all former con- 

 nection with that tribe, as they claimed to be, 

 they were legally entitled to the writ of habeas 

 corpus, and the Court had the inherent power 

 both to issue such writ and hear and deter- 

 mine the case made therein. They sliowed 

 also that the Omaha Indians had a perfect 

 right to give the relators part of the land in 

 their reservation, it being their own, as they 

 could give it to an alien coming to them from 

 any nation or government on earth ; the United 

 States Government having no legal power to 

 interfere with either. After the argument had 

 been closed on the second day of the hearing, 

 Standing Bear, by an express permission of 

 the Judge, personally addressed the Court in a 

 short speech, stating in plain terms some of the 

 hardships and the mortality of his tribe and 

 family since their compulsory removal from 



