Red Cloud lived to be a very old man. He became almost blind, and partly paralyzed. He stuck to his one wife. They were together for many years. He died in December, 1909, in a two-story house built for him by the Government on the Pine Ridge agency in South Dakota. He was aged eighty-seven. Five years before he had given his chief-ship over to his son, young Red Cloud, who carried the name. It is a name that will never be forgotten. CHAPTER XXIII STANDING BEAR SEEKS A HOME (1877-1880) THE INDIAN WHO WON THE WHITE MAN'S VERDICT The Ponca Indians were members of the large Siouan family. They had not always been a separate tribe. In the old days they and the Omahas and the Kansas and the Osages had lived together as Omahas, near the mouth of the Osage River in eastern Nebraska. Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas and Osages. The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska. When the captains, Lewis and Clark, met some of them, the tribe had been cut by the small-pox to only some two hundred people. They never have been a big people. Their number today, about eight hundred and fifty, is as large as ever in their history. [Illustration: Standing Bear. Courtesy of The American Bureau of Ethnology.] They and the Omahas warred with the Sioux, but they never warred with the white men. They have always been friendly to the white men, except once; and that once brings up the story of Standing Bear. Back in 1817 the Poncas made a treaty of friendship with the United States; and in 1825 they made another treaty, allowing white traders to live among them, and agreeing to let their own bad men (if any) be punished by the United States; and in 1859 they made another treaty, selling their hunting grounds to the United States, and keeping a tract on the Niobrara River for their own homes. None of these treaties did they break. They were at peace with even the Sioux. They had good farms, and were prospering. But in 1868 the United States laid out a new reservation for the Sioux. By a mistake this took in the Ponca reservation in Nebraska, and the Poncas were not told. The way they found out, was this: The Sioux began to come in and claim the land. "That is not right," said the Poncas. "You do not belong here. All this country is ours. Go back. We do not want you." So there was fighting, every little while, and the Poncas lost many warriors. This continued for nine years, until, by the raids of the Sioux, one fourth of the Poncas had been killed or captured. Still they had not been told by the United States that these lands were theirs no longer; but, suddenly, in 1877, they were told that they must get out.