by Mark Stein
But these were not actions, they were words, and the key to understanding Seward’s words is to ask what he was doing by saying them. In this instance, Seward was suggesting a “chess move” to create fear of an imminent war with outsiders, in the hope that it would rally enough Americans to forestall the crumbling of the Union. He had no intention of France or Spain mistakenly interpreting such saber rattling as a genuine threat.1
When it suited his purpose, Seward readily admitted that his words should not be taken at face value. Shortly before his appointment as secretary of state was made public, he told a British diplomat that he would soon be in a position that would require him to insult Great Britain. Years later it was discovered that, five weeks before Seward’s private memo to Lincoln, the British foreign secretary recorded in his diary that he’d received information indicating that the United States might create a quarrel with Britain in an effort to prevent the nation from dividing.2
Seward believed that Alaska was of vital importance to strengthening the bond securing the West Coast (whose residents relied on Alaska for imports of fish, timber, and fur) to the rest of the nation. Further securing that bond was also embedded in Seward’s other main reason for purchasing Alaska: to promote and protect American commerce with China and Japan.
Buying Alaska revealed Seward’s diplomatic skills; selling to the public the buying of Alaska required his political skills. He knew he was investing in a huge amount of territory about which most Americans knew nothing. Other than Americans on the West Coast, awareness of Alaska’s significance was limited primarily to a few intellectuals. But even these citizens did not know that diplomatic signals regarding Alaska’s potential sale to the United States were in the works, and had been for over a decade. In 1854 Russia, at war with Britain, offered the Americans a “treaty of purchase.” Being an act of diplomacy, the words did not necessarily mean what they said; the treaty was actually a fake. The Russians’ idea was to leak the treaty’s existence to avert a British attack on Alaska.3 As it turned out, Russia and the United States decided not to release the phony agreement. But Tsar Alexander II’s advisers increasingly viewed Alaska as more of a liability than an asset, and American political figures increasingly broached the purchase of Alaska with members of the cabinet and Russian ministers.
The Civil War slowed the frequency of these winks and nods but did not end them. Nor did the assassination of President Lincoln end Seward’s tenure as secretary. By 1867 he and Russian ambassador Eduard Stoeckl were exchanging offers and counteroffers. On the evening of March 29, Stoeckl called upon Seward at his home to inform him that his government had accepted the deal, and to ask for time the next day to begin drafting the actual treaty. Seward, wanting to keep the agreement under wraps, suggested they start now. The family’s dinner table was cleared, secretaries were summoned, and at four o’clock in the morning, a treaty was ready to take to the White House. President Andrew Johnson signed it the following day, sending word of his action to Congress.
The treaty now needed Senate ratification. That debate took place in executive session, away from public scrutiny. Nevertheless, the debate commenced immediately in the press. Most newspapers initially touted the purchase’s virtues in nearly identical language.4 Clearly, someone had prepared a public relations campaign timed to the release of the treaty. Given that the treaty had just been written the night before in Seward’s dining room, only Seward himself could have masterminded such a campaign.
The need for this public relations blitz quickly became evident. Opposition to the purchase commenced as soon as it was made public. On the East Coast, some papers such the New York Times supported the purchase while others such as the New York Tribune opposed it. Midwestern newspapers were likewise divided.5 West Coast newspapers, not surprisingly, vigorously endorsed it. And Southern newspapers—hardly fans of the man whose diplomacy had helped prevent European aid to the Confederacy—urged the Senate to vote no.
The Senate, as it turned out, was less divided. Emerging from private deliberations, it voted thirty-seven to two in favor of ratification. Constitutionally, once the Senate ratifies a treaty, that’s that. In this instance, however, the treaty required the United States to pony up $7,200,000, and that appropriation required approval by the House of Representatives. In effect, it too would have to ratify the treaty.
The House debate was public, and so heated one might think the purchase of Alaska entailed some master plan for the future. In fact, it did. The New York Herald wrote in March 1867 that the purchase of Alaska was “an important step toward the absorption of the whole continent by the United States.” Seward himself believed that, with the purchase of Alaska, the United States would inevitably come to acquire the land separating Alaska from the lower forty-eight states: the Canadian province of British Columbia. Those opposed to the purchase worried that the United States would expand too far—geographically and racially.6 Ultimately, however, over a year after the signing of the treaty, the House of Representatives sent to the Senate a bill containing the funds for the purchase of Alaska.
William Seward, meanwhile, had continued his efforts to expand America both westward and eastward. He sought to purchase the Dominican Republic and the Virgin Islands. He sought to gain a privileged American connection with Hawaii. And he acquired another barely habitable territory: a tiny group of islands in the Pacific, mid-distance between the American West Coast and Asia, and thus named Midway. The strategic importance Seward foresaw in this forlorn little atoll was borne out in World War II, when it became the scene of a critical battle between the United States and Japan.
· · · NEBRASKA, SOUTH DAKOTA · · ·
STANDING BEAR V. CROOK
The Legal Boundary of Humanity
Webster describes a person as “a living soul; a self-conscious being: a moral agent; especially a living human being; a man, woman or child; an individual of the human race.” This is comprehensive enough, it would seem, to include even an Indian.
—JUDGE ELMER S. DUNDY, 18791
General George Crook was not a crook. He was not even an opponent of Standing Bear. Only in legal terminology were they at odds. Also in legal terminology, an American Indian (according to the U.S. government) was not a person. Ponca chief Standing Bear, supported by General Crook and an increasing cadre of others, changed that. In the process, the boundary of Nebraska changed too. Also changed were the lives of every American Indian—though not necessarily in a way that they, or Standing Bear, may have hoped.
In the 1870s Standing Bear was one of a number of chiefs of the Ponca Nation. The Poncas were a small, peaceful nation that occupied land—repeatedly reduced by treaty—between the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, today a region along Nebraska’s northern border. Standing Bear raised livestock, grew vegetables, often wore Western farm clothes, and lived in a two-story home. Like many of the Poncas, he was a practicing Christian.2 The tribe had long coexisted amicably with nearby white settlers. Their only enemy was the Sioux, who lived to their north and vastly outnumbered them.
Chief Standing Bear (ca. 1834-1908) (photo credit 38.1)
Conflicting treaties
Standing Bear’s troubles began, unbeknownst to him, in 1868, when the Sioux signed a treaty with the federal government redefining the boundaries of their land. Neither the American negotiators, nor anyone in Washington, noticed that the treaty gave land to the Sioux that had belonged to the Poncas. The error provided the Sioux with a new excuse for a series of raids on the Poncas. The federal government, finally reacting to its error in 1877, did so in ways that revealed the complex web in which all Indian tribes were caught.
Standing Bear and his fellow Ponca leaders were called to a meeting with Commission on Indian Affairs inspector Edward Kemble and the government’s local Indian agent. Kemble had been directed by his superiors in Washington to tell the Poncas that “their interests have been carefully considered, and that it is very desirable that they should be established in a country where the ci
rcumstances are more favorable.”3 The more favorable country was in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).
Although resistant to giving up their ancestral land, the Ponca leaders ultimately agreed and went to look at available areas. Or: Although resistant to giving up their ancestral lands, the leaders ultimately agreed to look at available areas. Kemble, claiming the first version, later testified in a Senate investigation:
Most undoubtedly, they could not be removed without relinquishing their land there, and the next step after such relinquishment, or such agreement to relinquish, was to take a delegation to the Indian Territory to select some other home for them.
Standing Bear, claiming the second version, testified:
He told us he would take us to see this land down there first, and if we were suited we could come to Washington and tell the President so, and if not we could tell the President so.
One could be telling the truth and the other lying, or the truth could “lie” in language itself. None of the Ponca leaders spoke English, so a translator had been employed. Kemble testified, however, that he had hired the best man available:
Q: You had Charlie Le Claire as interpreter?
A: Yes, sir.…
Q: Was that before or after he had been driven out of the territory for fomenting trouble?
A: I had no information on that.…
Q: There did not seem to be any objection to him as interpreter?
A: He was the only one we could get.
Ten of the Ponca leaders, including Standing Bear, went with Kemble to look over the land being offered. When a Senate committee later questioned Kemble, words again proved to be problematic:
A: A great many wanted to go, but the instructions I had received … limited the number to ten.… Big Snake, Standing Bear’s brother, head soldier of the tribe, gave me a great deal of trouble. He wished to go.… But these ten men were insisted upon, and—
Q: Who insisted upon these ten men?
A: Myself and the agent.
Q: You picked out the men?
A: I did not say that.…
Q: Did you not say that you insisted that these ten men should go?
A: Subsequently I did, but that was after objection had been raised by Big Snake.
Even among the ten men selected by Kemble, none liked what they saw. “I said to him, ‘We have seen the land; we have told you we do not like it,’ ” Standing Bear recalled to the Senate committee. “ ‘You said you would take us to Washington to see the President.’ … Then he said, ‘The President did not tell us to take you to Washington.’ ‘Well then,’ we said, ‘take us back to our own land that we came from.’ And he said, ‘The President did not tell us to take you back to your own home.’ … He had given us two alternatives: either to take the land or … walk home.”
They walked. All but the two eldest, who could not do the 400-mile winter trek.
Six weeks later, Standing Bear arrived home to find Kemble. Having traveled by train, Kemble arrived ahead of them and now had new orders from the Commissioner on Indian Affairs. “Removal of Poncas will be insisted upon,” he was instructed. “[Sioux Chiefs] Spotted Tail and Red Cloud must move this summer to Missouri River. Their presence will render further stay of Poncas at old location impossible.” No ambiguity there, except in logic. If the Poncas were being moved from their land (south of the Missouri River) to protect them from the Sioux, why was the government now limiting the movement of the Sioux to the Missouri River? The answer would surface five years later, when Nebraska’s boundary changed.
Standing Bear found his people in panic, with Kemble demanding they pack at once and threatening to use force if they did not. Meanwhile, Standing Bear’s brother, Big Snake, was demonstrating why he was the tribe’s head soldier, having begun to organize resistance. Now that Standing Bear had returned with negative views about the land being offered, Kemble called for the military. He ordered the soldiers to take Standing Bear and Big Snake into custody.
By the time the brothers were released, the forced removal was commencing. Soldiers compelled the Poncas to journey without pause through a spate of horrific weather. The lack of sufficient shelter and rest took the lives of many of the tribe’s oldest, youngest, and otherwise weakest members—including Standing Bear’s tubercular daughter, Prairie Flower, herself the mother of two young children. The death toll did not abate when they were released in the new land, since the government had failed to provide sufficient food, lumber, wagons, and horses. In their first two years in the Indian Territory, one-third of the tribe died. Among them was Standing Bear’s teenage son, Bear Shield.
Following the death of his son, Standing Bear embarked on a plan to lead his people back to their ancestral home. In January 1879 he and twenty-nine carefully selected comrades quietly left the reservation, setting off as the vanguard of what they hoped would be a Ponca exodus. The local Indian agent wired Washington to alert agents posted with other tribes to be on the lookout for Standing Bear and, if seen, to have him returned to the Indian Territory.
Two months after their departure, Standing Bear and his cohorts turned up at the Omaha reservation. They were welcomed by the Omahas and by their government agent. But the agent’s words were deceiving. He contacted the region’s military commander, General George Crook, who promptly sent men and arrested the Poncas.
What happened next, from Standing Bear’s perspective, was difficult to fathom, as he later recalled to the Senate committee:
A: They put us in where the soldiers were, in the fort.… We stayed there all winter.… The soldiers said, “We do this because we were ordered to do so.” …
Q: What did you then suppose they were going to do with you?
A: I supposed they were going to take us back to the Indian Territory.
Q: What did the soldiers actually do?
A: Somebody got the soldiers to let us go. There were three men in Omaha that helped get us away from the soldiers.
Q: You don’t know how?
A: No, sir.
One of the men who helped Standing Bear get away from the soldiers was the assistant editor of the Omaha Herald, Thomas Tibbles. In a book published a year later, Tibbles (masked behind a pseudonym, Zylyff) recalled, “On the 29th of March, 1879, at about eleven o’clock at night … the city editor came in and informed [me] that he had just returned from Fort Omaha … where there was a band of Ponca Indians under arrest for running away from the Indian Territory.” It was not, however, the city editor who came into Tibbles’s office. Tibbles attributed the tip to the city editor to protect his source. It was General George Crook, the commanding officer of Fort Omaha, who came to his office that night.4
General George Crook (1828-1890) (photo credit 38.2)
Tibbles knew a good story when he saw one, and at Fort Omaha he saw one. He wrote it up for the Omaha Herald, then telegraphed it to papers nationwide:
Gen. Crook held a formal council with the Ponca Indians this morning … Standing Bear, hitherto in citizen’s clothes, in full Indian costume [said] … “Before I went to the [Indian] Territory, I had a good house and a barn.… I had cattle and hogs and all kinds of stock, and somebody came and took all my things away.… If a white man had land and someone should swindle him, that man would try to get it back, and you would not blame him. Look on me! … I need help.” …
Gen. Crook, turning to Standing Bear, said, “It is a very hard case, but I can do nothing myself. I have received an order from Washington and I must obey it.”
To describe Tibbles as a journalist is to give his résumé short shrift. As a teenager in Kansas, he had joined the ranks of abolitionist John Brown in the bloody confrontations in which Brown (who later attacked the U.S. Army arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia) was then engaged. After serving in the Civil War—possibly as a Union spy—Tibbles became an itinerant preacher, then a journalist, and eventually an impresario. After seeing his story picked up in Chicago, St. Louis, and three New York newspapers, he knew it wo
uld behoove him to keep it going. But how?
Tibbles reasoned that if he were being held by the government, his reaction would be to get a lawyer. He therefore took the case to a lawyer. His keen instincts led him to John L. Webster, a boyhood friend who, much like himself, had substantial ambitions. (Webster later became active in Nebraska politics, unsuccessfully seeking a U.S. Senate seat and the Republican nomination for vice president.) Where Tibbles saw a potentially big news story, Webster saw a potentially big legal issue—so big that, to help assure it got attention, he sought a cocounsel, former Omaha mayor Andrew J. Poppleton. The legal bombshell they spotted was a writ of habeas corpus, a procedure to have a person in custody brought before a judge. It takes place every day in courtrooms across America. But it had never before been applied for an American Indian.
Because Standing Bear was in the custody of General Crook, the petition was presented in court as Standing Bear v. Crook. General Crook, the nominal defendant, did not testify in the proceedings for reasons that, in his memoirs, become crystal clear. “[I] stated bluntly that [my] interest in the case was official, that personally [I] sided with the Poncas,” he wrote, adding, “The Poncas were … simply another case of injustice to the Indians, a subject with which [I] was becoming increasingly familiar.”
As Tibbles had hoped, the court case quickly commanded the attention of the nation’s press. “At Omaha yesterday, Judge Dundy of the United States Court granted a writ of habeas corpus commanding General Crook to show cause why he has in custody Standing Bear and other Ponca Indians who fled from the Indian Territory,” the New York World reported in August 1879. “The United States District Attorney has been directed to … endeavor to have the writ dismissed. He takes the ground that … the Indians stand as wards of the government, as minors are to their parents.”