"Then we told him the whole story. Then the officer said: 'You have done no wrong. The land is yours; they had no right to take it from you. Your title is good. I am here to protect the weak, and I have no right to take you; but I am a soldier, and I have to obey orders.'
"He said: 'I will telegraph to the President, and ask him what I shall do. We do not think these three men had any authority to treat you as they have done. When we own a piece of land, it belongs to us till we sell it and pocket the money.'
"Then he brought a telegram, and said he had received answer from the President. The President said he knew nothing about it.
"They kept us in jail ten days. Then they carried us back to our home. The soldiers collected all the women and children together; then they called all the chiefs together in council; and then they took wagons and went round and broke open the houses. When we came back from the council we found the women and children surrounded by a guard of soldiers.
"They took our reapers, mowers, hay-rakes, spades, ploughs, bedsteads, stoves, cupboards, everything we had on our farms, and put them in one large building. Then they put into the wagons such things as they could carry. We told them that we would rather die than leave our lands; but we could not help ourselves. They took us down. Many died on the road. Two of my children died. After we reached the new land, all my horses died. The water was very bad. All our cattle died; not one was left. I stayed till one hundred and fifty-eight of my people had died. Then I ran away with thirty of my people, men and women and children. Some of the children were orphans. We were three months on the road. We were weak and sick and starved. When we reached the Omaha Reserve the Omahas gave us a piece of land, and we were in a hurry to plough it and put in wheat. While we were working the soldiers came and arrested us. Half of us were sick. We would rather have died than have been carried back; but we could not help ourselves."
Nevertheless they were helped. The news of their arrest, and the intention of the Government to take them back by force to Indian Territory, roused excitement in Omaha. An Omaha editor and two Omaha lawyers determined to test the question whether the Government had a legal right to do it. It seemed a bold thing, almost a hopeless thing, to undertake. It has passed into a proverb that Providence is on the side of the heaviest battalions: the oppressed and enslaved in all ages have felt this. But there are times when a simple writ of habeas corpus is stronger than cannon or blood-hounds; and this was one of these times. Brought into the District Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska, these Poncas were set free by the judge of that court. Will not the name of Judge Dundy stand side by side with that of Abraham Lincoln in the matter of Emancipation Acts?
The Government attorney, the Hon. G. M. Lambertson, made an argument five hours long, said to have been both "ingenious and eloquent," to prove that an Indian was not entitled to the protection of the writ of habeas corpus, "not being a person or citizen under the law."
Judge Dundy took several days to consider the case, and gave a decision which strikes straight to the root of the whole matter—a decision which, when it is enforced throughout our land, will take the ground out from under the feet of the horde of unscrupulous thieves who have been robbing, oppressing, and maddening the Indians for so long, that to try to unmask and expose their processes, or to make clean their methods, is a task before which hundreds of good men—nay, whole denominations of good men—disheartened, baffled, and worn-out, have given up.
When Standing Bear found that by the decision of Judge Dundy he was really a free man, and could go where he pleased, he made a speech which should never be forgotten or left out in the history of the dealings of the United States Government with the Indians.
After a touching expression of gratitude to the lawyers who had pleaded his cause, he said: "Hitherto, when we have been wronged, we went to war to assert our rights and avenge our wrongs. We took the tomahawk. We had no law to punish those who did wrong, so we took our tomahawks and went to kill. If they had guns and could kill us first, it was the fate of war. But you have found a better way. You have gone into the court for us, and I find that our wrongs can be righted there. Now I have no more use for the tomahawk. I want to lay it down forever."