IN THE DILAPIDATED headquarters building at Fort Omaha, General Crook was nodding slowly. Bright Eyes had reached the episode in her tale of Ponca injustice with which he was most familiar— the last stage, when he himself had become involved.
Once Standing Bear had resolved to keep his promise to his dying son and save the lives of at least some of his people, said Bright Eyes, he carefully chose the members of the party he would lead on the escape bid. Agent Whiteman would try to stop him if he knew he was planning to run away, and so Standing Bear told nobody of his plans except those he intended to take along.61 Standing Bear began with his younger brother Yellow Horse, who was sick with a fever but said that if Standing Bear went back north, then he and his family would go too; his health and that of his family might improve back home in the northern climate. Like Standing Bear, Yellow Horse preferred to die trying to get back home than die here in the Warm Land. Long Runner and Chicken Hunter, both members of Standing Bear’s clan, also agreed that they and their families would join the flight north.62
Standing Bear also spoke with his good friend Buffalo Chip, chief of the Medicine clan. The middle-aged Buffalo Chip, considered a handsome man with graying hair trailing down his back, said that he would make the journey home with Standing Bear. Three other men also joined the escape bid. One was Buffalo Track, the Ponca from another clan, who had attacked White Eagle on the way south. The other two were Crazy Bear, an Omaha with a Ponca family, and Cries for War, a Yankton married to a Ponca woman.63 Both Crazy Bear and Cries for War had followed the tribe south the previous year after being separated from the Poncas by Inspector Howard when he evicted them from the northern Ponca reservation.
There would be a total of twenty-seven escapees; in addition to the eight men, their family members would number six boys and thirteen women and girls. Among the women and children going along were Standing Bear’s wife, Susette, his surviving daughter, Fanny, and his infant grandson and granddaughter. Following Prairie Flower’s death, Standing Bear and Susette took in her children to raise as their own. Six other members of the party apart from Yellow Horse were quite ill, and all the others were weak from lack of food. But they, like Yellow Horse, hoped that the cooler climate back in their homeland would restore them to the good health they had previously enjoyed.
As Christmas approached, the eight men involved in the scheme discreetly made their preparations. The first priority was transportation; in their condition they would never be able to repeat the epic six-hundred-mile walk home by Standing Bear and seven other chiefs in 1877. All but two of Standing Bear’s horses had died, and these remaining underfed steeds could only draw his light, open spring wagon. The other men could provide three covered wagons and teams between them.
The next requirement was provisions. As with the other aspects of their plan, Standing Bear and his fellow plotters knew it was essential not to raise the suspicions of the agent, his white employees, or the Ponca “half-breeds,” several of whom spoke English. Standing Bear didn’t trust them because the Indian Affairs men tended to favor them. He was now openly at odds with Lone Chief, leader of the “half-breeds,” who wanted Standing Bear to stop complaining to the government. So the plotters quietly put aside a little horse feed and a portion of their meager rations for the journey. Standing Bear had $10 in cash; Buffalo Chip had the same—a total of $20 for a trip of several months for twenty-seven people and eight horses. It would have to do.
On New Year’s Day, Standing Bear took aside his youngest brother, the giant Big Snake. Confiding the plan to him, he asked Big Snake to take charge of their clan in his absence. If this band succeeded in reaching the Niobrara, Standing Bear told his little brother, then he would send word for others to follow. That night, with Big Snake’s help, he loaded a wooden trunk containing the remains of his son Bear Shield onto the spring wagon along with poles and hides for a tipi. The departing families made tearful last-minute farewells and, then, in the cold early hours of the morning of January 2, 1879, the escapees slipped away from the Arkansas River Ponca agency and made for Kansas.
Knowing that they could be arrested for leaving their assigned reservation without a government pass, Standing Bear led his party north via the plains of far western Kansas, well away from white settlements, roads, and soldiers, often changing direction in case they were spotted and their course was passed onto the authorities so the army could intercept them. The farther north they went, the more the winter cold seeped into their bones as they huddled under blankets on their slow-moving wagons or walked to stay warm. Along the way they used their few dollars to buy fodder for the horses from white farmers. After twenty days the money was gone, and so was their food. For two days they ate nothing. Coming to a farm, Standing Bear fetched the farmer to see the sorry state of his little band. The farmer and his boys brought hay and a bag of corn. After the Indian children ravenously devoured the corn, the farmer went away and came back with bread, meat, and coffee. As the band continued up into Nebraska, other dirt-poor white farmers along the way also gave the passing Indians what food they could spare.
Alerted via telegraph by Agent William Whiteman that Standing Bear and a party of Poncas were on the move, Secretary Schurz soon had the army looking for the runaways. Meanwhile, the Kansas press was characterizing them as renegades on the loose, a threat to whites. Despite the hullabaloo, through January and February Standing Bear was able to evade detection all the way up to northeastern Nebraska. Lieutenant John Bourke later wrote that this wretched winter trek was made by Standing Bear’s Poncas “molesting nobody, and subsisting upon charity. Not a shot was fired at anyone; not so much as a dog was stolen.”64
At the end of February, word reached Chief Iron Eye at the Omaha reservation that Standing Bear and his party were drawing near. Without hesitation, Iron Eye, his daughter Bright Eyes, and other members of the Omaha tribe slipped out of Joe’s Village at night without alerting Indian Affairs agent Jacob Vore at the village’s Omaha agency and hurried south with ponies to meet the Poncas. Linking up with Standing Bear’s exhausted party, they took them to their settlement. As the Omaha tribes-people flooded around the Poncas and made them welcome, Iron Eye promised Standing Bear sanctuary. In the summer, he said, once the Poncas regained their strength, the Omahas would help Standing Bear take his son’s remains to the Niobrara burial ground and become reestablished on the old reservation. In the meantime, the Omahas had more than enough land—they would give Standing Bear’s people land to sow with wheat and corn and vegetables, and loan them all the implements they would need. What’s more, said Iron Eye, Standing Bear’s people could live with the Omahas for as long as they desired.
On March 4, two days after Secretary Schurz celebrated his fiftieth birthday, he received an unexpected late birthday present. A telegram from Agent Vore at the Omaha agency that day reached Commissioner Hayt saying that “the Poncas [had] just arrived” at his agency and had taken refuge with the Omahas. “Had them arrested; they promise to remain for orders; have no place to confine them. I await instructions.”65
Schurz responded by having several Indian Affairs officials promptly sent with instructions to interview Standing Bear on the Omaha reservation and convince him to turn around and lead his people back to the Arkansas River settlement. Once these Bureau of Indian Affairs officials arrived, they found Standing Bear determined to continue on to the Niobrara with his son’s remains and not to return to Indian Territory. The officials departed, their mission unfulfilled.
When the Indian Affairs men telegraphed Washington that Standing Bear refused to turn back, Secretary Schurz lost what remaining patience he had with the Poncas. This small, insignificant tribe, an annoyance to two administrations for several years, would not be permitted to frustrate the overall re- settlement of Plains Indians. Once again Schurz contacted Secretary McCrary at the War Department. On March 14, at Schurz’s request, McCrary instructed the commanding general of the army, General Sherman, to order the arrest of Standing Bear and the members of the Ponca tribe sheltering with him on the Omaha reservation. Telegrams began to fly. From Washington, General Sherman transmitted the order to divisional commander Lieutenant General Sheridan in Chicago, who on March 17 passed on the order to departmental commander Brigadier General George Crook at Fort Omaha. Faced with a direct order, and irrespective of his personal feelings in the matter, on March 19 Crook in turn ordered Colonel John H. King, commander of the 9th Infantry and post commander of Fort Omaha, to send a detachment to take the Poncas into custody and escort them back to Fort Omaha.66 The barest minimum number of men necessary was detailed for the job. The next day, First Lieutenant William L. Carpenter set off from Fort Omaha with just a corporal and four enlisted men from the 9th Infantry, using three saddle horses and a military ambulance drawn by four mules.67
On the morning of Sunday, March 23, Standing Bear, who had recovered much of his strength during the three weeks he had spent with the Omahas, was working in the fields with several fellow escapees when a panting Omaha runner came with the news that soldiers were at the Omaha agency. The soldiers, he said, wanted to take the Poncas back to Indian Territory. The Poncas must report to the agency in Joe’s Village by noon, ready to travel, said the runner, before he hurried off to pass on the same message to the other fugitives.68 Seized by despair, Standing Bear went to the tipi he had erected for his family and informed his wife of the news. Disconsolate, they folded their tipi, loaded their daughter, grandchildren, and few possessions onto their spring wagon, and slowly made their way to the agency.
It happened that the missionary who had converted Standing Bear to Christianity eight years before, Reverend J. Owen Dorsey, was at the Omaha agency. Dorsey, who had joined the American Ethnology Bureau in Washington as an ethnologist earlier in the year, had started compiling English translations of native American languages for the bureau. He was at the agency updating his records on the Omaha-Ponca language, with the encouragement of Chief Iron Eye and the help of Iron Eye’s eldest son, nineteen-year-old Woodworker, also known as Frank La Flesche— Bright Eyes’s half brother. When Standing Bear saw Dorsey, he made a beeline for him and pleaded with him, telling him that he and his people could not survive down in the Indian Territory where the Great Father had put them. He begged Dorsey to intervene to let the band stay with the Omahas, to work the land and live peacefully.
Buffalo Chip and several other men also crowded around the clergyman, begging him to help. But Dorsey responded that he could do nothing to prevent the military from carrying out orders to arrest the fugitive Ponca band. He urged the Poncas to go peacefully with the soldiers but promised to write on their behalf to contacts in Washington.69
Standing Bear went to Lieutenant Carpenter and asked for a council, and the lieutenant agreed. One of the Ponca men, Long Runner, was so ill in his tipi he couldn’t get out of bed, so, as Carpenter’s infantrymen stood idly around, seven of the Indians sat down with Carpenter outside the agency building. At the lieutenant’s request, they were joined by a white clerk from the agency, twenty-two-year-old W. W. “Willie” Hamilton. Son of Reverend Hamilton, Willie had grown up on the Omaha reservation and spoke the Omaha language fluently. The usual agency interpreter, an Omaha named Charles Morgan, was away, so Willie filled in for him.70
Through young Hamilton, Standing Bear gave the lieutenant a review of what led him and his band to escape to the Omahas, and told the officer that he and his companions wished to stay where they were. Lieutenant Carpenter, impressed by Standing Bear’s “able speech” and saddened by what he later described as the band’s “pitiable condition,” told the seven men that he had his orders and they must come with him to Fort Omaha.71 But when they reached the fort, they could speak with General Crook. He then asked if they would come with him peaceably, and Standing Bear sadly said they would but under protest.
As the men went to hitch up their horses and load their wagons with their folded tipis and cooking utensils, the Omahas generously gave them several additional ponies for the long journey. Lieutenant Carpenter was now in- formed that one of the Ponca men, Long Runner, refused to go. Taking along interpreter Willie, a soldier, and the agency blacksmith, a burly white man, Carpenter went to Long Runner’s tipi. Inside, they found a feverish Long Runner on his bed, wife and young daughter at his side. The lieutenant took out his orders, had the interpreter read them to Long Runner, and then asked the Ponca to come with him. But Long Runner stubbornly refused.
Long Runner tried to sit up, producing a knife. The blacksmith stepped up, took the weakened Ponca’s wrist, and forced the knife from his hand. Now Long Runner felt the cold steel of Lieutenant Carpenter’s pistol at his temple. The blacksmith and enlisted man bound Long Runner’s wrists and bundled him outside.72
In another tipi, Lieutenant Carpenter found a moaning Ponca woman who was obviously too ill to be moved, and he decided to leave her in the care of the Omahas and under the observation of the Omaha Indian Affairs agent. But the others had to depart. Standing Bear had given his word that he and his people would go to Fort Omaha, and, respectful of Standing Bear’s word and his pride, the level-headed young officer now let the main party travel on ahead without guards. Slowly, dejectedly they left Joe’s Village, following the Missouri south, some of them in wagons, some riding the Omaha ponies, some walking. The lieutenant and his soldiers followed along half a mile behind, with Long Runner traveling in the army ambulance, trussed up for the duration of the journey.
As Reverend Dorsey stood with numerous unhappy Omahas watching the Ponca band go, Bright Eyes came up to him. She had been teaching in the school while the drama unfolded outside the agency, and now she told Dorsey they must do something to help the Poncas. He replied that he intended writing to a colleague in Washington who was a friend of Interior Secretary Schurz, who, he was sure, would speak to Secretary Schurz on behalf of the Poncas. But that would take too long, the school mistress reminded him. They must do something now, before the army removed Standing Bear and his party from Nebraska and from General Crook’s area of responsibility. General Crook was a good man, she told the minister, someone who would listen to reason. But Dorsey seemed resigned to letting events run their course. After all, not even General Crook could be expected to disobey orders.
Bright Eyes wasn’t satisfied with that. She quickly wrote a statement about the mistreatment of the Poncas and gave it to Dorsey, urging him to distribute it to influential friends. He revised the statement in his own words and then sent copies to Episcopal churches in the East under his name and Bright Eyes’s name. During the following weeks the statement was read to congregations after the Sunday sermon. But Bright Eyes realized this process was too slow to prevent the removal of Standing Bear’s band from Nebraska. Immediate, drastic action was required.
For almost a week after the Poncas were taken away Bright Eyes stewed over their predicament, and then she made up her mind to act personally and decisively. It had to be done discreetly, but it had to be done. Speaking with her father, Chief Iron Eye, she put a proposal to him. Several times before this, she and Iron Eye had done things that were unorthodox and sometimes not strictly legal, but always for the good of their people. Now Bright Eyes reminded her father that he not only knew General Crook personally, he knew him very well indeed, probably better than any other Indian. Bright Eyes was certain the general would listen to Iron Eye—if he went to him to plead for their Ponca brothers and sisters. And Iron Eye had agreed.
On the evening of Friday, March 28, once Bright Eyes finished at the government school for the day, she and her father mounted his two fastest ponies and slipped out of Joe’s Village without alerting Agent Vore or anyone else to their plans, and headed south.
Now Iron Eye and Bright Eyes sat before General Crook in his office, exhausted by their journey yet driven by their determination to plead for justice. Bright Eyes made a final plea for the general to prevent the Poncas’ return to Indian Territory. She implored him to allow them to go home to the Niobrara River to bury the remains of Standing Bear’s son in the traditional Ponca burial grounds and to regain their old way of life in the land of their fathers.
All eyes turned to George Crook.73