One of the most amazing court cases you probably have never heard of
had come down to this. Standing Bear, the reluctant chief of the Ponca
tribe, rose on May 2, 1879, to address a packed audience in a Nebraska
courtroom. At issue was the existence of a mind that many were unable to
see.
Standing Bear’s journey to this courtroom had been
excruciating. The U.S. government had decided several years earlier to
force the 752 Ponca Native Americans off their lands along the fertile
Niobrara River and move them to the desolate Indian Territory, in what
is now northern Oklahoma. Standing Bear surrendered everything he owned,
assembled his tribe, and began marching a six-hundred-mile “trail of
tears.” If the walk didn’t kill them (as it did Standing Bear’s
daughter), then the parched Indian Territory would. Left with meager
provisions and fields of parched rock to farm, nearly a third of the
Poncas died within the first year. This included Standing Bear’s son. As
his son lay dying, Standing Bear promised to return his son’s bones to
the tribe’s burial grounds so that his son could walk the afterlife with
his ancestors, according to their religion. Desperate, Standing Bear
decided to go home.
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