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204 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 unserupulous thieves who have been robbing, oppressing, and maddening the Indians for so long, that to try to unmask