Historic Omaha

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Above: A bronze statue of General George
Crook, commander, Department of the
Platte, headquartered at Fort Omaha in
the 1870s.
COURTESY OF THE DOUGLAS COUNTY HISTORICAL
SOCIETY COLLECTIONS.
Below: The second Douglas County
Courthouse was completed in 1882 at
Eighteenth and Farnam. This view of the
courthouse was taken from the northeast
corner of the building.
COURTESY OF THE DOUGLAS COUNTY HISTORICAL
SOCIETY COLLECTIONS.
wagon, and, accompanied by about sixty
relatives, started north in the month of the
“Snow Thaws Moon,” or January 1879. Three
months later, weak and starving, the Ponca
reached their former home. The survivors
were met by a Ninth Infantry detachment,
escorted to Fort Omaha, and imprisoned.
General George Crook was the commander
of the Fort and sympathized with the
difficulties of the Ponca. He was under orders
to return the Ponca to Oklahoma. Wanting to
do something for the Indians, he appealed to
his friend, Thomas Tibbles, an editor for the
Omaha Herald, and asked him to publicize the
plight of the Ponca, hoping this would lead to
a chance to countermand the general
directives he had been given.
In a three-hour hearing conducted at Fort
Omaha, several Ponca leaders provided
testimony. One of them, Ta-zha-but, spoke
eloquently of their poverty and their
hardships. He reminded Crook, Tibbles and
the others present, “…one Father made us all.
We have hands, feet, head, and hearts all
alike. We are also men.”
When Standing Bear delivered his remarks
he catalogued the deaths from illness and
starvation, the miserable conditions in which
the Ponca lived, and their constant
humiliation by other tribes from whom they
had had to beg. With resignation he added:
I thought God intended us to live, but I
was mistaken. God intends to give the country
to the white people, and we are to die. It may
be well; it may be well.
He also appealed directly to Crook for help,
citing their weakness against the power of their
white conquerors. Crook was moved but was
unable to ignore the government edict.
However, Tibble’s campaign was having some
success. He had recruited a pair of prominent
Omaha attorneys, John Webster and Andrew
Poppleton, to represent the Ponca.
Tibbles and the attorneys, along with local
pastors, convinced Judge Elmer Dundy to hear
the case. With Crook’s tacit approval, Dundy
issued a writ of habeas corpus, requiring Crook
to show why he was holding these Indians.
Dundy also wrote a restraining order when
federal authorities tried to return the Ponca
south. On April 30, 1879, the trial began.
Standing Bear, unable to follow the testimony,
relied on the services of an interpreter.
The United States district attorney argued
that the living conditions along the Niobrara
were poor, that the Sioux constituted a threat,
that the Ponca had agreed to the move (a
statement the Ponca disputed), and that they
had been compensated for the loss of their land.
Webster and Poppleton picked these arguments
apart, piece-by-piece, adding that the country’s
Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed any person
HISTORIC OMAHA
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