Chapter 5
THE CHIEF’S INTERVIEW
AFTER CATCHING a couple of hours sleep, Henry Tibbles rose on the morning of Sunday, March 30, and quickly ate breakfast, gushing a distilled version of the story of the Poncas’ plight to his devoutly Methodist English-born wife Amelia, who had soldiered through many a crusade at his side since their wedding in 1861. He then set off for Fort Omaha on foot, taking along his reporter’s notebook and walking fast, with expectations of a fascinating day ahead. As he passed through Omaha, with the locals heading off to church all around him, he knew that Iron Eye and Bright Eyes were on their way back to the Omaha reservation.
At their secret early-morning meeting, General Crook had told Tibbles that he planned to conduct a formal interview with Standing Bear and his fellow Ponca chief, Buffalo Chip. Crook was under no obligation to do so, but Lieutenant Carpenter had promised the two Ponca chiefs an opportunity to speak with the general, and George Crook always kept his word, to Indians as well as everyone else. Because Sunday was officially a day of rest, the interview had to take place the next day, and the general set down 10:00 A.M. Monday as the time for the meeting. But Henry Tibbles couldn’t wait until Monday. He went out to the fort on his one day off determined to see the Poncas’ situation with his own eyes, hear their story from their own lips, and, most importantly, obtain verbatim quotes before he sat down at his desk at the Omaha Daily Herald to write the article that would launch a campaign on their behalf.
When Tibbles reached the fort after a brisk forty-five-minute walk, General Crook granted him access to the prisoners under detention in their three temporary lodges on the parade ground. Tibbles found most of the Poncas in their shelters, many suffering from the malarial fever they had contracted in the Indian Territory. In one shelter, he wrote, he came across a sick Ponca child moaning piteously. In another, a Ponca woman wailed “heart-breakingly” as if mourning for a dead loved one.87 According to the commander of their guard, Lieutenant Carpenter, six members of the fugitive band were considered too ill to travel at the moment.88
Tibbles then located Standing Bear. The newspaper editor was a regular visitor to the Omaha reservation but had little if anything to do with the reclusive Poncas up in the Dakota Territory, and it’s unclear whether he and Standing Bear had ever had dealings before. What he found was an imposing man of above-average height, with thick black shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, a square jaw, long, straight nose, large mouth, pronounced cheekbones, and sad dark eyes. His strong features were striking rather than handsome.
In the center of his forehead Standing Bear bore a round tattoo the size of a dime—the “honor mark.” While the designs varied, most Poncas and Omahas of both sexes had similar small honor marks on their foreheads. There were exceptions. Bright Eyes, for example, did not carry an honor mark because her father Iron Eye had chosen not to tattoo any of his children so that they might assimilate more easily into white society. Two conflicting years are given for Standing Bear’s birth, 1829 and 1834, meaning he was forty-five or fifty at this time.
To his disappointment, Tibbles found the chief unwilling to talk to him. Informed that General Crook would allow him to make a statement at a formal hearing next day, Standing Bear told Tibbles through an interpreter that he did not think it proper to grant the editor an interview for his newspaper prior to that. Determined to get the chief talking, Tibbles tried out some secret Soldier Lodge signs on him. When Standing Bear realized that Tibbles was a Soldier Lodge initiate, he immediately called a gathering of his little band. In one of the three temporary lodges, sitting cross-legged in a circle with the women and children seated behind them, listening to all that was said, the Ponca men smoked an Indian pipe that was shaped like a large tomahawk, passing it to Tibbles in turn, and talked long into the afternoon while the reporter made copious notes.
As translator, Tibbles used Charles P. Morgan, a full-blood Indian of the Iowa tribe who worked as a clerk for Agent Vore at the Omaha agency.89 Morgan once served as official Indian Affairs interpreter at the Ponca Agency in the Dakota Territory, until Agent Lawrence replaced him with Charlie Le Claire. He was not considered the most accurate of translators and was in fact responsible for the faulty translation which Inspector Kemble had insisted gave him authority to move the Poncas to Indian Territory.90 But Morgan was the only translator then available at Fort Omaha. He had been away from the reservation at the time of Standing Bear’s arrest, apparently collecting supplies for Agent Vore in Omaha, and General Crook had asked him to stay on awhile to act as interpreter when he met with Standing Bear’s band.
In deference to his seniority in age and his status as head of the Medicine clan, Standing Bear allowed Buffalo Chip to speak first. Using graceful gestures, the medicine man told Tibbles how the Poncas made the land their best friend, farming it to provide for their families. The land had never lied to them, he said; it had never made promises that it did not fulfill. The Poncas had learned to plow and sow the fields, had built houses of wood, had raised horses, cattle, pigs. Their families had always possessed good clothes and always had enough to eat. They were happy and healthy. Now all that had changed; Buffalo Chip and his people had been deprived of all they possessed. Now he was a prisoner. For what? He had done no wrong. If they went back to Indian Territory, he said, they would not be able to farm; they would fall sick and die. It would be better if the soldiers lined them all up and shot them, he said; better for them, better for the government.91
An awful silence fell over the gathering. Tibbles noticed that a Ponca woman sitting behind the circle of men was silently weeping as she rocked a baby in her arms. Beside the newspaperman, Morgan the interpreter turned to Tibbles and said, “This is awful. These men are my friends. They are of my blood.”92
Buffalo Chip spoke a little longer, asking that Indians be allowed to farm their lands, be given tools to farm and laws to protect them. If that were to happen, he said, the Indian would “soon be like a white man.”93
Then Standing Bear spoke slowly, deliberately, and at length, giving Tibbles a detailed history of all that had happened to the Poncas since the treaty of 1868 had taken their land from them, through the Sioux problems of 1875 and the subsequent trials of 1877, from the trip with Inspector Kemble to Indian Territory and the chiefs’ walk home to the tribe’s tragic forced march with Inspector Howard that had taken them to misery and death in the Indian Territory. Standing Bear spoke sadly of his promise to his dying son and pointed to a wooden trunk in the corner. It contained Bear Shield’s remains, waiting to be interred among the bones of his ancestors on the Niobrara.
Now Standing Bear’s wife, Susette, spoke up. Around Standing Bear’s age, tall and thoughtful looking, she said, “My mother is buried there,” referring to the Ponca burial grounds on the Niobrara, “my grandmother and another child. My boy was a good boy, and we tried to do what he wanted us to do.” As tears chased one another in quick succession down her cheeks, she asked Tibbles to speak with General Crook and ask him: if the Poncas must go back to the Indian Territory, then to at least let them bury Bear Shield on the Niobrara before they went.
Tibbles promised to talk with General Crook. He couldn’t tell her that Crook had come to him in confidence only hours before and, being in no position to help them officially, had asked Tibbles to help Standing Bear and his people.
As Susette continued to cry, she said apologetically, “My eyes are full of tears all the time. And ever since I came to this place there is an ache here.” She put her hand over her heart. “If we must go back these little children will soon die too.” She cast her hand around the infants in the shelter.94
No one spoke. A pall of gloom settled over the gathering. This was too much for Tibbles. Choked with emotion, he got up and went outside. After walking around the parade ground and composing himself, he returned to the council circle. Tibbles now entered into a long dialogue with Standing Bear, posing questions and discussing what Indians wanted for themselves. The sun was almost setting when Tibbles jammed his notebook into his pocket and said farewell to Standing Bear and his people and set off for town.
By this time he had worked out the tactics for his campaign on behalf of the Poncas. He and General Crook agreed that writing an editorial on behalf of the Poncas would not be enough. Tibbles had a newspaperman’s instincts, and he knew that he had to make a news event out of the Poncas’ plight. And he knew how to achieve that—he would recruit the soldiers of heaven to the cause. Universally known by the clergymen of Omaha for his dedicated pastoral work, Tibbles intended to make the rounds of the city’s Protestant churches that evening while they were packed for their Sunday services and address their congregations.
He hoped to catch a ride back into Omaha with a passing carriage, but every vehicle that went by was going in the opposite direction. Afraid that he’d be too late to reach some of the churches before their services ended, he broke into a trot and ran the last two and a half miles into town. Starting with Reverend William Harsha, who had already shown support for the Ponca cause and whose Presbyterian Church maintained a church and school on the Omaha reservation, Tibbles made pleas to the ministers, who then let him make speeches to their congregations.
Tibbles claimed that he was no public speaker, but the intensity of his delivery and the urgency of his message combined to stir the righteous indignation of the God-fearing folk of Omaha. By the time he finished he’d wrung an agreement from the ministers of the city’s Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Congregationalist churches that come Monday morning they would send a telegraph message to Interior Secretary Schurz in Washington begging him “to let the sick, weary Poncas stay on the Omaha reservation”95 and to follow it up with a detailed letter.
At eleven o’clock that night Tibbles arrived back at his Omaha home, worn out and hungry but elated. Seventeen and a half years before, when Henry Tibbles had proposed to English girl Amelia Owen, she could never have imagined what sort of life they would lead as husband and wife. Whether she married with her parents’ permission is unknown. But she was the granddaughter of a wealthy pottery factory owner in England, and a genteel, cultured life would have been expected for her. The young American minister she married was neither genteel nor cultured, and neither was the life Amelia led as Mrs. Henry Tibbles. With remarkable grace Amelia shared her husband’s postwar career, from a primitive and precarious existence toting a gospel tent and their two infant daughters around wild frontier settlements in Tibbles’s preaching days, to his night owl life as a newspaper editor. It was only when they settled in Omaha and Henry built a church and a parsonage that they had a house to call home, and even then it belonged to the church.
When Tibbles arrived home after his hectic day, Amelia served him a wholesome cooked supper, his first meal since breakfast, heard his excited account of the productive meeting with Standing Bear, then watched him start work on his Ponca material for the Herald, all apparently without a word of complaint. With his daughters Eda (11) and May (9) fast asleep, the crusader would have looked in on them and then sat down at the desk in his parlor and spread his pages and pages of shorthand notes in front of him.
By the time he had finished transcribing and organizing his notes and thought to look at his fob watch it was 5:20 in the morning, and the sun was up. Dragging himself to his bed, he fell into it. He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
For the second night in succession Henry Tibbles had managed to grab the bare minimum of sleep—little more than ninety minutes. Adrenaline was keeping him going. Rising at 7:00 A.M., he borrowed a carriage, and, with notebook at the ready, he was at General Crook’s office by 10:00 A.M. Monday, when Standing Bear’s interview was to take place. In the end, it was closer to noon by the time proceedings got under way; Tibbles would have been grateful for the additional two hours in bed.
The hearing before the general had no legal standing. This was not an appeal hearing in the legal sense. Considered wards of the state, Standing Bear and his Poncas had no legal rights of any kind. But to Crook there was no justice in that, just as there was no justice in Washington’s determination to send Standing Bear and his people back to the alien land of the Indian Territory. Throughout the Standing Bear affair, George Crook was driven by a personal moral principle that had influenced his attitude to and dealings with native American peoples over the past several years. Three years later he put it into a standing order to the officers and men serving under him: “One of the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to all—Indians as well as white men.”96
While he now strove to deliver a large measure of justice to the Poncas through his behind-the-scenes activity with Henry Tibbles, General Crook saw no justice in locking twenty-six Ponca men, women, and children in the unhealthy post guardhouse. Besides, he knew from experience that Indians did not cope well with close confinement. As his aide John Bourke later said, “The American Indian, born free as the eagle, would not tolerate restraint.”97 That was why Crook had condemned the guardhouse and allowed the Poncas to rig up shelters on the parade. He was also conscious of Indian sensitivities in another respect. The Indian system of justice permitted both the accused and all elders of a tribe to speak to an accusation. Crook was allowing the Ponca chief the courtesy of speaking for himself as would be the case in an Indian council.
The hearing took place in General Crook’s office before the general and several of his officers, his ADC Lieutenant Bourke, Colonel William B. Royall, Assistant Adjutant General R. Williams, and Lieutenant Carpenter. Henry Tibbles was present in his capacity as a representative of the press with Crook’s permission to report on what took place. Once the officers were assembled, Standing Bear, Buffalo Chip, and the six other men of the fugitive band were brought in, accompanied by Morgan the interpreter.
John Bourke noted in his diary that the long-haired Buffalo Chip and six of the others were dressed in shabby European shirts, jackets, and vests, with Indian leggings, and each wore a green Mexican blanket around his shoulders. But Standing Bear came in his official regalia, which included a buckskin smock that reached almost to the floor. Over this he wore a very wide belt of beads at the waist and a necklace of bear claws, both of which represented powerful medicine to Plains tribes. His long black hair hung in two braids, one at either side of his bronze face. He wore two eagle feathers in his hair. One was upright, another sloped down his shoulder.
To Standing Bear, his most important prop was the blanket of vivid red trimmed with blue stripes, which he wore around his shoulders. This was his council blanket, worn whenever he sat in council with fellow elders to discuss important business. To Standing Bear his red blanket was as important an official accoutrement as a wig was to an English judge or an academic gown to a graduating college student. According to Henry Tibbles, this garb was “the only proper attire whenever he was to speak officially for his people.”98
Standing Bear and his companions squatted in a semicircle on the floor in front of General Crook’s desk, with Standing Bear looking, in Henry Tibbles’s words, calm yet sorrowful.99 There was no need for a military guard; the prisoners had given the army no reason to suspect they would be troublesome. According to John Bourke, Lieutenant Carpenter, who had guarded the prisoners since their arrest, told him that Standing Bear and his people acted with “perfect sobriety and good behavior” throughout their time in custody.100 In a later statement to the Herald, Carpenter commended the “civilized” demeanor of the Ponca band—men, women, and children.101
Across the floor from the Poncas, sitting on a chair with the gathered military officers, Henry Tibbles readied his notebook and pencil. Beside him, Lieutenant Bourke was also preparing to take notes for his diary. Bourke was such a habitual note taker that the Apaches named him Paper Medicine Man during his service in Arizona under Crook. The Sioux had given him the name Ink Man.
General Crook began the proceedings by calling on Standing Bear to give an account in his own words of the removal of the Ponca tribe from its reservation in the Dakota Territory. Standing Bear slowly came to his feet and addressed the general personally, telling much the same sad Ponca story he had told Tibbles the previous day. He spoke in the halting Ponca tongue, pausing every so often for Morgan the interpreter to relate his words in English, then resuming. When he finished he resumed his position on the floor.
“It’s a downright shame!” exclaimed an officer beside Henry Tibbles, probably Lieutenant Bourke.102 Standing Bear then asked General Crook for permission to address the other officers, which Crook readily gave.
Again Standing Bear came to his feet, this time turning to face the officers and newspaperman. Addressing them as “my friends and brothers,” Standing Bear told the officers that he wanted to go back to his old home in the north, he wanted to save himself and his tribe. He beseeched God to send a good spirit to guide the officers and move them to take pity on him and help him save the women and children. Finally he said, “My brothers, a power I cannot resist crowds me down to the ground. I need help.” With that, Standing Bear resumed his seat, saying, “I have done,” pulling his red blanket around his shoulders as if he had suddenly grown cold—a sign among his people that he had finished speaking. Once again he faced General Crook with a solemn face.
The general now invited Buffalo Chip to speak, and with Morgan again interpreting, he made a short speech that focused on the reasons why the fugitives should not be sent back to the Indian Territory, why they should be allowed to stay in the north and provide for their families through their farming.103
When Buffalo Chip finished, General Crook said to the officers, “I have heard all this story before. It’s just as they say.” He was referring to the detailed account given to him by Bright Eyes two days before. But to preserve her anonymity and that of her father in the behind-the-scenes activities on behalf of the Poncas he could not tell Royall, Williams, or Carpenter where he had heard it. Then, as if to cover his tracks, he added, “It has long since been reported to Washington.”104
After Daily Herald readers encountered this latter comment in Henry Tibbles’s subsequent newspaper account of the interview, many expressed surprise to Tibbles that officials in Washington could know of the mistreatment of the Poncas and still decline to help them.
The general then turned to Standing Bear and through the interpreter told him, “It is a very bad case, but I can do nothing myself. I have received an order from Washington and I must obey it.”105
One of the senior officers, Royall or Williams, leaned forward and whispered to Tibbles, “Such orders as these always come through the influence of civilians.” He was referring to the Interior secretary. “The Army is in no way responsible for this.”106
“They have all the facts in Washington,” General Crook said again, “and it would do no good for me to intercede.” Of course, he had already interceded covertly. This comment was for public consumption or, more precisely, for his superiors in Chicago and Washington. “I might send a telegram, but it is likely to do more harm than good.” Looking over to Lieutenant Carpenter, he announced that the Poncas could stay a few more days at the fort to allow their horses to gain strength.107
Standing Bear now asked if he could speak one more time, and the general told him to go right ahead. Again the chief came to his feet. He told Crook that he knew the general had an order to send him and his people back to Indian Territory, and Standing Bear acknowledged that it must be obeyed. He asked just one thing. As he had lost all his property over the past several years, he asked that the Great Father provide money for provisions for the journey, and money to pay for the burial of members of the band who must surely die on the way back down to Indian Territory.
The general replied that all the army could do was provide rations to the Poncas for the trip south. “It is a very disagreeable duty to send you down there,” he said, coming to his feet, “but I must obey orders.”108 While this very interview was part of a ploy to keep the Poncas from being sent back to Indian Territory, he must be seen to be playing this whole affair by the book. And a soldier always obeys orders.
General Crook then adjourned proceedings and ordered Lieutenant Carpenter to return his prisoners to their quarters. The Poncas came to their feet and trooped out. The officers returned to duty. The interpreter returned to the Omaha reservation. And Henry Tibbles hurried back to Omaha to finalize his story for next day’s edition.
Back in his Herald office by 3:00 P.M., Henry Tibbles sat down to write an extended news article about the Standing Bear case. The end product would dominate several pages of the paper. His article reported, word for word, much of Standing Bear’s and Buffalo Chip’s interviews with General Crook, Tibbles’s interview with the pair the previous day, and a supporting interview with interpreter Charles Morgan. It finished with the text of the telegram sent by Omaha church leaders that day petitioning Interior secretary Schurz on behalf of Standing Bear and his band.
As the Ponca text headed for the print shop and Tibbles turned to his normal editorial work for the day, the latest in communications technology was employed to send the news story throughout the United States: the telegraph transmitted the story to newspapers in cities nationwide. There was a technical term for a multiple telegraph transmission—a message was sent out “broadcast.” It was a term that would later be appropriated by the radio industry and then the television industry. Henry Tibbles would live to experience one but not the other.
Tibbles’s labors meant that he didn’t arrive home until close to 3:30 A.M., totally exhausted. Amelia awoke as he lay down beside her in their bed. Telling her that the Ponca story had gone out to the eastern papers, he remarked that this latest campaign, with just his pen for a weapon, required as much physical endurance as his youthful adventures as an abolitionist, when his weapons had been a gun and a sword. Amelia consoled him with the reminder that as taxing as his work to free the Poncas was, “the whole country would know about it in the morning.”109 He knew she was right. As he closed his eyes, a glow of contentment settled over him. He knew that he had written a story too good for other editors to ignore. He knew that he had set the fire. The question was, How would it be received by a nation bent on westward expansion at the expense of the Indian peoples? Would the fire rage or would it flicker and then die?