Previous to this every
Indian in the United States was subject to the orders of the Secretary of
the Interior. If he happened to be a man of a tyrannical nature, the
Indians fared hard. One Secretary of the Interior at the point of the
bayonet had caused all the Poncas Indians to be driven from northern
Nebraska down to Indian Territory, depriving them of lands to which they
held government deeds. They were left in the new country for months without
rations, and more than one third of them died. Among these was the son of
Standing Bear. The old chief refused to have the boy buried in the strange
country, and, gathering about thirty members of his tribe together, he
started for their ancient hunting-grounds, intending to bury his boy where
generations of the Poncas chiefs lay.
The Secretary of the Interior heard of the runaways, and through the War
Department telegraphed to General Crook, of Omaha, to arrest the Indians,
and return them to Indian Territory. So General Crook arrested Standing
Bear and his followers, and took them all, with the old wagon that
contained the body of the dead boy, down to Omaha.
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