Blood and Equality

(Ponca Chief Standing Bear Addresses the U.S. District Court in Nebraska in 1879)

Two Latino festivals in Iowa have been cancelled. Organizers fear a violent backlash from immigration foes who broadly blame “illegals” for killing Mollie Tibbetts and others.

We can learn much from a trial in 1879 to remove the Ponca Indian tribe from Nebraska. First, we will listen to an argument made by an “educated” lawyer— a U.S. Attorney, G.M. Lambertson— who sought removal and relocation of the Poncas. I have reprinted a brief passage from his law review article “explaining” why Indians did not deserve U.S. citizenship. Second, we will hear from Chief Standing Bear, who addressed the court through a female interpreter, Susette ("Bright Eyes") La Flesche. Lastly, we will hear from the judge.

G.M. Lambertson: Again, there is no overwhelming political necessity, as in the case of the negroes,  requiring us to make citizens of the Indians. When we remember that our country is heavily invaded, year by year, by the undesirable classes driven out of Europe because they are a burden to the government of their birth that as many as seventy thousand immigrants have landed on our shores in a single month, made up largely of Chinese laborers, Irish paupers, and Russian Jews; that the ranks are being swelled by adventurers of every land -the Communist of France, the Socialist of Germany, the Nihilist of Russia, and the cutthroat murderers of Ireland--that all these persons may become citizens within five years, and most of them voters under State laws as soon as they have declared their intentions to become citizens - we may well hesitate about welcoming the late "untutored savages" into the ranks of citizenship.

Standing Bear rose, extending his hand toward the judge’s bench: “That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man. God made us both.”

Judge Elmer Dundy issued a ruling that surprised many observers and caused comment across the country. The judge found that "an Indian is a person within the meaning of the law" and that Standing Bear was being held illegally. He issued a “writ of habeas corpus” — in this case, an order to release someone held illegally. 

The judge said more: "That the Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation as well as the more fortunate white race, and have the inalienable right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ so long as they obey the laws and do not trespass on forbidden ground.”

…

Two years after the trial, Congress appropriated money to compensate the Ponca for their losses, and allocated land for individuals of the Ponca tribe similar to homesteading titles given to white settlers. The hate directed at Latinos in Iowa appears to be a step back from the progress made in Nebraska in the early 1880s.

For more, see http://nebraskastudies.org/1875-1899/the-trial-of-standing-bear/the-trial/ and G. M. Lambertson, Indian Citizenship, 20 Am. L. Rev. 183 (1886).