--THE PONCA INDIANS.--The Ponca Indians have always been peaceful and friendly. It is not known that any of their number ever killed a white man. In 1858 they released to the United States all their land, except about twenty square miles. In response to a clamor from the whites to get this from them a new treaty was made in 1866, by which the Poncas ceded 30,000 acres to the United States, and the latter _ceded_ to the Poncas certain townships. On this land they built houses, raised crops, and lived happily and prosperously, but the white man would not let them alone. In 1877 Indian Agent James Lawrence, Indian Inspector E. C. Kemble, and Rev. S. D. Hinman, an Episcopal Missionary among the Indians, came and insisted that the United States wanted them to leave and go to the Indian Territory. This they refused to do. A paper purporting to be a contract was drawn up by these men; the signature of a half breed by the name of Lone Chief, who does not belong to the tribe, was attached to it. This paper was forwarded to Washington, placed on file without examination, I suppose, and the United States Army was ordered to see that the tribe was removed. I have seen and examined a copy of that so-called contract, and it is simply infamous to call it a contract. It is nothing more than a record of what was said at a council, and has internal marks that the speeches from which it quotes were never made. Yet on the strength of that paper, with all the chiefs of the tribe protesting against the outrage, these people, 715 in number, were taken and carried to the Indian Territory, and left in a malarial country, without money and without shelter, to get along as best they might. Since that time, about 300 of them have died. But that is not all of this unspeakable villainy. The household and farm effects, horses and ponies and cattle, the whole not worth less than $200,000, were taken and sold, and the proceeds put into the pockets of nobody knows whom. The Indians got none of it. One of the chiefs, Standing Bear, escaped from the Indian Territory and travelled back into Northern Nebraska, that he might find exemption from death. Here he was arrested for being off his reservation, and started as a prisoner for the Indian Territory. On his way through Omaha, Mr. T. H. Tibbles, of one of the Omaha papers, interviewed him, and so thoroughly were that gentleman’s sympathies stirred by the recital of the old man’s wrongs, that he made an effort to secure his release by a writ of habeas corpus. In this he succeeded, and Standing Bear was released.