Standing bear: American: after his people were unjustly evicted from their homeland in Nebraska, Chief Standing Bear--aided by one of the Army's most renowned Indian fighters--mounted a legal challenge to prove what should have been obvious: Indians were people under the law.(Biography)

In the murky pre-dawn hours of October 30, 1879, Lieutenant Stanton Mason and a detachment of 12 soldiers arrived at the Ponca reservation in Oklahoma's Indian Territory. After concealing their horses behind a small general store, the troops quietly met with William Whiteman, the Indian affairs agent assigned to the Poncas.

For several months, Whiteman had barraged Interior Secretary Carl Schurz with telegrams describing the supposed threat posed by Big Snake, one of several men recognized as chiefs by the Poncas. The dispatches described Big Snake as "extremely sullen and morose" and accused him of having "a very demoralizing effect upon the other Indians." Just a few days before Lt. Mason and his men arrived, Whiteman had sent a panicky telegram demanding that Big Snake be arrested and sent to Fort Reno to be imprisoned "for the remainder of his natural life."

The irony of Whiteman's request was that Big Snake--like the rest of the Poncas--was already serving a life sentence in prison.

The Imprisoned Poncas

That the Poncas were demoralized was obvious, as was the immediate cause of their dejection. Two years earlier they had been uprooted from their ancestral lands at the point of the bayonet and sent on a forced march more than 600 miles south to Indian Territory. Of the fewer than 800 Poncas who left their homeland in northern Nebraska, a little less than one-quarter had died on the march from disease, hunger, and fatigue. E.A. Howard, the Indian Agent who supervised the relocation, was alarmed at the fatality rate (primarily because of how it reflected on his administration). In a letter to Washington after the Poncas had been settled in Indian Territory, Howard predicted that "a great mortality will surely follow among the people when they have been here for a time and been poisoned by the malaria of the climate."

In their new "home," the Poncas were treated as prisoners. They couldn't leave the reservation without permission from the Indian Agent, upon whom they depended for food, seeds, and other essential goods. In early 1879, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Commissioner Ezra Hayt subdivided the Ponca reservation to make room for 370 members of Chief Joseph's Nez Perce tribe, which had surrendered to the U.S. Army just shy of reaching free territory in Canada.

The Poncas were agrarian; the Nez Perces were capable warriors, but not hostile. These tribes had nothing in common, beyond the mistreatment they had experienced at the hands of the federal government. However, as an editorial in the local Arkansas City Traveler noted at the time: "With the addition of the Nez Perce, trade will be increased considerably." As Indian Agent. Whiteman received subsidies from Washington based on the total population under his supervision.

It was standard practice for Indian Agents to pad expense vouchers for Indian welfare distribution and to receive kickbacks from corrupt dry goods merchants. Many agents profited so handsomely from this corrupt trade that they could take a very small salary and live very well. This engine of corruption, commonly called the "Indian Ring," propelled many figures into politics, both locally and nationally.

While the Indian Ring prospered, Indians were left destitute. In an 1862 letter to Abraham Lincoln, George A.S. Crooker, a critic of the Indian system, denounced "the cohesive power of public plunder [that] cements rogues together stronger than party or any other ties." By abetting the misery of the Indians and fomenting conflict, Crooker wrote, the Indian Ring's corrupt activity "not only cost a large sum of money but has deluged our western border in blood." Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple of Minnesota, mortified by the wretched condition of the Indians and the arrogant corruption of federal Indian Affairs officials, similarly warned that the Indian system "'commences in discontent and ends in blood."

Discontent, Defiance, and Murder

By October 1879, Big Snake's discontent had become sufficiently pronounced to throw…