Standing Bear in his formal attire National Anthropological
Archives, Smithsonian Institution On their journey westward in
1804, Lewis and Clark learned about the Ponca, a small tribe
living on the west bank of the Missouri River and along what are
now the lower Niobrara River and Ponca Creek in northeast
Nebraska. The two did not meet as the tribe was on a hunting
trip to the west. Early Life And Movement To Reservation
Standing Bear was born around 1829 in the traditional Ponca
homeland near the confluence of the Niobrara and Missouri
rivers. About thirty years later, the tribe sold its homeland to
the United States, retaining a 58,000-acre reservation between
Ponca Creek and the Niobrara River. On this reservation the
Poncas lived a life of hardscrabble farming and fear-the United
States did little to protect them from attacks from the Brule
Sioux. When the federal government created the Great Sioux
Reservation in 1868, the Ponca Reservation was included within
its boundaries, depriving them of title to th