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”

That reservation was not an empty administrative zone.

It was home.

It contained fields, villages, burial places, memories, and the material foundation of community life.

Then came a bureaucratic and diplomatic disaster.

In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the United States included land associated with the Ponca reservation within the larger territory described for the Sioux.

The Ponca were not a party to that treaty in the sense of having agreed to surrender their home through it.