Chapter 18
THE DARK DAYS OF OCTOBER

IN THE SECOND half of September, while the four crusaders were busy preparing to head east, their chief opponent, Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, was far from idle. Henry Tibbles’s efforts on behalf of the Poncas in Boston during the summer caused a stir that sent shock waves all the way to Washington. The eminence of the members of the Boston Ponca Committee, the strongly pro-Ponca editorial by the respected Edward Everett Hale and later supportive articles in the Boston Advertiser, as well as the vocal support of Wendell Phillips and Mayor Prince, all combined to sink the secretary’s strategy of slurring Standing Bear and Henry Tibbles to discredit their Ponca campaign. Other measures would be necessary if this wave of sympathy for the Poncas was to be countered. Schurz went on the offensive.

In its September 24 edition, the Arkansas City Traveler reported on the front page that Secretary Schurz had just issued “a long and elaborate statement concerning the true condition of the Poncas.” Distributed to the press throughout the country to appear in papers from the New York Times to the Omaha Daily Herald, this statement contained the first public admission by the Interior Department that the Poncas had good reason for complaint. A version of this statement was included in the Interior Department’s report to Congress for the year 1879. Not surprisingly, the statement was worded in a way that skewed the truth in the defense of Secretary Schurz and spread the blame among entities ranging from the Sioux Indian tribes to Schurz’s predecessor at the department during the Grant administration, Zacharia Chandler.

Mr. Schurz says that by the treaty of 1868, this (Ponca) reservation, situated in Dakota, was ceded to the Sioux, who are now in actual possession of the same. This cession was the result of a blunder of a former administration, and as the Sioux insisted upon their property rights, a removal of the Poncas became necessary. This removal was accompanied by a combination of disasters and mishaps; but the sum of the whole matter is comprised in the statement that the Ponca Indians, on their new reservation in the Indian Territory, are prospering fairly, and are not only contented, but are on the road to civilization.

The unidentified Washington-based author of this article proceeded to add his own comment to the story about the Schurz statement. “This careful presentment of the case may not please the sentimentalists who have been so vociferous over the wrongs of the Poncas. But it bears the unmistakable impress of absolute truthfulness.”

Carl Schurz didn’t stop there. As soon as his statement had been circulated, he departed Washington and headed west. On October 1, the Traveler reported that Secretary Schurz had just passed through Arkansas City on his way to inspect all the Indian reservations in the Indian Territory. On October 22, the same paper reported that Schurz had returned from the Ponca reservation and was heading back to Washington after concluding his tour of Indian Territory reservations. In Arkansas City, the secretary announced that a school would be built at the Ponca agency, but apart from the present lack of school facilities, according to the Traveler, Carl Schurz “expressed himself highly pleased with things at the Agency.”

Schurz was supremely confident of his position in the Ponca affair. If worse came to worst, he could call on the support of President Rutherford B. Hayes. The president was careful to refer to Schurz in public as “General Schurz,”222 respecting his Union army rank of brigadier general, but in private he called him Carl.²²³ More than a political supporter, Schurz was a close family friend who went out of his way to aid and advise Hayes and his son, Webb C. Hayes, the president’s personal secretary. Schurz knew that the president would resist any accusation against him and would staunchly stand by his Interior secretary.

As Schurz returned to Washington, satisfied that he had been seen to give prompt attention to the Ponca tribe and that he had shored up his position against the complaints coming out of Boston, he had no idea that Henry Tibbles and three Indian companions were also heading east and were about to launch a powerful new assault against him.

As they set off from Omaha in the second half of October, Tibbles and his fellow crusaders received a telegram from Williams, their agent, telling them he had arranged lecture engagements at Pittsburgh en route to Boston. First stop was Chicago, where on October 19 they made their inaugural speeches at the Second Presbyterian Church. Introduced by Bishop Clarkson, the crusaders were followed by Reverend Harsha. Raising several hundred dollars, the event was a success but not a triumph. After a brief stay at Chicago’s Palmer House hotel, the quartet bade farewell to the two churchmen and took the train to Pittsburgh in the last week of October. Now the crusaders were truly on their own.

There was no Indian committee in Pittsburgh, so their reception was low-key. Tibbles says nothing about the venues at Pittsburgh or the size of the crowds, nor about how the speeches made by Standing Bear and Bright Eyes were received. He only says that while he was sitting on the platform during the last of the engagements, listening to either Standing Bear or Bright Eyes speak, a telegram from Williams was handed to him. It instructed the party to take the next train to Boston without delay. They departed Pittsburgh the next day.

When they stepped off the train at Boston early on the morning of Wednesday, October 29, exhausted after a three-hundred-mile journey from Pittsburgh, they were met by a beaming B. W. Williams with the news that, thanks to Mayor Prince, the members of the party were to be the guests of the city of Boston for an entire week. They were to be put up at the Tremont House, one of the city’s best hotels, at the Boston city council’s expense. And later that same morning the mayor, members of the council, and one hundred prominent citizens would hold a grand reception for them in the hotel ballroom. Then, come Saturday night, there would be a great public reception for them at Horticultural Hall, with all of Boston invited to attend and extend a welcome to the Ponca crusaders. With this coup of organization, Williams had excelled himself.

After breakfast at the Tremont House, the crusaders found themselves the toast of the town in the hotel ballroom later that morning. Introduced by Mayor Prince, Tibbles, Bright Eyes, and Standing Bear each spoke briefly, before the guests thronged around Standing Bear and Bright Eyes, keen to meet and talk to them. As Henry Tibbles and Frank La Flesche hung back, marveling at the reception, Bright Eyes and Standing Bear were surrounded by people who wanted to shake their hands and wish them well. When they finally broke away to eat lunch in the hotel dining room, the four of them were “amazed and delighted” by the reception they received from Boston’s movers and shakers.²²⁴

The people of Boston had a long history of taking colorful guests to their hearts. Almost half a century before, in 1834, famous Tennessee frontiersman and congressman Davy Crockett had come to the city, also on a speaking tour of New England, and had found a similarly warm welcome. “The citizens of Boston generally are uncommon kind and civil,” Crockett was to write after his visit. “I was entertained like a prince.” Crockett came away with the opinion that the people of New England “have more kind feelings to one another, and live in more peace and harmony than any people I ever was among.”²²⁵

Over the next two days the campaigners met with the members of the Boston Indian Committee and gave press interviews as they prepared for their largest event yet, the huge public reception planned for Saturday night. The Boston Advertiser had featured their arrival in two editions that week, and editor Goddard promised a stirring editorial for Saturday’s issue to ensure a large turnout for the Horticultural Hall reception.

As Tibbles, Standing Bear, Bright Eyes, and Frank La Flesche lingered over an alcohol-free lunch at the Tremont House on Saturday, November 1, chattering excitedly about the overwhelming welcome Boston had given them so far, about the grand event coming up that evening and the campaign that lay ahead, Tibbles says that they “almost dared to hope that we should win the dreaded fight very easily.”²²⁶ Their spirits were high. None of them ever touched a drop of alcohol, but that heady day they were so happy it was almost as if they were drunk. Standing Bear, it turned out, liked to make dreadful puns, which were even worse in translation. “That afternoon,” says Tibbles, “we laughed at everything, especially Standing Bear’s many puns.”²²⁷

They were still at the table when, around 5:00 P.M., Agent Williams walked into the dining room, ashen-faced. He looked ghastly as he slowly approached them. The jolly mood of the quartet evaporated as they realized something was amiss. Tibbles noticed that Williams held several telegrams in his hand. He asked what was wrong. Williams fidgeted with the telegrams as he advised in a faltering voice that one was fresh off the line from Kansas. The other, “followed you from Chicago round by Pittsburgh” and was “three days old now.”²²⁸

No one could imagine what news the telegrams could contain to make the lecture bureau chief look so distraught. They would have thought the speaking tour had been canceled for some reason, perhaps as a result of some act by the government.

Williams faced Tibbles, hardly able to look him in the eye. “I have some very bad news,” he said. “You and Standing Bear must prepare yourselves for heavy blows.”²²⁹ He then proceeded to tell Tibbles that, the previous day around noon, Standing Bear’s brother Big Snake had been shot and killed at the Ponca agency in the Indian Territory on the orders of Agent William Whiteman. But there were tidings even worse than that. As Williams held out the telegrams, he informed Henry Tibbles that the second message had been sent from Omaha three days before, bearing the news that his wife, Amelia, was dead.