The Indian Dispossessed
city; a day or two later, one Sunday, several churches passed resolutions after their regular services, and the pastors joined in a telegram of protest to the Secretary of the Interior. Friends of the Indian race in Washington were at once informed, and appealed in person to both the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
All this availed nothing; the final word from Washington ordered their return to the Indian Territory. But this set-back served only to stimulate the good people of Omaha in their efforts. Attorneys were then interested in the case, and on a writ of habeas corpus the whole question of the detention and removal of Standing Bear's band was brought into the United States District Court for Nebraska for a hearing, on the ground that the Indians had committed no crime and were deprived of their liberty without due process of law.
The Interior Department strenuously opposed this measure of relief. The counsel for the Government, in an argument of several hours' duration, maintained that Standing Bear was not entitled to the protection of a writ of habeas corpus, on the ground that an Indian was not a person under the law, and had no standing in the courts; while the equally able attorneys for the Indians contended that such protection was intended to apply to every human being, and that any other interpretation of the law
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