Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Amid all the turmoil of the plains nations in the 1860s and ’70s, the Ponca nation on the Niobrara River lived relatively undisturbed, having benefited from an early agreement with the US and an agrarian culture that fit the territorial conceptions of US policy better than did the ranging habits of hunting nations. Because of bureaucratic negligence in Washington, DC, however, the Ponca lost their land. First it was mistakenly signed over to the Sioux as part of the settlement in Red Cloud’s treaty of 1868; then in 1876 the Ponca were included in a list of northern Plains nations to be driven south to Indian Territory in response to Sioux resistance, even though the Ponca had had nothing to do with that conflict. Several Ponca leaders, including White Eagle and Standing Bear, were sent to Indian Territory and stranded there. They then walked 500 miles on foot back to their own lands only to be told that it was time to deport the whole nation to Indian Territory. In May 1877, soldiers arrived to force them on their way, and they had no other choice. For a month and a half they traveled south, burying the weak and the children who died along the way.