Background
In the year 1877, Chief Standing Bear and the Ponca tribe were relocated from their home in Nebraska to the Quapaw Reservation, 500 miles away in Oklahoma, by the United States government. The U.S. had made a treaty with the Sioux tribe, known as the Fort Laramie Treaty, which carelessly gave them the ownership of the Ponca tribe's land. The journey from Nebraska to Oklahoma became known as the Trail of Tears. On the perilous trip there, Standing Bear's son, Bear Shield, grew ill and passed away. Standing Bear promised his son that he would bury him in their homeland, back in Nebraska. With that promise, Standing Bear and a group of natives from the tribe attempted to return to Nebraska. On their return home, General George Crook of the United States Army was given orders to arrest Standing Bear for leaving their reservation without permission. After the arrest of Standing Bear, a writer from the Omaha Herald, Thomas Tibbles, reached out to two young lawyers named John Webster and A.J. Poppleton. Both lawyers agreed to represent Standing Bear in court, free of charge. By 1879, the case was underway. In court, Standing Bear issued a statement saying, "It seems as though I haven't a place in the world, no place to go, and no home to go to, but when I see your faces here, I think some of you are trying to help me, so that I can get a place sometime to live." Standing Bear went on to argue in court that Native Americans are "persons within the meaning of the law" and that they are people too. Standing Bear claimed that "[his] blood is of the same color as yours. God made me, and I am a man," meaning that everyone is equal and entitled to their rights. Judge Elmer S. Dundy ruled that Native American people have rights to protection and habeus corpus.