The Removal of the Poncas
seven were sent to the "happy hunting-grounds" by the removal within one year.
The Honorable Carl Schurz, as Secretary of the Interior, and nominally at the head of Indian affairs, had visited upon his undeserving head the odium of the whole Ponca business. His open letters to Governor Long, Senator Dawes, and Mrs. Helen Jackson (the author of "Ramona" and "A Century of Dishonor") are laden with his tale of personal woe. They reveal an able advocate with a pitifully weak case, but he valiantly makes the best of it. Here are a few fragments from a letter to Governor Long:
"The old Ponca reserve in southeastern Dakota, a tract of 96,000 acres, was confirmed to that tribe by various treaties. In 1868 a treaty was concluded with the Sioux by which a reservation was granted to them, including the tract which formerly had by treaty been confirmed to the Poncas. The Sioux treaty of 1868 was ratified in the usual way and became the law of the land. The Poncas, however, continued to occupy the ceded tract."
So the Sioux treaty became the law of the land. What became of the Ponca treaty? This raises a question: If the Government confirms a tract of land to one tribe, then unwittingly deeds it to another tribe, which gets the land? Justice might point to the first tribe. The Government, with the power to deliver to either, seems to have taken its choice.
The Secretary's personal defence is the only con-
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