When Standing Bear was born circa 1829, the Ponca traditionally raised maize, vegetables, and fruit trees in these sites during the summer.

In 1859, when Standing Bear was a young man, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had encouraged a flood of European-American settlers, and the United States government pressured the Nebraska tribes to sell their land.

Relatives sought annuity payments, people lost resources to sickness and starvation, and raids from hostile tribes were frequent.

With the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), however, the government illegally gave the new Ponca reservation to the Santee Dakota as part of its negotiation to end Red Cloud's War.

White Eagle and other Ponca leaders later claimed that because of a mistranslation, he had understood that they were to move to the Omaha Reservation, not to the Indian Territory.

In February 1877, ten Ponca chiefs, including Standing Bear, accompanied Inspector Edward C. Kemble to Indian Territory to view several tracts of land.

[6][7] The Ponca arrived in Oklahoma too late to plant crops that year, and the government failed to provide them with the farming equipment it had promised as part of the deal.

In 1878 they moved 150 miles (240 km) west to the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River, south of present-day Ponca City, Oklahoma.

Standing Bear had promised to bury him in the Niobrara River valley homeland, so he left to travel north with about 30 followers.

Although the official orders were to return them immediately to Indian Territory, Crook was sympathetic to the Ponca and appalled to learn of the conditions they had left.

[11] Crook told the Ponca story to Thomas Tibbles, an outspoken advocate of Native American rights (who had once served under John Brown).

Acting as interpreter for Standing Bear was Susette LaFlesche, an accomplished and educated bilingual Omaha of mixed-race background.

Years later, blind and in failing health, the attorney Poppleton reflected on his final court plea for Standing Bear: "I cannot recall any two hours' work of my life with which I feel better satisfied.

The case gained the attention of the Hayes administration, which provided authority for Standing Bear and some of the tribe to return permanently to the Niobrara valley in Nebraska.

Susette (Bright Eyes) LaFlesche, later married to Henry Tibbles, and her brother Francis, who later became an ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution, accompanied Standing Bear on the speaking tour.

In 1893 Standing Bear worked for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in Chicago and visited the World's Columbian Exposition where he rode the Ferris Wheel in full ceremonial headdress.