Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2010
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 30:4 (Fall 2010).
Abstract
On the night of January 2, 1879, Standing Bear and thirty other Ponca men, women, and children slipped away from their disease-ridden new home in Indian Territory. Standing Bear was on a mission, leading his band back to the tribe's ancestral lands along the Nebraska-South Dakota border where he could honor his dying son's last wish, to be buried near the sacred chalk bluffs above the Missouri River.
As author Joe Starita explains, Standing Bear's journey was plagued by subzero temperatures and gales. When their Omaha Indian friends went out to meet them 600 miles and two months later, Starita writes, "they were shocked at what they saw-faces hollowed from hunger and skin blackened from frostbite, gaunt children, ragged clothes, emaciated horses, and so many sick."
Comments
Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.