t had been a cold, hungry journey, of five hundred miles, and their
relatives and friends were glad to see them again.

But the United States inspector was waiting for them. He was angry.
He said that the Great Father had ordered the Poncas to change homes.
It did not seem to matter whether or not they liked the new home. And
he called for soldiers, and all the Poncas were bundled out of their
villages and taken to the hot country of the south. On the way women
and children died. Standing Bear's daughter died.

Just as Standing Bear and the other chiefs had tried to explain, the
new country was not a good country for the Poncas. It was humid and
hot; their Niobrara country had been dry and bracing. Within one year
a third of them were dead from sickness; the rest were weak and
miserable. They pined for the villages that they had built and loved,
and that they had lost without any known reason.

After a year and a half Standing Bear's boy died, as so many others had
died; and the heart of Standing Bear was heavy. He did not sleep, by
thinking that his son's bones must lie here in this unfriendly country.
His medicine demanded that the boy should rest with their ancestors, in
the Ponca ground along the dear Niobrara.

Therefore, in January, 1879, he placed the bones in a sack, and tied
the sack to his neck, and taking his people who could travel, he set
out to walk to Ponca land.

That was hard work. They made their way as best they could, but had
been over three months on it when, in May, they arrived at the
reservation of their friends the Omahas, near the Missouri River in
northeastern Nebraska.

Chief Standing Bear asked the Omahas if they might rest, and plant a
few acres of ground, so as to get food. The Omahas gave them seed and
ground. Standing Bear still had the bones of his son, in the bag.
When he had started a crop, he was going on with the bones, and bury
them at the Niobrara, where the Poncas of happier years had been buried.

Before the crop was in, soldiers appeared, and arrested him and all his
party, to take them back to the hot country.

This much alarmed the Omahas. They had heard how the Poncas had been
moved off without warning and without reason. Standing Bear was not
being allowed to stay; he had lost his country forever. The same thing
might happen to the Omahas.

They had a similar treaty with the United States. They thought that
they owned their lands. They had been imp