Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/196

 the old home for burial, and the broken-hearted chief, hoping at the same time to save the lives of his wife and only remaining child, placed the bones of his boy in an old trunk, and with fifty of his followers escaped from the reservation. After enduring incredible hardships, thirty of them reached their kindred tribe, the Omahas, who dissuaded them from at once attempting to continue on their journey to the old Ponca reserve, for they were sick and without provisions and the necessary implements to establish homes for themselves. The Omahas induced Standing Bear to remain with them, gave his party land, tools and seed to plant it, and those of the Indians who were not too ill to do so went to work.

But the Interior Department did not propose to have any Ponca bands within a possible marching distance of their old home. Under orders of the War Department troops were sent to the Omaha reservation to take the party South. They came upon these Indians, half of them still sick, the others ploughing and planting, acquainted them with the orders of the Department, and once again the Poncas took up the weary march, back to their Siberia, still bearing the trunk containing the bones of Standing Bear's son.

They were first taken to Fort Omaha, situated on the outskirts of the city of Omaha. In an incredibly short time their story was being told about the 12