The Indian Dispossessed
the writ of habeas corpus were not present, having been released by the order of Dundy, J., and no security for their appearance having been taken."
It would have required something more than a cordial invitation to bring Standing Bear again into the clutches of his Great Father.
Much more that is interesting in the Ponca case does not appear in the official reports. The case of Standing Bear brought the public to its highest pitch of indignation over the Ponca outrage. Public meetings were held in condemnation of the whole affair, and attention was called to many other instances of the Government's perfidy in its dealings with its helpless wards. In Boston a committee was appointed, with Gov. John D. Long of Massachusetts as chairman, to investigate the wrongs of the Poncas; money was raised to determine in the courts the legality of holding the remaining members of the tribe in the Indian Territory, and to restore their old home to them. The Secretary of the Interior was appealed to by persons of prominence in both official and civil life to sanction such a test of the matter in the courts. Again, all this availed nothing. The official argument is of much the same satisfying and convincing order as "The obvious unwisdom and even impossibility of removing Indians from the Indian Territory."
The most miserable of all the official excuses put forward was based upon an incomprehensible blunder
186
