“We consider the treatment of the Ponca Indians as one of the most heart-sickening chapters in our national record of Indian wrongs, and we are determined to spare no effort to restore to them their stolen homes and rights, and to relieve the American people of the stigma of this terrible wrong.
“The Senate of the United States during the past winter appointed a select committee ‘to ascertain and report the circumstances of the removal of the Ponca Indians from their reservation, and whether the said Indians are not entitled to be restored thereto.’ This Senate Committee devoted a long time to a thorough and patient investigation of this whole Ponca case, and reported that the Poncas had been ‘forced, without authority of law, from their homes to the Indian territory,’ and reported also a bill for their restoration to their former reservation, and recommending ‘that $50,000 be appropriated for the purpose of taking the Poncas back, and restoring their now dilapidated homes.’
“This able report of the United States Senate says that ‘in dealing with one of the most peaceable and orderly and well disposed of all the tribes of Indians, the Government has violated in the most flagrant manner their rights of property, and disregarded their appeals to the honor and justice of the United States, and the dictates of humanity.’”
The report also says that “the committee can find no language sufficiently strong to condemn the whole proceeding, and trace to it all the troubles which have come upon the Poncas, and the hardships and sufferings which have followed them since they were taken from their old reservation and placed in their present position in the Indian Territory.”
The Omaha Ponca Relief Committee need no better vindication of their action in behalf of this distressed and outraged people than these strong and weighty words of a committee of United States Senators, composed of representative men of both political parties.
The Omaha Committee consisted of Bishop Clarkson, of Nebraska, chairman; Rev. A. F. Sherrill, Rev. W. I. Harsha, Leavitt Burnham, W. M. Yates, and P. L. Perine.
At the request of this committee, Mr. T. H. Tibbles in June went to the Indian Territory to visit the Poncas (of whom only about 400 were left alive). He was authorized “to assure them of the interest and efforts of humane people all over the country in their behalf, and to notify them that the Omaha Committee were ready to assist them in any practical way to return to their
