Statues: The People They Salute

Nebraska- Standing Bear

A statue of Standing Bear, Chief of the Ponca tribe, recently joined the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. The dedication ceremony was held on September 18, 2019. The state of Nebraska decided to replace the statue of William Jennings Bryan, a former Secretary of State and presidential candidate, who had been representing Nebraska in the collection since 1937, with Chief Standing Bear. Each state decides which two statues will represent their state in the National Statuary Hall Collection. 

Standing Bear stood up for his family and people. In 1879, Standing Bear became the first Native American to give testimony in federal court. He petitioned the court for his right to return home after the Ponca tribe had been removed from their lands in Nebraska and forced to live in Oklahoma. 

The U.S. government claimed that they mistakenly included the Ponca’s territory in a land agreement with the Sioux. The Sioux began raiding the land, and the U.S. government decided the solution to ending the conflict was to send the Ponca to Oklahoma. 

The Ponca did not want to move to the arid land the U.S. government chose for them. Earlier the Ponca had sought to establish an amicable relationship with the United States government, and in 1858, agreed to surrender all of its claimed territory with the exception of a patch of land around the Niobrara River. They shifted from a nomadic lifestyle to a farming one, and did well growing corn and trading with white settlers.

When the Ponca people were forced off their land in Nebraska where they had prospered to land in Oklahoma where no food or shelter had been provided, many of the Ponca died of disease and starvation, including the son of Chief Standing Bear. 

Chief Standing Bear then set his mind on returning his son’s body to their ancestral lands. He and 30 others set out on a trek back to Nebraska. It was the middle of winter, so near Omaha, they stopped to visit relatives at the Omaha reservation. On the orders of the Secretary of the Interior, Standing Bear and his party were arrested.

They ended up in the custody of General George Crook, who was sympathetic to the group’s plight. Crook went to the media, and the story spread nationwide. Two lawyers offered to take up their case pro bono, and asked a judge to free the Poncas immediately.

The U.S. attorney argued that Native Americans had no right to sue the government, because “an Indian was neither a person nor a citizen.” Standing Bear and his lawyers pressed on, making Standing Bear the first Native American to give testimony in federal court.

These powerful words were expressed in court by Chief Standing Bear,  

“That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. The same God made us both. I am a man.”

The judge begrudgingly ruled that “an Indian is a ‘person’ within the meaning of the laws of the United States and that “no rightful authority exists for removing by force any of the relators to the Indian Territory.” He ordered the Ponca to be released from custody.

Standing Bear returned to the Niobrara River land from which the Ponca had been removed, and buried his son there. He continued to live on Ponca lands in Nebraska, where he died in 1908.

Chief Standing Bear did not surrender to injustice. He stood up for his rights, and others stood with him. A powerful lesson. 

Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Read more in her series Statues: The People They Salute visit The Table of Contents and the Facebook Page.  (I’ll be adding to the Substack Table of Contents as I transfer the Blog Posts. Please subscribe to this Substack 😊🇺🇸🤓)