Conflict between the Ponca and the Lakota Sioux, who now claim the Ponca land as their own by United States law, force the U.S. to remove the Ponca from their own ancestral lands.
When Congress decided to remove several northern tribes to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in 1876, the Ponca were on the list.
The Ponca paramount chief White Eagle, Standing Bear, and other Ponca leaders had met with U.S. Indian Agent A. J. Carrier and signed a document allowing removal.
White Eagle, supported by other Ponca leaders, will later claim that because of a mistranslation, he had understood that they were to move to the Omaha Reservation, not to the Indian Territory.
In February 1877, ten Ponca chiefs, including Standing Bear, accompany Inspector Edward C. Kemble to Indian Territory to view several tracts of land.
After viewing lands on the Osage Reservation and the Kaw Reservation, the chiefs were unhappy with what they were shown, finding the land unsuitable for agriculture, and had asked to return home without looking at the Quapaw Reservation near present-day Peoria, Oklahoma.
Kemble, angry at what he called the Ponca chiefs' "insubordination," had refused to take them home until they had viewed all the land.
Instead, eight of the chiefs had decided to return home on foot.
Kemble had visited the Quapaw Reservation and selected it as the removal destination.
In April, Kemble heads south to the Quapaw Reservation with those Ponca willing to leave.
Most of the rest of the tribe refuses and must be moved by force.
The Ponca arrive in Oklahoma too late to plant crops this year, and the government fails to provide them with the farming equipment it had promised as part of the deal.
