That sympathy did not erase Crook’s military career or transform him into the central hero of a Ponca story.

Standing Bear and the Ponca remained the people who had suffered removal and taken the risk of returning.

But Crook’s reaction mattered because he was in a position to prevent their detention from remaining invisible.

Thomas Henry Tibbles, an editor at the Omaha Daily Herald, learned what was happening.

Tibbles understood the power of the story immediately.

A group of Ponca had been driven south by the government, suffered devastating losses, traveled back north, and then been arrested for trying to return to the country they regarded as home.