The Indian Dispossessed
country to their beloved Dakota home is most pathetic; that any of them reached the North alive is wholly due to the quick sympathy and assistance of benevolent people through whose country they passed, and of many others who had learned of their affliction. A few of these Poncas reached their old neighbors, the Santees, whose reservation was a few miles east of the old Ponca home. The Santee agent reports:
"During the last year about thirty Poncas came among us asking that they could be allowed to stay, stating they had been taken to a very hot place and many of their friends had died, and they were heartsick and wished the Santees to have pity on them and allow them to stay up here in this good land among them. The councillors consented, and they are among us sending their children to school and making a good start."
Another little band, in the early spring of 1879, set their faces northward under the guidance of Chief Standing Bear. It will be remembered that the daughter of Standing Bear, Prairie Flower, died on the march to the South; many of his relatives and all but one of his children died in the Indian Territory. The last to die was his oldest son, a young man who could speak and read English, the hope and dependence of his aged father. The dying boy, according to the later testimony of Standing Bear, begged his father to take his body back to
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