Students follow tragic path taken century ago by Ponca, who were marched out of Nebraska to Oklahoma

[Omaha Steve]

MEGAN FARMER/THE WORLD-HERALD
Ross Greathouse, front left, a member of the Nebraska Trails Foundation, leads Peru State College students Thursday along the Chief Standing Bear Trail in Barneston, Nebraska.


http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/students-follow-tragic-path-taken-century-ago-by-ponca-who/article_2dc96cf5-83a6-5a64-bc53-8cd3ce68b278.html

POSTED: FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2015 1:00 AM
By Joe Duggan / World-Herald staff writer

BARNESTON, Neb. — The students stepped along a forgotten rail bed in southeast Nebraska and tried to imagine 500 people on a journey of sadness more than a century ago.

They came to this strip of soil and granite along the Big Blue River to seek out an unmarked path walked by members of the Ponca Tribe in 1877. In that long-ago summer, a community of first Nebraskans was forced to leave home for Indian Territory in Oklahoma.



“For me, it puts a place with the history,” said Frank Wolff, a senior history major at Peru State College.

He and 10 fellow students embarked Thursday on a two-day tour that will span the state from Kansas to South Dakota, visiting key places along the Ponca trail. They have been studying the tribe and its famed leader, Chief Standing Bear, who won a landmark civil rights decision 136 years ago in an Omaha courtroom.

FULL story at link.

While college students have come under fire for racism, these students deserve HUGE KUDOS!!!

[dhill926]

1. K & R....

good for them!

[niyad]

2. HUGE k and r