Standing Bear
1829–1908 1 entry
Biography
Standing Bear, in Ponca Ma-chú-nah-zhe, was a chief of the Ponca whose trial changed American law. Born around 1829 in the valley of the Niobrara River, in today’s Nebraska, he was among the Ponca leaders when, in 1877, the government forced the tribe to move to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, where about a third of them died of hunger and disease within two years.
When his son died in 1879, Standing Bear set out with some thirty followers to bury him in their homeland, and was arrested by the army. With the help of a journalist and two lawyers he went to court for his freedom, and in the case of Standing Bear v. Crook a federal judge ruled that an Indian is a person under the law, with the right to seek justice in court. He was allowed to stay on the Niobrara, toured the cities of the East to speak for the rights of his people, and died there in 1908.
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