Standing Bear's Right Hand

The winter of eighteen seventy-eight killed Standing Bear's son. The boy died on the Ponca tribe's forced new reservation in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, far from the Missouri River homeland where the Ponca had lived for generations. Standing Bear had promised his son a burial in their home earth. In January of eighteen seventy-nine, he and twenty-nine Ponca followers left Oklahoma and began walking north.

The journey covered nearly six hundred miles. When the group reached the Omaha reservation in March, hungry and exhausted, the United States Army arrested them and brought them to Fort Omaha. Under the law as it was understood in eighteen seventy-nine, Standing Bear had no legal recourse. The government's position was that an Indian was neither a citizen nor a person within the meaning of the law, and therefore had no standing to bring any action in federal court.

Two attorneys, John L. Webster and Andrew J. Poppleton, offered to represent Standing Bear without fee. They filed for a writ of habeas corpus, demanding that the government justify the detention. United States District Judge Elmer Dundy agreed to hear the case.

The trial was held in the Omaha federal courthouse in late April and early May of eighteen seventy-nine. When it closed, Judge Dundy allowed Standing Bear to address the court. Standing Bear raised his right hand and spoke through an interpreter. According to the journalist Thomas Henry Tibbles, who was present, he said: that hand is not the color of yours, but if I prick it, the blood will flow, and I shall feel pain.

On May twelfth, eighteen seventy-nine, Judge Dundy issued his ruling. An Indian is a person within the meaning of the laws of the United States, he wrote, and has therefore the right to sue out a writ of habeas corpus in a federal court. The military detention was illegal. The Ponca were free.

The decision did not grant citizenship, and its scope was limited, but it was the first time a federal court had ruled a Native American a legal person with rights enforceable against the government. Journalists called it a landmark. The government did not appeal.