Perce leader Chief Joseph were sent to a reserva-
tion in Indian Territory. The conditions there are
miserable. Already ill and weak with hunger, many
of the Nez Perce die on the reservation. Among
them are five of Chief Joseph’s children.
Chief Joseph obtains permission to travel to
Washington, D.C., to ask for the government’s
help. Before Congress, he delivers an eloquent
speech recording the suffering of his people and
the many injustices the United States has commit-
ted against them. His plea to be allowed to return
to his homeland in Oregon’s Wallowa Valley, how-
ever, is greeted with little enthusiasm by western
congressmen. Chief Joseph’s speech, however, does
impress the members of the Indian Rights Asso-
ciation (see entry for DECEMBER 1882) and other
eastern philanthropists. Widely circulating Chief
Joseph’s speeches, they will make the return of the
Nez Perce to the Northwest a cause of national in-
terest. (See also entry for MAY 22, 1885.)
March 3
The Bureau of Ethnology is established.
By an act of Congress, the Bureau of Ethnology
(later renamed the Bureau of American Ethnology)
is formed to collect information about Ameri-
can Indian tribes and their cultures. John Wesley
Powell, a major in the U.S. Army, is chosen as
the bureau’s first director. Over the next 85 years,
the organization will compile a huge amount of
research material, although much of it will be col-
ored by racial bias. The essays published by the
bureau in its annual reports and bulletin will have
a great influence on generations of scholars of In-
dian history and anthropology.
April 18
Standing Bear v. Crook defines Indians as
human beings.
In January 1879, Ponca leader Standing Bear and
66 of his followers left their reservation in Indian
Territory to return to their ancestral lands in pres-
ent-day Nebraska. The Ponca had been forcibly
removed to Indian Territory two years earlier after
U.S. officials negotiated a treaty in which they
mistakenly granted the Ponca homeland to the
Sioux. The Ponca suffered horribly during their
removal: more than one-fourth of them died en
route, including Standing Bear’s children. Against
the orders of the U.S. Army, he was determined
to travel home in order to bury his son in Ponca
territory.
About halfway there, Standing Bear and the
other Ponca were stopped by General George
Crook, who placed them under armed guard as
he prepared to return them to Indian Territory.
Newspaper accounts protested the harsh treatment
of the Ponca, and several attorneys called for their
release. The lawyers presented Crook with a writ
of habeas corpus, demanding that he present his
prisoners and declare the reason for their impris-
onment. A U.S. attorney countered that habeas
corpus could not apply to the Ponca because, as
Indians, they were not legally considered human
beings.
The dispute is resolved in court with the rul-
ing in Standing Bear v. Crook that Indians are in
fact people under U.S. law. Standing Bear’s own
testimony plays a crucial role in this landmark
case. “My hand is not the same color as yours,” he
explains to the court, “but if you pierce it, I shall
feel the pain. The blood will be the same color.”
(See also entries for OCTOBER 31, 1879, and for
NOVEMBER TO DECEMBER 1879.)May to OctoberThe Sheepeater War is fought.
When five Chinese and two American prospectors
are murdered in present-day Idaho, the army be-
lieves the culprits are the Sheepeaters, a group of
about 30 Bannock and Shoshone Indians in the
area. Troops sent out to subdue the Sheepeaters
are met by a small war party that initially forces
them to retreat. As the public clamors for the
Sheepeaters’ capture, more soldiers are dispatched.
For months the Sheepeaters successfully evade
the troops, but they are forced to abandon their