Chief White Eagle (c. 1825 – February 3, 1914) was a Native American politician and American civil rights leader who served as the hereditary chief of the Ponca from 1870 until 1904. His 34-year tenure as the Ponca head of state spanned the most consequential period of cultural and political change in their history, beginning with the unlawful Ponca Trail of Tears in 1877 and continuing through his successful effort to obtain justice for his people by utilizing the American media to wage a public relations campaign against the United States and President Rutherford B. Hayes. His advocacy against America's Indian removal policy following the Ponca Trail of Tears marked a shift in public opinion against the federal government's Indian policy that ended the policy of removal, placing him at the forefront of the nascent Native American civil rights movement in the second half of the 19th century.
Family history and early life (1825–1847)
White Eagle was born on the ancestral Ponca homeland somewhere near the confluence of the Niobrara River and Missouri River which forms the contemporary South Dakota–Nebraska state line. At the time of his birth, the Ponca form of government was an oligarchy in which the full sovereign power of the Ponca was vested in a hereditary chief sovereign who was counseled by thirteen chiefs—six senior chiefs and seven junior chiefs—who represented the interests of the Ponca citizenry. The chief sovereign served as the head of state and ranking senior chief and the position was a dynastic succession based on male primogeniture. Dynastic rule was vested in White Eagle's direct male line, a dynasty established by White Eagle's paternal grandfather Chief Little Bear late in the 18th century when he assumed power from the traditional sovereigns by heroic feat. At the turn of the 20th century, White Eagle provided ethnographers at the Smithsonian Institution the oral history of how he became hereditary chief sovereign:
White Eagle's exact birth year is unknown. Various sources place his birth year as early as 1803 and as late as 1840, though both historical estimates are dubious. When White Eagle died in early 1914, American press reports indicated that he was "the oldest Indian in the United States" at 111 years old, placing his birth in 1803, one year prior to the arrival of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804. This report is dubious as White Eagle's father Iron Whip told British author Charles Mackay in 1858 that he was 56 years old, placing his birth year at 1802. As White Eagle was Iron Whip's first born son, there is an equally low probability that he was born in 1840, a year made all the more unlikely as White Eagle was documented as a junior chief on August 8, 1846, when he accompanied a high ranking Ponca delegation that sought to establish diplomatic relationship with Brigham Young's Mormon Pioneers during their emigration to the Great Basin. The delegation was led by White Eagle's aged paternal grandfather Little Bear whose death was recorded by the Mormons in 1846. The Mormons witnessed the transfer of power to Little Bear's eldest son and White Eagle's uncle, Two Bulls, after Little Bear's death. A month later, Two Bulls died and the Mormons again witnessed the transfer of power to White Eagle's father, Iron Whip, who abdicated the hereditary chief sovereignty to White Eagle in 1870, thereby corroborating White Eagle's oral history.
Chieftaincy (1870–1904)
Ponca removal crisis and Ponca Trail of Tears (1870–1877) White Eagle's tenure as chief was defined by the unlawful forced removal of the Ponca from their treaty protected territory in the Dakota Territory to the Indian Territory in 1877, in direct violation of the Ponca Treaty of 1865 and American law. Known as the Ponca Trail of Tears, this removal was a six-hundred mile forced march spanning three modern-day states, resulting in numerous deaths en route. The forced march consisted of two parties of Ponca citizens. The first party was composed of approximately 170 Ponca citizens with mixed ancestry and began on April 16, 1877. The second party was to consist of the vast majority of the Ponca citizenry numbering about 500 people, including White Eagle and his vice chief Standing Bear. For nearly a month, White Eagle and Standing Bear resisted the unlawful efforts of Edward Cleveland Kemble, the federal agent sent by President Ulysses S. Grant, to force the Ponca removal by fraud. On April 24, 1877, General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered two companies of American soldiers to Ponca territory to force their compliance. White Eagle said:
On May 16, 1877, White Eagle again addressed the Ponca people regarding the imminent removal: "My people, we, your chiefs, have worked hard to save you from this. We have resisted until we are worn out, and now we know not what more we can do. We leave the matter into your hands to decide. If you say that we fight and die on our lands, so be it." White Eagle later recalled what happened afterward, "There was utter silence. Not a word was spoken. We all arose and started for our homes, and there we found that in our absence the soldiers had collected all our women and children together and were standing guard over them. The soldiers got on their horses, went to all the houses, broke open the doors, took our household utensils, put them in their wagons, and pointing their bayonets at our people, ordered them to move. They took all our plows, mowers, hay-forks, grindstones, farming implements of all kind, and everything too heavy to be taken on a journey and locked them up in a large house. We never knew what became of them afterwards. Many of these things of which we were robbed we had bought with money earned by the work of our hands."
The removal lasted 54 miserable days, beginning on May 16, 1877, and ending on July 9, 1877, with many deaths occurring en route. The removal was plagued by torrential rains which flooded the unpaved dirt roads, miring the Ponca in mud for most of the march. A tornado struck the Ponca removal party on June 7, 1877, near Milford, Nebraska, killing one child and injuring many others. The federal agent in charge of the removal described the event as follows:
The following day, yet another child died. As the Poncas continued their forced march across Kansas, four more people died: a young child named Little Cottonwood died outside Blue Rapids, Kansas, on June 18, two elderly women died south of Manhattan, Kansas, on June 25, and a young child died outside of Emporia, Kansas, on June 30. Two days later, an assassination attempt was made on White Eagle by a disaffected Ponca named Buffalo Chip who held White Eagle responsible for the mounting death toll. The federal removal agent described the chaotic scene of July 2nd his journal as follows: "Broke camp at six o'clock. Made a long march of fifteen miles for Noon Camp, for reason that no water could be got nearer. An Indian became hostile and made a desperate attempt to kill White Eagle, head chief of the tribe. For a time, every male in camp was on the warpath, and for about two hours the most intense excitement prevailed, heightened by continued loud crying by all the women and children." A week after the failed assassination attempt, the Ponca arrived at the Quapaw Agency in the Indian Territory. The federal removal agent wrote:
As a result of the unlawful removal, the Ponca suffered severe economic losses, including the loss of their wooden homes, personal property, and agricultural implements. Due to the hasty nature of the unlawful removal perpetuated by Edward Cleveland Kemble and the Hayes administration, the Ponca were removed to a swampy marsh in the Indian Territory and forced to live outside exposed to the elements in a tropical climate. No preparations were made to accommodate the Ponca by the newly inaugurated Hayes administration or Carl Schurz, President Hayes' cabinet secretary responsible for overseeing the removal. Within six months, a further 141 deaths were reported as half of the Ponca population suffered from tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. Among the victims were White Eagle's wife, four of his children, and his father Iron Whip,Miami (Oklahoma) Daily News-Record, Mar. 1, 1957, p. 3. who preceded him as hereditary chief of the Ponca from 1846 until his abdication in 1870. Iron Whip signed the broken treaty with President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 shortly before Lincoln's assassination. The exact number of deaths is unknown; however, it is known that the death toll exceeded 200 of the 700 Poncas — 30% of the Ponca population — and included the outright extinction of 24 Ponca families.
Advocacy for Native American rights following the Ponca Trail of Tears (1877–1881) White Eagle led a delegation of Ponca leaders to Washington in the immediate aftermath of the removal in order to confront President Hayes and the American politicians in the Congress regarding the clear illegality of the removal. He and Standing Bear arrived on November 8, 1877.
White Eagle's leadership during the Ponca removal crisis played a central role in the series of events culminating in a landmark civil rights ruling in 1879 recognizing Native Americans as persons due civil rights under the Constitution of the United States for the first time in American history in Standing Bear v. Crook. Immediately following the Ponca removal, White Eagle aggressively sought restoration of the ancestral Ponca homeland from President Hayes and the United States Senate for the American government's violation of the Ponca Treaty of 1865 and its subsequent mismanagement of the Ponca removal. The efforts of both White Eagle and Standing Bear generated significant support from many notable Americans of the time including the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, former abolitionist Wendell Phillips, and author Helen Hunt Jackson who advocated on behalf of the Ponca by writing the seminal book on Native American civil rights entitled A Century of Dishonor. Nebraska journalist Thomas Tibbles traveled the country on a speaking tour to raise the money necessary for the Ponca to appeal their removal to the United States Supreme Court. Tibbles "thought that, if the Christian people of this country only knew of these horrors, they would be glad to help White Eagle in getting out of the Indian Territory, and saving from death the little children." Tibbles appealed to large audiences "not only help White Eagle, but in so doing, burst the infamous Indian Ring," which was a corrupt segment of political appointees. Tibbles argued that "if they could get standing in the courts for White Eagle and the Ponca, they would put an end to the Indian question and the Indian Wars and at once solve the Indian Question."