The small Niobrara nation whose chief made American law admit that 'an Indian is a person.'
Not an ending: forced off the Niobrara homeland in 1877 in the Ponca Trail of Tears, the nation split in two. Most reorganized in Indian Territory as today's Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. A smaller group returned toward Nebraska under Chief Standing Bear, whose 1879 habeas corpus case (Standing Bear v. Crook) first established that Native Americans were 'persons within the meaning of the law'; part of the original Niobrara-area land was restored to this group in 1881, and after a 1966 federal termination, they were restored as the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska in 1990.
The atlas holds 2 border frames for Ponca — the shape you scrub through changes in 1673 · 1877.
The story of the Ponca chief whose case made American law admit that 'an Indian is a person.'
The removal and dispossession context for the small Niobrara nation (broad context).