Many people know the story of Chief Standing Bear. Books have been written and movies made about his story and that of the Ponca Tribe. I am not writing this story to open up old wounds or stir up resentment towards nationalities or governments. I am writing it because Standing Bear’s story inspires me to walk with God—no matter what. The U.S. government had taken his land in South Dakota (now northern Nebraska) and forced his people to travel to Oklahoma. Many died from malaria, the journey, or the desolate conditions in Indian Territory.
Incredibly, Standing Bear, his family, and friends were at church when the pastor told them that they were to going to be driven from their lands. He told them that they had been “honest, industrious, frugal, hard-working, and had just gotten themselves nice houses and farms.” He felt very sorry for them, but there was nothing he could do.
Henry Tibbles, who traveled with Standing Bear in the late 1800s, recorded Standing Bear’s own words in the book, Standing Bear and the Ponca Chiefs. Standing Bear lost the house he had built with his own hands, his farming equipment, his outbuildings and a mill. The Agency demanded that he bring in his possessions. He took the following:
“four cows, three steers, eight horses, four hogs (two very large ones), five wagon-loads of corn with the side boards on (about 130 bushels), one hundred sacks of wheat, and one wagon-load loose, which I had in boxes (about 275 bushels), twenty-one chickens, two turkeys, . . .three axes, two hatchets, one saw, three lamps, four chairs, one table, two new bedsteads, one hay-knife, three pitchforks, two washtubs, and washboard, one cross-cut saw, one cant hook, two log chains, two ox-yokes, two ladders, two garden rakes, three hoes, one new cooking-stove, one heating-stove, twenty joints of pipe, two trunks (one very large), one valise, crockery, knives and forks, and a great many other things which I cannot now remember.”
The detail makes my heart ache. He also lost two children and his brother was shot in Oklahoma. How could he possibly go on? Why did he not just curl up in a ball of bitterness and give up?
I don’t know what I would have done. My reason for going into detail is to show Standing Bear’s incredible heart for God in the face of tremendous adversity. His walk with God encourages me to walk with God.
When Standing Bear was asked to state his religious belief, he replied without a moment’s reflection. He said,
‘There is one God, and He made both Indians and white men. We were all made out of the dust of the earth. . . .God wishes us to love Him and obey His commandments, follow the narrow road, work for Him on earth, and we shall have happiness after we die. I am told His Son died for us, died that we might live. I want to try and do something for Him, to be like Him, follow in His footsteps as nearly as I can. . . .I wish to follow the narrow road. It is the road of happiness.’”
His words encourage me to join him on the narrow road. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
© Sue Carlisle 2013. Sue Carlisle is a member of the Ponca tribe and spent much of her youth on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Her passion is to encourage people to look at creation and see our awesome Creator.
1. Thomas Henry Tibbles, Standing Bear & the Ponca Chiefs, Edited by Kay Graber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972, 5.
2. Ibid., 13
3. Ibid.
