IN THE EARLY hours of Thursday, October 30, 1879, Lieutenant Stanton A. Mason, a sergeant, and twelve troopers from Company H of the 4th Cavalry Regiment quietly dismounted at the Ponca agency at the junction of the Arkansas and Salt Fork Rivers. After concealing their horses behind the agency’s commissary store, the cavalrymen slipped into the house of Indian Affairs agent William H. Whiteman.
Ever since Big Snake had been brought back to the Ponca reservation in the spring, Agent Whiteman had been sending reports to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington that Big Snake was “extremely sullen and morose” and was having “a very demoralizing effect upon the other Indians.”230 Whiteman later claimed in one breath that throughout the summer Big Snake repeatedly threatened to kill him, while in another he said that Big Snake had not spoken a word to him since his enforced return. In the third week of October, Whiteman sent a telegram to Commissioner Hayt, telling him that the Ponca had attempted to murder two men on the reservation and begging the commissioner “to arrest Big Snake and convey him to Fort Reno and there confine him for the remainder of his natural life.”231 On October 25, the Interior Department gave approval for Big Snake to be arrested, and the interdepartmental wheels began to turn, resulting in the dispatch of Lieutenant Mason and his men from Fort Reno.
After Lieutenant Mason arrived at the agency, he and Whiteman discussed the best way to carry out the arrest of Big Snake. Whiteman told the cavalry officer that he owed a number of Ponca tribesmen money for special work they had carried out for the agency, and Big Snake was one of them. Government money only came into the agency spasmodically. The agent and his white employees were themselves only paid several times each year, and earlier that year the Bureau of Indian Affairs had fallen six months behind in its salary payments to the Ponca agency. By June, money for salaries and expenses had finally been brought up to date, and now in October the latest pay packet had just come out from Washington. This meant that if Whiteman were to send out a message that he would be paying all outstanding moneys to the Poncas the next day, Big Snake would almost certainly come into the agency. Whiteman proposed to Lieutenant Mason that if the soldiers were to lie in wait for the big man they should be able to surprise and arrest him.
Lieutenant Stanton Mason was, according to Nathan Hughes, acerbic editor of the Arkansas City Traveler, “one of the most gentlemanly officers it was ever our pleasure to meet.”232 What Hughes might categorize as a gentleman is open to question—he also described William Whiteman as a gentleman. Lieutenant Mason passed through Arkansas City from time to time in the course of his duties, and Hughes befriended him. According to the editor, “Mason is a good officer, a man of courage, and will carry out instructions to the letter.”233 In this case, Lieutenant Mason’s instructions were to bring Big Snake back to Fort Reno in handcuffs, and that was what he intended to do, with a minimum of fuss. Mason agreed to Agent Whiteman’s plan.
The agent’s message regarding payment for special work was duly circulated by runners during the day. Throughout the following morning men of the Ponca tribe arrived at the agency office in ones and twos to collect their earnings and then purchase goods from the agency trader, Joe Sherburne. Inside the office, the Poncas dealt with several men—Whiteman, the agent’s clerk A. R. Satterthwaite, Sherburne, and the interpreter employed by the agency, Batiste Barnaby, an Oto. All went without incident through the morning, as Whiteman paid each man what was owed him, always with one eye on the door in case Big Snake appeared.
A little before noon on Friday, Big Snake walked into the agency office, accompanied by another Ponca clan chief, Hairy Bear, who had moved up in the clan hierarchy, apparently via the death through natural causes of its previous leader, one of the chiefs who had accompanied White Eagle and Standing Bear on the 1877 inspection tour of Indian Territory.
Whiteman told Big Snake and Hairy Bear to take a seat for a moment, then left the room. Moments later, he returned with Lieutenant Mason, his sergeant, and seven enlisted men armed with loaded cavalry carbines. Big Snake and Hairy Bear were sitting waiting for the agent. As Mason and the main body of soldiers quickly surrounded the two Indians, the remaining five enlisted men appeared outside the agency building and barred the door, with carbines at the ready, to prevent other members of the tribe from entering the office to help Big Snake.
Big Snake’s companion, Hairy Bear, jumped to his feet at the sight of the armed soldiers, but Big Snake kept his seat and eyed the troopers with disdain, realizing that he had been lured into a trap. Through interpreter Barnaby, Lieutenant Mason informed Big Snake that he was under arrest. Big Snake remained calm, asking why. Agent Whiteman then said that one of the charges against him was that he had threatened the agent’s life. Big Snake patiently denied the claim.
“Tell Big Snake to come along,” Lieutenant Mason instructed the interpreter. “Tell him to get up and come with us.”
Big Snake did not budge from his chair. “Tell me what I have done,” he said to the officer. “I have killed no one, I have stolen no horses, I have done nothing wrong.”
The lieutenant briefly conferred with Agent Whiteman to one side, while Big Snake sat defiantly with arms folded. Mason once more addressed the Ponca through the interpreter. “You tried to kill two men, and were pretty mean.”
Big Snake shook his head and denied the trumped-up charge.
Now Agent Whiteman intervened, instructing the interpreter to tell Big Snake that he had better go with the soldiers; he would learn more about the charges against him once he reached Fort Reno.
Big Snake shook his head. “I have done nothing wrong.” He glared at Whiteman. “I will die before I go.”
Hairy Bear, seeing Big Snake’s defiance on the one hand and the soldiers’ determination to arrest him on the other, tried to reason with his friend, telling him that the officer was not going to arrest him for nothing, and he had better go along with him. “Perhaps you will come back to the reservation all right,” he added. “You have a wife and children,” he reminded him. “Remember them, and do not get killed.”
“Get up,” Lieutenant Mason commanded once more. “If you do not go with us, something might happen.”234
Slowly Big Snake rose to his feet and stood towering over the soldiers. Agency trader Joe Sherburne, who had been watching all this take place from the background, later testified that Big Snake now threw off the red blanket he had been carrying over his shoulders. This act, to Sherburne, was Big Snake’s way of showing that he was not armed. But the soldiers around him, no doubt thinking that he meant to fight, would have immediately tensed.235
Big Snake turned to Hairy Bear. “I do not want to go,” he told him. “If they want to kill me, let them do it, right here.”236 Hairy Bear was impressed by his friend’s coolness and determination in the face of the Bluecoats but terrified for him at the same time. Meanwhile, the interpreter translated Big Snake’s words, which only generated impatience from Lieutenant Mason.
“There is no use in talking,” the lieutenant said. “I came to arrest you, and I want you to come with me.”237 Mason stomped out the door to the troopers outside. When he returned, he was carrying a pair of handcuffs. Mason and one of his men then tried to take hold of Big Snake by the wrists, but the Indian effortlessly pushed the two of them away. Mason, angry now, instructed four of his men to secure the man while his sergeant applied the handcuffs. The soldiers lay aside their carbines, but when they advanced on Big Snake, all five were thrown off, as if they were rag dolls. Again they tried, and again the soldiers found themselves repelled by the giant.
There was a pause, with the soldiers puffing and panting, and now Big Snake calmly resumed his seat and folded his arms. Lieutenant Mason snapped an order, and now the sergeant and five of his men fell on the seated figure. Even as it appeared they had the man under control, Big Snake rose up to his feet with the soldiers hanging onto him. With a monumental effort he then heaved them off him, sending all six sprawling across the floorboards.
The two remaining troopers had been standing, carbines in hand, watching this circus, and now one stepped up to Big Snake, swinging his weapon. With a sickening crunch, he crashed the butt of his carbine into the Indian’s face. Moments later, the second soldier came from the side and brought the barrel of his carbine down across Big Snake’s temple. The Ponca staggered and fell back against the wall. But he would not go down. With blood streaming down his face, he straightened again.
Hairy Bear later testified to what he witnessed and heard that day: he saw one of the soldiers level his carbine and point it at Big Snake, who was only feet away from him. Gripped by fear for his friend, unable to watch what he knew must come next, Hairy Bear looked away. He heard a shot. And then he heard Big Snake crash to the floor, dead.
The shooting of Big Snake at first panicked Lieutenant Mason and Agent Whiteman. The man was the brother of the nationally famous Standing Bear, after all, and they both knew how his death might look to Standing Bear’s white friends—as a payback by the government for Standing Bear’s daring to take the authorities to court and win. The pair must have talked long and hard about what to do, for it was not until the next afternoon that a trooper arrived at the Arkansas City telegraph office to send a message to Washington telling of the shooting—a message that Whiteman and Mason would have labored over at length.
From the telegraph office the news spread rapidly around Arkansas City, and it was the talk of the town that night and the next day. Meanwhile, someone in Arkansas City sent a telegraph message to the Boston Daily Advertiser with the report that Big Snake had been shot on William White-man’s orders. Perhaps it was the telegraph operator himself, excitedly sending the news out broadcast. Maybe it was a local clergyman sympathetic to the Poncas, intent on letting the increasingly well-known Boston committee know what had taken place.
From whatever source, the news flashed north to Boston during the late afternoon. Once it reached the Advertiser, the telegram was quickly passed on to B. W. Williams. And this was the message from Kansas that Williams carried into the Boston hotel to the Tibbles party at around 5:00 P.M. that Saturday.
The following Monday, as the news of Big Snake’s death broke in the press, the Department of the Interior issued a statement that “Standing Bear’s brother, Big Snake, a bad man” had been “shot accidentally” at the Ponca agency in the Indian Territory.238
On Wednesday, November 5, the Arkansas City Traveler informed its readers,
On Saturday night and Sunday our city was rife with rumors of “heep big Injun” troubles at the Ponca Agency, which upon investigation proves to have grown out of an attempt to make an arrest. It appears that a squad of soldiers had an order to arrest an Indian for various misdemeanors, who refused to submit to the law’s requirements and resisted. He was pled with, both by the soldiers and prominent Indians of the tribe, but all to no purpose, and, becoming enraged, he attempted violence and was, in the melee that followed, shot by one of the soldiers. No blame is attached to anyone, and in half an hour’s time everything was as quiet as if nothing had occurred.
The message received in Boston said that Big Snake had been shot on Agent Whiteman’s orders. Despite the contradictions and controversy surrounding the shooting of Standing Bear’s brother, Secretary Schurz did not order an Interior Department inquiry. As far as Carl Schurz was concerned, the matter was closed.