That act of grief and love set in motion a chain of events that would make Standing Bear a civil rights hero (article available here).
Standing Bear was born in what is now Nebraska some time between 1829 and 1834. The Ponca sought to establish an amicable relationship with the United States government, and in 1858, agreed to surrender all of its claimed territory with the exception of a patch of land around the Niobrara River. The move required them to shift from a nomadic lifestyle to a farming one. No food or shelter had been provided for them there, and Standing Bear was among the Ponca leaders who went to survey the proposed relocation sites, but they found the land arid and refused to move. Ultimately, though, their protests proved futile and in 1877, six hundred Ponca were escorted by the military to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
Many of the Ponca died of disease and starvation, including the son of Chief Standing Bear. The chief’s efforts to return his son’s body to their ancestral lands transformed him into a civil rights icon. After his son’s death, Standing Bear was determined to return home, in spite of the relocation order. He and 30 others set out on a trek back to Nebraska, in the middle of winter. Near Omaha, they stopped to visit relatives at the Omaha reservation. On the orders of the Secretary of the Interior, Standing Bear and his party were swiftly arrested.
When Standing Bear petitioned the court for his right to return home, the judge was left to decide whether Native Americans had the same rights of freedom as the rest of the nation under the Constitution. The U.S. attorney argued that Native Americans had no right to sue the government, because “an Indian was neither a person nor a citizen.” In 1879, Standing Bear refuted this notion, becoming the first Native American to give testimony in federal court. “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain,” he famously said. “If you pierce your hand you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same god made us both.”
Though the judge branded Native Americans as now a “weak, insignificant, unlettered, and generally despised race,” he ultimately ruled that “an Indian is a 'person' within the meaning of the laws of the United States” and that “no rightful authority exists for removing by force any of the relators to the Indian Territory.” He ordered the Ponca to be released from custody.
Today, Standing Bear has been honored with a towering statue in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. "He was a man dedicated to his family and his people,” said Nebraska U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, at the unveiling of the new statue in September 2019. “His legacy has lived on and I am proud to welcome his statue to our Nation’s Capitol.”