1. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
2. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
3. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
4. He was the lowest ranked West Point graduate promoted to major general.
5. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
6. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
7. Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
8. Crook, General George Crook, editor’s note.
9. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
10. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
11. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
12. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
13. McDermott, Excerpts.
14. From an interview given by Agent James Lawrence to the Indian Herald in February 1877; reprinted in the Arkansas City Traveler, March 4, 1877.
15. Lawrence, interview. While Standing Bear put the number of students at fifty to sixty, Lawrence said the number was seventy-five.
16. White Eagle, testimony to the Senate Select Committee concerning the Removal and Situation of the Ponca Indians, 46th Congress, 1881.
17. Bright Eyes, testimony to the Special Commission to the Poncas, 1881.
18. Standing Bear, testimony to the Ponca Commission.
19. Standing Bear, testimony to the Ponca Commission.
20. Charles Morgan, interview, Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879.
21. Various sources provide slightly different lists of the chiefs involved. This list was provided to the Arkansas City Traveler when the chiefs were in Arkansas City and was published in the Traveler on February 21, 1877. The Traveler referred to Little Chief as “the Chief.”
22. According to Charles Morgan, the interpreter at the Ponca agency at the time, Charles Le Claire and his brother David sent Washington a petition calling for the removal of agent Arthur Carrier and his replacement by their friend Lawrence. Morgan said that the Le Claires included names of chiefs who later claimed to know nothing about it. Once he had the job as agent, Lawrence made Charles Le Claire the official interpreter.
23. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
24. The Poncas knew and trusted Reverend Hinman. One of the clan chiefs, Standing Buffalo, even named a son Hinman, after him.
25. White Eagle, testimony to the Senate Select Committee, 1881.
26. From a report on the Ponca chiefs’ visit, Arkansas City Traveler, February 21, 1877.
27. Arkansas City Traveler, February 21, 1877.
28. White Eagle, testimony to the Senate Select Committee, 1881.
29. Standing Bear, statement, in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
30. White Eagle, testimony.
31. This episode is based on Standing Bear’s statement. White Eagle told a similar story, but with less detail and without crediting Standing Bear with the leading role; he also failed to mention the detachment of the older chiefs.
32. Arkansas City Traveler, February 28, 1877.
33. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
34. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
35. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
36. Edward Kemble, testimony to Senate Select Committee, 1880. He said the telegram was sent on April 12.
37. In his statement, Standing Bear says he was taken to Yankton, but all other sources say it was Fort Randall, which was opposite the Yankton Sioux reservation. There may have been an error in the Standing Bear translation.
38. Senate Select Committee, 1881.
39. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
40. Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
41. The size of the military force was later confirmed by Interior Secretary Schurz.
42. The $4,000 estimate was by Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs, as was the journalist’s wage. The $25/month house rental was advertised in the Omaha Daily Herald in May 1879.
43. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
44. Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Fieldwork Diary.
45. Omaha Daily Herald, May 2, 1879.
46. Testimony to Senate Select Committee, 1881.
47. Charles Morgan, Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879.
48. White Eagle, testimony.
49. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
50. Howard’s report is included in the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report for 1877.
51. Standing Bear, testimony to the Ponca Commission.
52. Standing Bear, testimony to the Ponca Commission; White Eagle, testimony to the Senate Select Committee.
53. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
54. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
55. White Eagle, testimony.
56. Standing Bear, testimony.
57. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
58. White Eagle, testimony.
59. Hayt, letter to Schurz, in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
60. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
61. He did not approach his son-in-law Shines White, identified by Standing Bear as the husband of Prairie Flower. According to interpreter Willie Hamilton (in testimony to the habeas corpus hearing of May 1, 1879, reported in the Omaha Daily Herald, May 2) Standing Bear’s two grandchildren were orphans— both their mother and their father were dead. Either Shines White was not the father of the two children or Hamilton was in error. According to the Arkansas City Traveler, Shines White was alive and well in the Indian Territory in 1880.
62.. Standing Bear consistently used the name Chicken Hunter for this clan member. In the April 4, 1879, petition for a writ of habeas corpus, he is called Little Duck, apparently a translation error.
63. Charles Morgan, interview, Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879.
64. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
65. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
66. Special Order no. 33, reprinted in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
67. The above special order made provision for the quartermaster to supply the horses and mule team. No specific mention is made of a military ambulance, but this was a common form of army transport. General Crook loaned Henry Tibbles a military ambulance from Fort Omaha when he took Alice Cunningham Fletcher to the Omahas, Poncas, and Sioux in 1881. With its spring suspension, it was considered more comfortable than a wagon.
68. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
69. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
70. Morgan told of his absence in the Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879. Young Hamilton told of his role as translator during the arrest in his testimony to the habeas corpus hearing of May 1 reported in the Herald of May 2.
71. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
72. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
73. No documentary evidence exists for the March 29 meeting between General Crook, Bright Eyes, and Iron Eye, or the presence of Bright Eyes and Iron Eye at Crook’s subsequent secret meeting with Henry Tibbles. Crook’s autobiography never reached the Ponca affair, while Tibbles deliberately failed to mention Bright Eyes’s early involvement in the campaign, to protect her and to prevent anyone from inferring that he and she were close at that time, since he was a married man. In his books and diaries John Bourke mentioned nothing of Crook’s involvement in the behind-the-scenes activities on behalf of the Poncas, including the clandestine meeting between Crook and Tibbles in the early hours of March 30, to protect his general. What Crook embarked on with Tibbles was nothing less than a conspiracy against the U.S. government, a conspiracy to which Bright Eyes was a party. I steadfastly believe the meeting between Bright Eyes and Crook took place on March 29, and that this meeting spurred Crook to act on behalf of the Poncas within hours, early the following morning, after the prisoners had been on his doorstep at Fort Omaha for days, since March 27. The following Monday, March 31, Crook declared, a little impatiently it seems, “I have heard all this story before. It is just as they represent it.” He could only have heard the entire story recently and from an insider with intimate knowledge of the case. Reverend Dorsey and Reverend Hamilton had no comprehensive knowledge of the Poncas’ mistreatment, and young Willie Hamilton, the interpreter, confessed he didn’t even speak to Standing Bear or the others after they arrived at the Omaha agency in March 1879. Crook could not have heard the story from Standing Bear or another member of the Ponca tribe as he hadn’t spoken to any of them prior to March 31. Bright Eyes is the obvious source of his detailed information. Her pro-Ponca activities, some of them illegal and clandestine, prior to and following the arrest of Standing Bear, show that such a mission to General Crook is the sort of thing she wouldn’t have hesitated to carry out. Only one hint about her secret trip to see Crook and then Tibbles at Omaha made its way onto paper. Addison Sheldon, in his book History and Stories of Nebraska, for which he interviewed both Standing Bear and Bright Eyes, wrote of Bright Eyes and Standing Bear’s Poncas, “She visited Omaha on their behalf. While thus engaged she became acquainted with Mr. T. H. Tibbles.”
74. See Chapter 3, note 73, for a detailed discussion of the role of Bright Eyes and Iron Eyes in this meeting and the earlier meeting with General Crook at Fort Omaha. The fact that Crook left his visit until the early hours of the morning is telling. He didn’t wear an army uniform as a rule, so he could have slipped into the newspaper office unnoticed at an earlier hour. But Indians in the streets of Omaha in March 1879 would certainly have turned heads; while Bright Eyes may have passed for a white, Iron Eye would not have. The 1:00 A.M. meeting time was obviously chosen to ensure they weren’t seen, and, more importantly, not seen in Crook’s company.
75. Harsha proved to be an active supporter of the campaign for the Poncas. He became so wrapped up in the affair that he wrote a novel, Plowed Under (published in 1881 under the pseudonym of Anonymous), which purported to have been written by an Indian chief. He even managed to have Bright Eyes write a foreword for it. Critics soon realized that Harsha’s overwrought tale of injustice could only have been written by someone with an outsider’s knowledge of Indians, not by a Native American.
76. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
77. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
78. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
79. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days. General Crook had secretly asked Tibbles to go to Spotted Tail, chief of the Brulé Lakota, and urge him to reject proposals that would soon be put to him personally by the Indian Affairs commissioner, proposals that Crook considered against the Brulé’s best interests and contravened promises Crook had made to the tribe. Of that incident, Tibbles wrote in Buckskin and Blanket Days, “I gladly accepted the mission, agreeing to Crook’s firm demand that I should be very careful not to let anyone, either white or Indian, learn who I was or what my purpose was.”
80. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
81. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
82. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
83. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
84. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
85. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
86. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
87 Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
88. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
89. Both Tibbles and John Bourke (in his diary) wrote that Morgan was a full-blood Omaha, but other sources, including Mathes and Lowitt, The Standing Bear Controversy, say he was an Iowa who lived with Iron Eye’s family on the Omaha reservation for a time. Iron Eye’s mother was part Iowa, his second wife a full-blood Iowa; Morgan may have had a family connection with Iron Eye through one of them.
90. Bright Eyes, testimony to the Senate Select Committee, 1881.
91. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
92. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
93. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
94. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
95. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
96. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
97. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
98. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
99. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
100. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
101. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
102. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
103. Speeches made by Buffalo Chip and Standing Bear were reported in the Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879, and, with slight variations, in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
104. Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879.
105. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
106. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
107. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days; Ponca Chiefs.
108. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
109. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
110. Headlines from Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879.
111. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
112. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
113. Andrew J. Poppleton, Reminiscences, said he was certain the idea of the habeas corpus challenge started with Crook.
114. All these Omaha attorneys advertised for new clients in the Omaha Daily Herald in May 1879, at the time the Standing Bear hearing was taking place.
115. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
116. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
117. Unlike the Omaha attorneys described at 114, Webster did not advertise for new business.
118. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
119. During her interrupted speech at the Omaha Presbyterian Church the following September; Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
120. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
121. Tibbles, Buckskins and Blanket Days.
122. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
123. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
124. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
125. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
126. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
127. Wakely, Omaha.
128. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
129. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
130. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
131. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
132. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
133. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
134. Hayt, letter to Schurz; in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
135. Hayt, letter to Schurz; in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
136. Hayt, letter to Schurz; in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
137. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
138. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
139. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
140. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
141. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
142. The Republican story was also picked up and run by the Arkansas City Traveler on May 21, 1879.
143. Standing Bear related this to Sheldon, who included it in History and Stories of Nebraska. Also cited earlier in Jackson, A Century of Dishonor.
144. Omaha Daily Herald, April 1, 1879.
145Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
146. From the Dundy judgment in the Standing Bear case. Dillon, Cases Determined in the United States Circuit Courts for the Eighth Circuit.
147. Dillon, Cases Determined in the United States Circuit Courts for the Eighth Circuit.
148. All quotes from the hearing come from the lengthy verbatim reports of proceedings that appeared in the Omaha Daily Herald on May 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7; also in Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
149. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
150. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
151. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
152. Lambertson’s arguments are reconstructed from Judge Dundy’s judgment and from A. J. Poppleton’s rebuttal of those arguments, which appeared in full in the Omaha Daily Herald, May 4, 6, and 7, 1879.
153. Poppleton’s summation and Lambertson’s interjections appear in full in the Omaha Daily Herald, May 4, 6, and 7, 1879.
154. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
155. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
156. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
157. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
158. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
159. The report in the Republican was used by the Arkansas City Traveler on May 21, 1879.
160. This was how the Boston Advertiser described Bright Eyes’s speaking voice on October 30, 1879.
161. Omaha Daily Herald, May 2, 1879.
162. Omaha Daily Herald, May 2, 1879.
163. Repeated in the Arkansas City Traveler, May 21, 1879.
164. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
165. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days. In his May 3, 1879, Omaha Daily Herald report of Standing Bear’s speech, Tibbles didn’t include this emotional climax. Perhaps he thought that with its accusatory tone it might antagonize Judge Dundy, the last thing he wanted to do, if he ran it. Tibbles merely wrote in the Herald, “After a few more remarks he closed.” Tibbles included the full closing in his later life story, long after the judge handed down his decision.
166. From the Dundy judgment in the Standing Bear case. Dillon, Cases Determined in the United States Circuit Courts for the Eighth Circuit.
167. Repeated in the Arkansas City Traveler, May 21, 1879.
168. Omaha Daily Herald, May 15, 1879.
169. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
170. Bourke, Diaries.
171. Omaha Daily Herald, May 15, 1879.
172. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
173. Reported in the Arkansas City Traveler, May 21, 1879.
174. Letter of May 20, 1879, from Sherman to the secretary of war; included in the record of the Senate Select Committee looking into the removal of the Poncas, 1881.
175. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
176. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
177. Bourke refers to the bag of bones around Standing Bear’s neck in On the Border with Crook.
178. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
179. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
180. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
181. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
182. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
183. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
184. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
185. Omaha Daily Herald, May 15, 1879.
186. Arkansas City Traveler, June 11, 1879.
187. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
188. Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 26, 1877.
189. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
190. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
191. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
192. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
193. New York Observer, January 1881.
194. Senate Select Committee, 1881, Senate Executive Document 14.
195. Senate Select Committee, 1881, Senate Executive Document 14.
196. Senate Select Committee, 1881, Senate Executive Document 14.
197. Senate Select Committee, 1881, Senate Executive Document 14.
198. Arkansas City Traveler, June 18, 1879.
199. Arkansas City Traveler, May 26, 1880.
200. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
201. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
202. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
203. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
204. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
205. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
206. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
207. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
208. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
209. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
210. Boston Daily Advertiser, August 6, 1879.
211. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
212. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
213. Boston Daily Advertiser, August 6, 1879.
214. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
215. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days; the entire conversation. Phillips later wrote a dedication in Ponca Chiefs.
216. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
217. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
218. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
219. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
220. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
221. New York Times, August 23, 1879.
222. Hayes, Diary and Letters.
223. Hayes, Diary and Letters.
224. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
225. Crockett, Davy Crockett’s Own Story.
226. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
227. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
228. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
229. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
230. Senate Select Committee, 1881, Senate Executive Document 14.
231. Senate Select Committee, 1881, Senate Executive Document 14.
232. Arkansas City Traveler, December 8, 1880.
233. Arkansas City Traveler, December 8, 1880.
234. Hairy Bear, testimony to Senate Select Committee, 1881.
235. Joseph Sherburne, testimony to Senate Select Committee, 1881.
236. Hairy Bear, testimony to Senate Select Committee, 1881.
237. Hairy Bear, testimony to Senate Select Committee, 1881.
238. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
239. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
240. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
241. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
242. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
243. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
244. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
245. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
246. Boston Daily Advertiser, November 2, 1879.
247. Boston Daily Advertiser, November 2, 1879.
248. Boston Daily Advertiser, November 2, 1879.
249. Boston Daily Advertiser, November 2, 1879.
250. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
251. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
252. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
253. Tibbles, Ponca Chiefs.
254. Manifest Destiny, a doctrine attributed to journalist Cora Montgomery (real name Jane Cazneau) and first espoused politically by Democrats and later adopted by Republicans, held that the United States should and inevitably would expand its national boundaries, initially west to the Pacific and then beyond.
255. Arkansas City Traveler, January 7, 1880.
256. Arkansas City Traveler, January 7, 1880.
257. Bourke, Diaries.
258. Barnard, Rutherford B. Hayes and His America.
259. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
260. Washburn, The American Indian and the United States.
261. Hayes, Diaries and Letters.
262. Hayes, Diaries and Letters.
263. Hayes, Diaries and Letters.
264. Arkansas City Traveler, December 8, 1880.
265. Colonel George W. Manypenny, a former member of the board of Indian commissioners.
266. Jackson, Indian Reform Letters.
267. Standing Bear, testimony to the Ponca Commission, 1881.
268. Bourke, On the Border with Crook.
269. Watterson, Marse Henry.
270. Fletcher, Fieldwork Diary.
271. The date shown in Buckskin and Blanket Days, provided by Tibbles’s daughters, is incorrect. County records and newspaper articles noting the wedding confirm the 1881 date.
272. Schurz, Speeches, Correspondence, and Political Papers.
273. Tibbles, Buckskin and Blanket Days.
274. New York Times, May 27, 1906.
275. New York Times, May 27, 1906.
276. Standing Bear, testimony to Ponca Commission, 1881.