Standing Bear and the Nebraska Revolution

1001 Books to Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 110
Joe Starita, “I Am a Man”: Chief Standing Bear's Journey For Justice

Chief Standing Bear didn’t want to upend American legal principles or found a new Native American nation; but he did both these things anyway. When he packed his meager belongings and left the badly organized Ponca reservation without permission, he wanted only to bury his eldest son on his ancestral homeland, overlooking Nebraska’s Niobrara River. He might also, perhaps unconsciously, have hoped the United States Army would kill him.

As a journalist rather than a credentialed historian, University of Nebraska professor emeritus Joe Starita brings a distinctive approach to this account. Like a historian, Starita prizes primary sources, which this case provides in abundance. But he also incorporates oral history from Ponca people, many directly descended from Standing Bear. He focuses not just on describing events, but also contextualizing them for audiences not necessarily familiar with one of American history’s most contentious cases.

The Ponca Nation probably originated east of the Mississippi River, but by the time they encountered White colonists, they were a settled, agrarian people overlooking the Niobrara River. Like other nations, they had contentious relations with Whites, but by the 1870s, they lived peacefully with their White neighbors. That wasn’t good enough for the Department of the Interior, though, which imposed a forced resettlement program.

Thus a succession of Indian Agents from New England, and infantry officers unfamiliar with Nebraska, forced the Ponca off their land. Force-marched to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), the Ponca found inhospitable terrain, neighbors who didn’t speak their language, and malaria. Many Ponca, including several members of the council of chiefs, died. When sickness took Standing Bear’s teenage son, he left one dying request: bury me in our people’s homeland.

Many Americans know, and lament, our history of forcing Native Americans off their land. But Joe Starita stresses how slapdash and poorly organized this practice was. American generals signed Indian treaties hastily, without bothering to check whether they might contradict existing agreements with other nations. The United States promised Ponca land to the Ponca and also the Lakota, and because the Lakota were better-armed, the Ponca had to move.

Besides being internally consistent, it had become unpopular with many Americans. By 1879, when Standing Bear defied the Indian Agency and walked back to Nebraska with about thirty followers, the local White population favored the Ponca’s claims. General George Crook, a decorated “Indian Fighter,” was ordered to arrest Standing Bear, but even he didn’t support the action. Soon the nascent wire services grabbed Standing Bear’s story and took it nationwide.

Chief Standing Bear (left) and General George Crook

(The Ponca’s popularity wasn’t entirely without White judgment. White settlers liked the Ponca because they wore European-style trousers, lived in timber-framed houses, and worshiped in an Episcopal church. Unlike their warlike neighbors, the Lakota, the Ponca reassured White settlers that White civilization was popular and desirable, and their settlements in formerly Native lands served a Christian mission. Starita describes, but doesn’t judge, these facts.)

Standing Bear made his real breakthrough, though, when his White supporters convinced him to do something no Native American had ever done: sue his arresting officer, General Crook, for the writ of habeus corpus. Before 1879, Native Americans had no legal standing in American courts. Standing Bear’s supporters believed something had happened to change this condition: the 14th Amendment had redefined citizenship. But they needed a court case to test this belief.

Starita’s account changes at this point, shifting from a tragic history of racist actions, to a courtroom drama. The Omaha federal court preserves copious records of the trial. But, as even Starita admits, the outcome wasn’t entirely certain; American courts had historically been self-serving in dispensing justice, and under the original Constitution, “Indians not taxed” weren’t legally human. Standing Bear’s lawsuit wasn’t small change for a tumultuous, barely unified nation.

The case unfolds through evidence, testimony, and public sentiment. But Starita, an engaging storyteller, knows something the original 19th-Century audience wouldn’t have known: General George Crook, the named defendant in Standing Bear’s lawsuit, actually supported the prosecution, and actively helped their case. Like many frontier Americans, Crook had grown discouraged by ceaseless Indian Wars, and wanted to force a change.

History records that Standing Bear won his case, forcing the United States to recognize Native Americans as legal persons. History also records that Standing Bear led the Northern Ponca back to Nebraska, where their descendents remain. But Starita demonstrates, through evidence and compelling storytelling, that this outcome wasn’t certain. Then as now, America required brave individuals and groups to stand against power, to force America to be free.