United States In 1817 the tribe signed a peace treaty with the United States. By a second treaty in 1825, they regulated trade and tried to minimize intertribal clashes on the Northern Plains. In 1858 the Ponca signed a treaty by which they gave up parts of their land to the United States in return for protection from hostile tribes and a permanent reservation home on the Niobrara. The Ponca signed their last treaty with the US in 1865. In the 1868 US-Sioux Treaty of Fort Laramie the US mistakenly included all Ponca lands in the Great Sioux Reservation. Conflict between the Ponca and the Sioux/Lakota, who now claimed the land as their own by US law, forced the US to remove the Ponca from their own ancestral lands. Relocation When Congress decided to remove several northern tribes to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in 1876, the Ponca were on the list. After inspecting the lands the US government offered for their new reservation and finding it unsuitable for agriculture, the Ponca chiefs decided against a move to the Indian Territory. Hence, when governmental officials came in early 1877 to move the Ponca to their new land, the chiefs refused, citing their earlier treaty. Most of the tribe refused and had to be moved by force. In their new location, the Ponca struggled with malaria, a shortage of food and the hot climate. One in four members died within the first year. Standing Bear Chief Standing Bear was among those who had most vehemently protested the tribe's removal. When his eldest son, Bear Shield, lay on his deathbed, Standing Bear promised to have him buried on the tribe's ancestral lands. In order to carry out his promise, Standing Bear left the reservation in Oklahoma and traveled back toward the Ponca homelands. He was arrested for doing so without US government permission and ordered confined at Fort Omaha. Many people took up his cause, and two prominent attorneys offered their services pro bono. Standing Bear filed a habeas corpus suit challenging his arrest. In Standing Bear v. Crook (1879), held in Omaha, Nebraska, the US District Court established for the first time that Native Americans are "persons within the meaning of the law" of the United States, and that they have certain rights as a result. This was an important civil rights case. Nebraska In 1881, the US returned 26,236 acres (106