A Century of Dishonor / A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes

by Helen Hunt Jackson

The report also says that "the committee can find no language sufficiently strong to condemn the whole proceeding, and trace to it all the troubles which have come upon the Poncas, and the hardships and sufferings which have followed them since they were taken from their old reservation and placed in their present position in the Indian Territory."

The Omaha Ponca Relief Committee need no better vindication of their action in behalf of this distressed and outraged people than these strong and weighty words of a committee of United States Senators, composed of representative men of both political parties.

The Omaha Committee consisted of Bishop Clarkson, of Nebraska, chairman; Rev. A. F. Sherrill, Rev. W. I. Harsha, Leavitt Burnham, W. M. Yates, and P. L. Perine.

At the request of this committee, Mr. T. H. Tibbles in June went to the Indian Territory to visit the Poncas (of whom only about 400 were left alive). He was authorized "to assure them of the interest and efforts of humane people all over the country in their behalf, and to notify them that the Omaha Committee were ready to assist them in any practical way to return to their old homes, from which they had been unjustly and inhumanly ejected."

Mr. Tibbles succeeded in visiting the Poncas, although the Government agent interfered with him in many ways, and finally arrested him by authority of an order from Washington to arrest any member of the Omaha Committee who came upon the reservation. He was insulted by the agent, taken by force out of the reservation, and threatened with much more severe treatment if he ever returned.

This high-handed outrage on a free citizen of the United States aroused indignation throughout the country. The comments of the Press on the occurrence showed that people were at last waking up to a sense of the tyrannical injustice of the Indian Department. The New York Tribune said, editorially:

"The Indian Department may as well understand at once that the Ponca case has passed out of their control. It is a matter of simple justice which the people are determined to see righted. *** No petty Indian agent has the legal right to imprison, maltreat, and threaten the life of any citizen totally guiltless of offence beyond that of working to give these serfs of the Government the standing of human beings. *** It is the Government of this great Republic, where all men are free and equal, that holds these Poncas prisoners on a tract where to remain is death. They are innocent of any crime except that they have been robbed of their land, and that they ask to bring suit, as a black man or convict could do, in the courts for its recovery."

Mr. Tibbles reported the condition of the Poncas in Indian Territory as "deplorable in the extreme. They live in constant dread and fear, and are as much imprisoned as if they were in a penitentiary." They seem "to have lost all hope, are broken-hearted and disconsolate. With one or two exceptions, they are making no effort to help themselves. Their so-called farms are miserable little patches, to which they pay very little attention. One of them said to me, 'If the Government forces me to stay here, it can feed me. I had a good farm back at our old home, and if I was back there I would farm again; I have no heart to work here.' The one hundred and fifteen who are back on the old reservation have a much larger amount of land under cultivation than the whole four hundred who are in Indian Territory. They have kept their crops in good condition, and are full of energy and hope."

The Government Agency for the Poncas having been transferred to the Indian Territory, the annuities due the tribe were of course paid there, and that portion of the tribe which had fled back to Dakota received nothing. Moreover, the Indian Bureau issued an order forbidding any Ponca who should leave the Indian Territory to take with him any kind of property whatsoever, under penalty of being arrested for stealing. As they could not take their families on the long, hard journey to Dakota without food or means of transportation, this order kept them imprisoned in Indian Territory as effectually as a military guard could have done.

The Government employés in charge of them reported, meanwhile, that they had "made up their minds to live and die where they are. *** There exists a feeling of contentment in the tribe that will make it very difficult for any one to induce them to leave their present home," says a general press despatch, presumably dictated by the Indian Bureau, and sent throughout the country on July 15th.