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The Price of Obtaining New Land

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THE PRICE OF OBTAINING NEW LAND In 1876, Congress called for the removal of certain Native American tribes to ‘Indian Territory,’ which is in present-day Oklahoma. The Ponca tribe was one of the tribes called to be moved to the Indian Territory. The Ponca, unlike some of the other Indian tribes, actually had peaceful relations with the United States at the time. They did not fight back against the United States when government officials first came to visit the tribes; in fact, the Ponca tried to stay as diplomatic as possible with the U.S. and even signed treaties and trade agreements with them. However, the U.S. broke their treaties with the Ponca and instead removed them from their land to the Indian Territory. Chief Standing Bear, one of the chiefs in the Ponca tribe, tells his account of the removal of his tribe in the 1870s and how the United States poorly handled it. For the most part, Chief Standing Bear does not explicitly state any hostility or resentment that he may have had toward the inspector or the president. Standing Bear did not say anything positive or negative about the inspector outside of saying that he and the other two men “made [their] trouble.” Instead, he goes into detail about the different hardships that his tribe had to endure during the entire ordeal. After the inspector got angry and decided to leave the Ponca chiefs to walk home from the Indian Territory, Standing Bear described the harsh journey back for him and the other Ponca chiefs: “It

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