Petitioners
Standing Bear and other Ponca Indians
Respondent
George Crook, U.S. Army General
Petitioners' Claim
That confinement of American Indians by the U.S. Army violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioners
John L. Webster, Andrew J. Poppleton
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Genio M. Lambertson
Justice for the Court
Elmer S. Dundy
Place
Lincoln, Nebraska
Date of Decision
12 May 1879
Decision
The Court upheld Standing Bear's claim and ordered the Poncas released from U.S. custody.
Significance
The ruling established that Indians are "persons" under U.S. law and those who are not members of tribes have rights to challenge U.S. actions. Issues surrounding Standing Bear's vulnerability to the whim of U.S. officials led reformers to lobby for major changes in U.S. Indian policy. As a result, the 1887Dawes Act converted communally-controlled reservation lands into individually-owned land parcels. Though passed with good intentions, the act proved disastrous to Indian social and economic well-being; its harmful effects were still felt by the close of the twentieth century. In the 1990s Congress similarly sought to limit the rights of immigrants and foreign terrorist suspects tochallenge their detentions.
Before European "discovery" of North America, the Ponca Indians were originally part of a larger Siouan language group in eastern North America. The Siouan group gradually migrated westward, settling in various places. The Ponca and Omaha segments worked their way up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers before eventually splitting apart. In the thirteenth century, the Ponca settled in future Dakota territory, near the mouth of the Niobara River where it joinsthe Missouri. With increasing numbers of whites entering the area by the mid-nineteenth century, food sources including wild game significantly declinedand foreign diseases such as smallpox spread rapidly. This resulted in the death of a majority of native peoples in the region. Through this trauma, the Ponca remained a small peaceful tribe.
In 1858, the Ponca ceded over 2,000,000 acres of land to the United States ina treaty, keeping less than 100,000 acres for a reservation. The Ponca soonmoved onto the reservation and began a transition to an agricultural economy.The United States's delay in providing assistance promised in the treaty ledto increased hardships. In addition, the more aggressive Sioux Indians and whites raided the Ponca for their food, possessions, and horses. By 1865, thePonca signed another treaty, moving their reservation for better protection.However, the following year a treaty between the United States and the mightySioux nation inadvertently placed most of the new Ponca reservation in a Sioux reservation. Hostilities renewed, with the Sioux destroying Ponca crops, stealing livestock, and killing tribe members. By the 1870s the Ponca, facingfood shortages and continued Sioux raids, were increasingly desperate. The United States, in an effort to appease the Sioux and protect the Ponca, decidedto remove the Ponca against their will to the recently established Indian Territory in the future state of Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Civil War, Congress in 1868 ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing that "all persons" have due process and equal protection of the laws. However, throughout much of the nineteenth century, the legal rights of Indian individuals were not a major concern of the federal government and or the courts. U.S.-Indian relations were largely directed by treaties rather than common law until Congress ended the treaty making period in 1871. Dealings with individual Indians were essentiallyavoided. In addition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had established anextensive system for policing and punishment that essentially operated beyondthe reach of the courts. Indian agents with ready access to the military hadbroad authority. It is likely that within this system thousands of individuals were detained for a wide range of alleged actions through the years. However, by the 1870s Indian issues rose in the national eye as the West became increasingly settled and reformers shifted attention from the slavery issue. Ademand for major reforms in the treatment of Indians gathered momentum.
Indians Are "Persons"
Having received funding and direction from the federal government, Indian agents from the BIA began seeking land in 1877. Among a group of Ponca that traveled to Indian Territory with the agents to find land was a respected triballeader named Standing Bear. Greatly discouraged by what they saw, the group abruptly returned to the Ponca reservation. However, by the end of April a large group of Poncas were convinced to move and left for their new home. Fearing that Standing Bear and his brother were serving as a disruptive force withthe remaining Ponca, the Indian agent directed the military to arrest and confine them. With Ponca resistance somewhat defused, the last group, includingStanding Bear, began their journey southward in May. Conditions along the journey were harsh and Standing Bear's daughter died on the trip. In their new home, the Ponca found that no reservation had yet been established apart fromother tribal lands. Through 1878, with the lack of housing and little government support for cultivation, many died, including a son of Standing Bear. Distressed, he and over 20 others left in January of 1879 to return home. Upon arrival at the Omaha Reservation en route to their homeland, they were arrested in a strictly military operation and taken to Fort Omaha, Nebraska, with the intent of being sent back to Indian Territory.
Lawyers for Standing Bear filed for a writ of habeas corpus, a requestthat a person being detained be brought before a court to review the legality of the imprisonment, with the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Nebraska. Standing Bear argued before Judge Elmer Dundy that, having committed no crime and not being informed why he was arrested, he should be released. He also claimed to no longer be a member of the Ponca, having left the tribe in Indian Territory so as to adopt "the general habits of the whites" and become self-sufficient. General George Crook, on behalf of the United States, responded that the Ponca prisoners were still members of the tribe and had disobeyedIndian agent orders to settle in Indian Territory and pursue "the habits andvocations of civilized life." Crook, using the 1857 Dred Scott slaverycase findings, argued that Indians, like blacks, did not possess rights to sue in federal courts as part the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. He contended only U.S. citizens could request writs.
With an Indian suing a U.S. Army general for the first time in the federal courts, the trial received national attention. Judge Dundy ruled on several keypoints. First, Dundy found that U.S. habeas corpus law applied "to all mankind" without requirement of citizenship, and that "even an Indian" is aperson under the Webster Dictionary definition. Dundy wrote that when"a person is charged we do not inquire upon the trial in what country the accused was born nor to what race he belongs." Therefore, Dundy continued, "itwould, indeed, be a sad commentary on . . . our laws, to hold that Indians .. . cannot test the validity of an alleged illegal imprisonment." Therefore,Standing Bear could bring the lawsuit. Second, Dundy found that all persons in the United States had the "natural and inherent right . . . to . . . life,liberty, and pursuit of happiness." Therefore, Standing Bear had the legal right to withdraw from tribal membership. Third, Dundy assessed whether the United States had legal power to dictate to Indians who were not members of tribes where to live. He could not find any law or treaty that gave the United States that power.
Dundy concluded that the United States could use military force to remove a person from a reservation, but law required the person be turned over to civilian custody after removal, which had not happened with Standing Bear. The army had no broad authority to detain Indians without full civilian due processprotections. Dundy wrote, "In time of peace no authority, civil or military,exists for transporting Indians from one section of the country to another, without the consent of the Indians, nor to confine them to any particular reservation against their will." Dundy ordered Standing Bear and the other Poncas"discharged from custody." Crook filed an appeal, but the United States decided to drop the case.
Impact
Standing Bear was the first case to challenge the U.S. government's extensive use of military authority over Indians and to question the legal authority of the United States to confine Indians on reservations against their will. The decision was the first recognition that Indians were persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, Indians still did not have citizenship status, and their precise legal standing remained poorly defined. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 later provided some clarification.
Freed, Standing Bear, and the others promptly returned to the Niobara River area but were without a country, living on an island overlooked in the Sioux treaty. Standing Bear filed suit to reclaim reservation lands given to the Sioux, eventually winning judgment in December of 1880 with Judge Dundy again presiding. However, a presidential commission including General Crook was created to study the Ponca situation. Based on the commission's findings, President Rutherford B. Hayes recommended to Congress in January of 1881 that each Ponca be provided 160 acres of land, either in Indian Territory or on the Niobara, whichever the individuals wished. The allotment would be nontaxable for 30 years and funding for agricultural supplies would be provided. Congress passed an act adopting the recommendations, but another nine years passed beforethe Niobara Ponca received their lands. Meanwhile, Standing Bear became a spokesman for Indian rights touring the eastern states before his death in 1908.
The court held in Standing Bear that any person not a citizen of the United States and in custody of U.S. authorities has the right to challenge the custody's legality through the writ of habeas corpus. That Indians on reservations had writ powers posed a significant new threat to the previously unchallenged powers of BIA Indian agents. Indians now had much the same rights as foreign nationals. However, the Standing Bear decision was largely ignored as court precedent in this regard. Few legal challenges to the authority of Indian agents followed. Many continued to argue that Indians should be subjected to military authority due to their "conquered" status.
Importantly, Standing Bear contributed toward a major change in U.S.--Native American policy with substantial implications across the nation. Theearlier policy of isolating Indians on reservations dramatically changed in the 1880s to a policy of forcing Indians to blend into the dominant white culture. In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act. The act applied the basic concepts of the Hayes commission report toIndians throughout the nation. The act authorized the BIA to divide communally-owned tribal land, such as reservations, among tribal members in small sections, called allotments. Supporters of Standing Bear's cause believed this act would free Indians from arbitrary relocation by U.S. authorities by makingthem private property owners. Actually, the Indian controlled land base in the United States substantially eroded from 138 million acres in 1887 to only52 million acres in 1934. "Surplus" lands, often the more agriculturally productive, were made available to whites. Towns grew within reservation boundaries. Congress, upon seeing the devastation to Indian society that allotments had wrought, ended the allotment era in 1934.
The issue of individuals' status under the Due Process Clause rose again in the 1990s, spurred by an increasingly anti-immigrant mood in the United States. Congress fundamentally changed U.S. immigration laws with passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The law substantially reduced the legal rights of alien immigrants who were subject toeither expulsion or criminal prosecution for attempting to reenter the UnitedStates. Immigrants could be deported without a trial or hearing before a judge. As with the BIA in the Ponca case, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was given broad powers in an expedited removal process thatstripped federal courts of their authority to review INS decisions. Similarly, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996which allowed detention of noncitizens in U.S. jails outside the rules of due process by prohibiting the filing of habeas corpus petitions.
Related Cases
The Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Severalty Act, named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts,is sometimes called the General Allotment Act. Passed in February of 1887, it established federal Indian policy for the next half-century, until its effective repeal by the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
Under the Dawes Severalty Act, the president was authorized to order a surveyof Indian reservations and, from the results, to allot homesteads to membersof tribes. The act provided for each head of household to receive 160 acres,single adults 80 acres, and unmarried children 40 acres. These lands would be exempt from local property taxes for 25 years, but the owners were also prohibited from selling their allotments during that period. The land remainingwould be sold to non-Indians. The allotment provisions proved disastrous to the Indians. The allotments chopped up land previously belonging to Indians and allowed much of it to be transferred to non-Indians. It forced Indians to adopt an agrarian lifestyle by expecting them to live off of their homesteadsrather than hunting and gathering over a vast territory.
Sources
Bacon, Donald C., et al., eds. The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Standing Bear and other Ponca Indians
Respondent
George Crook, U.S. Army General
Petitioners' Claim
That confinement of American Indians by the U.S. Army violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioners
John L. Webster, Andrew J. Poppleton
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Genio M. Lambertson
Justice for the Court
Elmer S. Dundy
Place
Lincoln, Nebraska
Date of Decision
12 May 1879
Decision
The Court upheld Standing Bear's claim and ordered the Poncas released from U.S. custody.
Significance
The ruling established that Indians are "persons" under U.S. law and those who are not members of tribes have rights to challenge U.S. actions. Issues surrounding Standing Bear's vulnerability to the whim of U.S. officials led reformers to lobby for major changes in U.S. Indian policy. As a result, the 1887Dawes Act converted communally-controlled reservation lands into individually-owned land parcels. Though passed with good intentions, the act proved disastrous to Indian social and economic well-being; its harmful effects were still felt by the close of the twentieth century. In the 1990s Congress similarly sought to limit the rights of immigrants and foreign terrorist suspects tochallenge their detentions.
Before European "discovery" of North America, the Ponca Indians were originally part of a larger Siouan language group in eastern North America. The Siouan group gradually migrated westward, settling in various places. The Ponca and Omaha segments worked their way up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers before eventually splitting apart. In the thirteenth century, the Ponca settled in future Dakota territory, near the mouth of the Niobara River where it joinsthe Missouri. With increasing numbers of whites entering the area by the mid-nineteenth century, food sources including wild game significantly declinedand foreign diseases such as smallpox spread rapidly. This resulted in the death of a majority of native peoples in the region. Through this trauma, the Ponca remained a small peaceful tribe.
In 1858, the Ponca ceded over 2,000,000 acres of land to the United States ina treaty, keeping less than 100,000 acres for a reservation. The Ponca soonmoved onto the reservation and began a transition to an agricultural economy.The United States's delay in providing assistance promised in the treaty ledto increased hardships. In addition, the more aggressive Sioux Indians and whites raided the Ponca for their food, possessions, and horses. By 1865, thePonca signed another treaty, moving their reservation for better protection.However, the following year a treaty between the United States and the mightySioux nation inadvertently placed most of the new Ponca reservation in a Sioux reservation. Hostilities renewed, with the Sioux destroying Ponca crops, stealing livestock, and killing tribe members. By the 1870s the Ponca, facingfood shortages and continued Sioux raids, were increasingly desperate. The United States, in an effort to appease the Sioux and protect the Ponca, decidedto remove the Ponca against their will to the recently established Indian Territory in the future state of Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Civil War, Congress in 1868 ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing that "all persons" have due process and equal protection of the laws. However, throughout much of the nineteenth century, the legal rights of Indian individuals were not a major concern of the federal government and or the courts. U.S.-Indian relations were largely directed by treaties rather than common law until Congress ended the treaty making period in 1871. Dealings with individual Indians were essentiallyavoided. In addition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had established anextensive system for policing and punishment that essentially operated beyondthe reach of the courts. Indian agents with ready access to the military hadbroad authority. It is likely that within this system thousands of individuals were detained for a wide range of alleged actions through the years. However, by the 1870s Indian issues rose in the national eye as the West became increasingly settled and reformers shifted attention from the slavery issue. Ademand for major reforms in the treatment of Indians gathered momentum.
Indians Are "Persons"
Having received funding and direction from the federal government, Indian agents from the BIA began seeking land in 1877. Among a group of Ponca that traveled to Indian Territory with the agents to find land was a respected triballeader named Standing Bear. Greatly discouraged by what they saw, the group abruptly returned to the Ponca reservation. However, by the end of April a large group of Poncas were convinced to move and left for their new home. Fearing that Standing Bear and his brother were serving as a disruptive force withthe remaining Ponca, the Indian agent directed the military to arrest and confine them. With Ponca resistance somewhat defused, the last group, includingStanding Bear, began their journey southward in May. Conditions along the journey were harsh and Standing Bear's daughter died on the trip. In their new home, the Ponca found that no reservation had yet been established apart fromother tribal lands. Through 1878, with the lack of housing and little government support for cultivation, many died, including a son of Standing Bear. Distressed, he and over 20 others left in January of 1879 to return home. Upon arrival at the Omaha Reservation en route to their homeland, they were arrested in a strictly military operation and taken to Fort Omaha, Nebraska, with the intent of being sent back to Indian Territory.
Lawyers for Standing Bear filed for a writ of habeas corpus, a requestthat a person being detained be brought before a court to review the legality of the imprisonment, with the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Nebraska. Standing Bear argued before Judge Elmer Dundy that, having committed no crime and not being informed why he was arrested, he should be released. He also claimed to no longer be a member of the Ponca, having left the tribe in Indian Territory so as to adopt "the general habits of the whites" and become self-sufficient. General George Crook, on behalf of the United States, responded that the Ponca prisoners were still members of the tribe and had disobeyedIndian agent orders to settle in Indian Territory and pursue "the habits andvocations of civilized life." Crook, using the 1857 Dred Scott slaverycase findings, argued that Indians, like blacks, did not possess rights to sue in federal courts as part the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. He contended only U.S. citizens could request writs.
With an Indian suing a U.S. Army general for the first time in the federal courts, the trial received national attention. Judge Dundy ruled on several keypoints. First, Dundy found that U.S. habeas corpus law applied "to all mankind" without requirement of citizenship, and that "even an Indian" is aperson under the Webster Dictionary definition. Dundy wrote that when"a person is charged we do not inquire upon the trial in what country the accused was born nor to what race he belongs." Therefore, Dundy continued, "itwould, indeed, be a sad commentary on . . . our laws, to hold that Indians .. . cannot test the validity of an alleged illegal imprisonment." Therefore,Standing Bear could bring the lawsuit. Second, Dundy found that all persons in the United States had the "natural and inherent right . . . to . . . life,liberty, and pursuit of happiness." Therefore, Standing Bear had the legal right to withdraw from tribal membership. Third, Dundy assessed whether the United States had legal power to dictate to Indians who were not members of tribes where to live. He could not find any law or treaty that gave the United States that power.
Dundy concluded that the United States could use military force to remove a person from a reservation, but law required the person be turned over to civilian custody after removal, which had not happened with Standing Bear. The army had no broad authority to detain Indians without full civilian due processprotections. Dundy wrote, "In time of peace no authority, civil or military,exists for transporting Indians from one section of the country to another, without the consent of the Indians, nor to confine them to any particular reservation against their will." Dundy ordered Standing Bear and the other Poncas"discharged from custody." Crook filed an appeal, but the United States decided to drop the case.
Impact
Standing Bear was the first case to challenge the U.S. government's extensive use of military authority over Indians and to question the legal authority of the United States to confine Indians on reservations against their will. The decision was the first recognition that Indians were persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, Indians still did not have citizenship status, and their precise legal standing remained poorly defined. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 later provided some clarification.
Freed, Standing Bear, and the others promptly returned to the Niobara River area but were without a country, living on an island overlooked in the Sioux treaty. Standing Bear filed suit to reclaim reservation lands given to the Sioux, eventually winning judgment in December of 1880 with Judge Dundy again presiding. However, a presidential commission including General Crook was created to study the Ponca situation. Based on the commission's findings, President Rutherford B. Hayes recommended to Congress in January of 1881 that each Ponca be provided 160 acres of land, either in Indian Territory or on the Niobara, whichever the individuals wished. The allotment would be nontaxable for 30 years and funding for agricultural supplies would be provided. Congress passed an act adopting the recommendations, but another nine years passed beforethe Niobara Ponca received their lands. Meanwhile, Standing Bear became a spokesman for Indian rights touring the eastern states before his death in 1908.
The court held in Standing Bear that any person not a citizen of the United States and in custody of U.S. authorities has the right to challenge the custody's legality through the writ of habeas corpus. That Indians on reservations had writ powers posed a significant new threat to the previously unchallenged powers of BIA Indian agents. Indians now had much the same rights as foreign nationals. However, the Standing Bear decision was largely ignored as court precedent in this regard. Few legal challenges to the authority of Indian agents followed. Many continued to argue that Indians should be subjected to military authority due to their "conquered" status.
Importantly, Standing Bear contributed toward a major change in U.S.--Native American policy with substantial implications across the nation. Theearlier policy of isolating Indians on reservations dramatically changed in the 1880s to a policy of forcing Indians to blend into the dominant white culture. In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act. The act applied the basic concepts of the Hayes commission report toIndians throughout the nation. The act authorized the BIA to divide communally-owned tribal land, such as reservations, among tribal members in small sections, called allotments. Supporters of Standing Bear's cause believed this act would free Indians from arbitrary relocation by U.S. authorities by makingthem private property owners. Actually, the Indian controlled land base in the United States substantially eroded from 138 million acres in 1887 to only52 million acres in 1934. "Surplus" lands, often the more agriculturally productive, were made available to whites. Towns grew within reservation boundaries. Congress, upon seeing the devastation to Indian society that allotments had wrought, ended the allotment era in 1934.
The issue of individuals' status under the Due Process Clause rose again in the 1990s, spurred by an increasingly anti-immigrant mood in the United States. Congress fundamentally changed U.S. immigration laws with passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The law substantially reduced the legal rights of alien immigrants who were subject toeither expulsion or criminal prosecution for attempting to reenter the UnitedStates. Immigrants could be deported without a trial or hearing before a judge. As with the BIA in the Ponca case, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was given broad powers in an expedited removal process thatstripped federal courts of their authority to review INS decisions. Similarly, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996which allowed detention of noncitizens in U.S. jails outside the rules of due process by prohibiting the filing of habeas corpus petitions.
Related Cases
- Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).
- Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903).
- United States v. Omaha Tribe of Indians, 253 U.S. 275 (1920).
- United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371 (1980).
The Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Severalty Act, named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts,is sometimes called the General Allotment Act. Passed in February of 1887, it established federal Indian policy for the next half-century, until its effective repeal by the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
Under the Dawes Severalty Act, the president was authorized to order a surveyof Indian reservations and, from the results, to allot homesteads to membersof tribes. The act provided for each head of household to receive 160 acres,single adults 80 acres, and unmarried children 40 acres. These lands would be exempt from local property taxes for 25 years, but the owners were also prohibited from selling their allotments during that period. The land remainingwould be sold to non-Indians. The allotment provisions proved disastrous to the Indians. The allotments chopped up land previously belonging to Indians and allowed much of it to be transferred to non-Indians. It forced Indians to adopt an agrarian lifestyle by expecting them to live off of their homesteadsrather than hunting and gathering over a vast territory.
Sources
Bacon, Donald C., et al., eds. The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
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