MOSAIC

Statue Swap

of the Ponca tribe has replaced one of William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. The substitution was the first of two the Nebraska legislature voted. Besides putting the chief in for Secretary of State Bryan, legislators voted to swap out a statue of Secretary of Education Julius Morton for one of novelist Willa Cather in 2020. A mix-up led to the Ponca being displaced from their tribal lands in 1877 to a reservation 500 miles southeast in Oklahoma. En route nearly a third of the Ponca died, including Standing Bear’s daughter, Prairie Flower. The rest arrived sick and hungry. In 1879, the chief’s 16-year-old son died. Bear Shield had asked to be buried on Ponca land. Bearing his son’s bones, Standing Bear and 66 other Poncas returned to Nebraska. Federal officials had U.S. Army Brigadier General George Crook arrest them. Crook, despite his extensive role in forcing reported. “If you pierce your hand you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.” Ruling in , the judge found Standing Bear to be a person with the right to freedom of movement. The chief remained on Ponca land in Nebraska until his death in 1908.