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”
Removal had fractured the community.
Deaths had marked the journey.
Land had changed hands.
Federal policy had continued evolving.
The Ponca had survived, but survival was not the same thing as having escaped federal interference.
Decades after Standing Bear’s death, the Northern Ponca would encounter another policy that makes the 1879 language of legal personhood feel almost painfully ironic.
You Might Also Like
The Man I Loved Disappeared the Exact Night I Told Him We Were Having a Baby — Two Weeks Later He Knelt in My Grandfather’s Gravel Driveway and Told Me He Hadn’t Run From Fatherhood; He’d Run to Burn Down His Entire Inheritance So His Family Could Never Come for Our Child
Daily Gossips
I Heard You
Daily Gossips
The Native Marine In America’s Most Famous WWII Photograph – And What Happened After He Came Home
Daily Gossips
You Should Have Checked Who You Married
Daily Gossips