Ponca Chief Standing Bear. Photo from National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Native reporter Kevin Abourezk uncovers the mystery of two Indian agents with the same name but only one of them oversaw the forced removal of Chief Standing Bear and the Ponca Tribe from Nebraska to Oklahoma:
Martha Howard Manning never met her great-grandfather, and that may have contributed to some of the confusion as to his deeds in life. As a young girl, Howard Manning learned that E.A. Howard had taken part in a historically significant event. She learned her great-grandfather had been the former federal agent who oversaw the 1877 forced march of nearly 750 Ponca tribal members from their home in northeast Nebraska to Oklahoma’s Indian Territory. That march eventually led Ponca Chief Standing Bear to return to Nebraska with some of his people and face the wrath of the U.S. government for leaving the Oklahoma reservation. Standing Bear eventually succeeded in getting a U.S. District Court judge to declare him a person in the eyes of the law with the right to return home. Howard Manning learned much about E.A. Howard from the journal in which he detailed his travels with the Poncas, including his conflicted feelings about having to take the farming people who had never made war with the government on a 550-mile walk across open prairie.Get the Story:
Kevin Abourezk: The mystery of the two E.A. Howards (The Lincoln Journal Star 11/26)
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