STANDING BEAR WAS ARRESTED FOR TRYING TO GO HOME – THEN HIS CASE FORCED A U.S. COURT TO DECIDE IF A NATIVE MAN WAS A “PERSON”

The speaking tour helped push a major American author into a new political cause.

That chain is one reason the Standing Bear story can sustain more than a short legal anecdote.

Each stage produced another consequence.

But even as reform attention increased, the legal status of Native people remained unsettled.

Only a few years after Dundy called Standing Bear a person entitled to habeas corpus, another Native man would learn just how much the ruling had left unresolved.

JOHN ELK’S CASE SHOWED THAT “PERSON” DID NOT MEAN “CITIZEN”