Standing Bear and the Meaning of Person
Near Lincoln, Nebraska
In the winter of eighteen seventy-eight and eighteen seventy-nine, a Ponca chief named Standing Bear made a long journey north from Indian Territory in Oklahoma to northeastern Nebraska. His son, Bear Shield, had died. Standing Bear had promised the boy that he would be buried in the land of his ancestors, along the Niobrara River. The journey north was made on foot in winter, with a small band of followers, including some who were themselves sick.
When Standing Bear and his group arrived in Nebraska, they were detained by troops under General George Crook and held at Fort Omaha. The army's position was that the Ponca had left the reservation without authorization and must be returned.
Two Omaha attorneys, John Webster and Andrew Poppleton, who was chief counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad, offered to represent Standing Bear without fee. They filed a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court in Omaha. The government's lawyers argued that an Indian was neither a person nor a citizen and therefore lacked standing to petition the court for anything.
The case was heard in the spring of eighteen seventy-nine. Standing Bear was permitted to speak at the end of the trial. He held up his hand and spoke through his interpreter, Susette LaFlesche, an educated Omaha woman who would later become nationally known as an advocate herself. He said, according to the record: that hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours.
On May twelfth, eighteen seventy-nine, Judge Elmer Dundy ruled that an Indian is a person within the meaning of the law and that Standing Bear and his people were being held illegally.
It was the first time a federal court had made such a ruling. Standing Bear buried his son in Nebraska. He spent the rest of his life speaking and advocating for Ponca rights. His case is the foundation of Native American civil rights law in the United States.
