The Story of Chief Standing Bear. A Great Native American Civil Rights Activist

Chief Standing Bear was one strong leader. Plus he had a goatee which is pretty unusual.

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Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

Today I wanted to tell the story of a Ponca Indian chief named Standing Bear. It's a story of courage, perseverance and determination in the face of tragedy and overwhelming odds.

The Ponca were one of the tribes who worked hard to get along and negotiate(compromise and give in)with the United States government in the 1850's.

To the Chief the name of the game was Survival

In other words, they could see the writing on the wall and chose to try and stay alive instead of fight and get wiped out.

So they did just that during the greedy and merciless onslaught of the white man's expansion West. In fact, they gave up all their traditional lands save about 58,000 acres. This was in what is now Northeast Nebraska.

All was good until the feds, in their ultimate wisdom(sarcasm) created a great big reservation for their enemies the Sioux.

Thanks for working with us Chief but...

The only problem was the big Sioux reservation included their 58,000 acres and the Ponca were supposed to give up their homeland and move to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

Chief Standing Bear told them that their deal sucked and he protested. The government's response was to send hundreds of troops in to force them out...they evicted them and sent them on the long march with winter coming.

By the time they arrived in Oklahoma they were exhausted and half starved. They'd lost one third of their members on the trail. In December the chief's 16 yr old son passed away.

Chief Standing Bear with his wife and child, don't know the year:

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The Chief was determined to bury his son in the ground of their homeland so he and a few of his tribe started right back toward Nebraska in the middle of winter.

Well, it was against the white man's law for an Indian to leave the reservation so the small band was labeled "renegades," tracked down and arrested. Chief Standing Bear argued that they were citizens and were free to travel.

Chief Standing Bear:

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Apparently this was a novel concept but a general agreed with him, General Crook.

In fact, General Crook greatly sympathized with the Chief and what he was trying to do so he contacted a newspaper journalist named Thomas Henry Tibbles(I love these names..General Crook and T.H. Tibbles!).

The general got Tibbles involved in writing all these stories about the plight of the Chief and started turning public opinion to support his position.

Tibbles then, hired two big name lawyers from Omaha to represent the chief and his people. The Chief sued the U.S. government.

The big argument

Was that the tribe couldn't be held prisoners because they were American citizens and entitled to legal rights. The government's argument was that the Native Americans did not constitute “persons” under the law. Can you believe that?

Amazingly the judge ruled by the letter of the law instead of hate and prejudice.

We know he was a racist because he said that in spite the Indians being weak, insignificant, unlettered, and generally a despised race he ruled in favor of Standing Bear!

The judge declared that the Chief and his tribe were, indeed, persons under the law, and as such were entitled to move around the country like any citizen.

Here's the Chief in another cool outfit:

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A major legal victory

This was the first time that Native Americans had been legally declared to be people who had a legitimate right to all the freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution.

The government appealed of course and the case went before the Supreme Court who upheld the lower court's decision.

Standing Bear was finally allowed to return to his homeland to bury his son and he was also buried there when he passed. His determination forced the law of the land to recognize all Indians to be lawful citizens from that point on.

And his story lives on

Because the Nebraska legislature just sent a bronze statue of him to Washington, D.C. to reside in the National Statuary Hall which has 100 statues from all the states commemorating important figures in history from each state.

Statuary Hall:

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Some of the statues are in the Hall of Columns:

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And here is Standing Bear's statue. I think the sculptor did a fantastic job:

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Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

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