How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [131]
A: I did not say that.…
Q: Did you not say that you insisted that these ten men should go?
A: Subsequently I did, but that was after objection had been raised by Big Snake.
Even among the ten men selected by Kemble, none liked what they saw. “I said to him, ‘We have seen the land; we have told you we do not like it,’ ” Standing Bear recalled to the Senate committee. “ ‘You said you would take us to Washington to see the President.’ … Then he said, ‘The President did not tell us to take you to Washington.’ ‘Well then,’ we said, ‘take us back to our own land that we came from.’ And he said, ‘The President did not tell us to take you back to your own home.’ … He had given us two alternatives: either to take the land or … walk home.”
They walked. All but the two eldest, who could not do the 400-mile winter trek.
Six weeks later, Standing Bear arrived home to find Kemble. Having traveled by train, Kemble arrived ahead of them and now had new orders from the Commissioner on Indian Affairs. “Removal of Poncas will be insisted upon,” he was instructed. “[Sioux Chiefs] Spotted Tail and Red Cloud must move this summer to Missouri River. Their presence will render further stay of Poncas at old location impossible.” No ambiguity there, except in logic. If the Poncas were being moved from their land (south of the Missouri River) to protect them from the Sioux, why was the government now limiting the movement of the Sioux to the Missouri River? The answer would surface five years later, when Nebraska’s boundary changed.
Standing Bear found his people in panic, with Kemble demanding they pack at once and threatening to use force if they did not. Meanwhile, Standing Bear’s brother, Big Snake, was demonstrating why he was the tribe’s head soldier, having begun to organize resistance. Now that Standing Bear had returned with negative views about the land being offered, Kemble called for the military. He ordered the soldiers to take Standing Bear and Big Snake into custody.
By the time the brothers were released, the forced removal was commencing. Soldiers compelled the Poncas to journey without pause through a spate of horrific weather. The lack of sufficient shelter and rest took the lives of many of the tribe’s oldest, youngest, and otherwise weakest members—including Standing Bear’s tubercular daughter, Prairie Flower, herself the mother of two young children. The death toll did not abate when they were released in the new land, since the government had failed to provide sufficient food, lumber, wagons, and horses. In their first two years in the Indian Territory, one-third of the tribe died. Among them was Standing Bear’s teenage son, Bear Shield.
Following the death of his son, Standing Bear embarked on a plan to lead his people back to their ancestral home. In January 1879 he and twenty-nine carefully selected comrades quietly left the reservation, setting off as the vanguard of what they hoped would be a Ponca exodus. The local Indian agent wired Washington to alert agents posted with other tribes to be on the lookout for Standing Bear and, if seen, to have him returned to the Indian Territory.
Two months after their departure, Standing Bear and his cohorts turned up at the Omaha reservation. They were welcomed by the Omahas and by their government agent. But the agent’s words were deceiving. He contacted the region’s military commander, General George Crook, who promptly sent men and arrested the Poncas.
What happened next, from Standing Bear’s perspective, was difficult to fathom, as he later recalled to the Senate committee:
A: They put us in where the soldiers were, in the fort.… We stayed there all winter.… The soldiers said, “We do this because we were ordered to do so.” …
Q: What did you then suppose they were going to do with you?
A: I supposed they were going to take us back to the Indian Territory.
Q: What did the soldiers actually do?
A: Somebody got the soldiers to let us go. There were three men in Omaha that helped get us away from the soldiers.
Q: You don’t know how?
A: No, sir.
One of the men who