pabbing houses were some of the only ones in the world bit 1950's that would still process all three types of meat. by the 1960's pretty much the packing houses had been built in the 18890's and were becoming out of date. so really the whole industry starts taking a different turn and omaha stops being that center. the stockyards are unely -- unfortunately not there. the only piece present is the livestock exchange building, and that was pretty much a mini city when it was conceived. it had everything in it from barber shops to hotel shops, hotel rooms, administrative affses, ballrooms. it was a kind of one-stop shop for south omaha and pretty much anything you needed to do with the stockyard exchange would be there. it's now apartments and pedro martinez happen in the ballroom

for a local high school. that's the only thing that's left in south omaha of this booming industry. the beef industry in omaha is still going strong. we have companies that still ship meat to and from and around the world. people still associate omaha with beefment you still want to get an omaha steak when you visit. so things like that are still ery prevalent in the city. 79 case, standing bear v. crook, the united states recognized native americans as people under the aw enforcement in the next discussion, hugh reilly tells sued ut the plaintiff who

the mrmar -- army general. hugh reilly: all of the indian wars fought in the region were kind of directed out of this area. so it would have been instrumental even the little bighorn, tore the end of that, but the cheyenne outbreak, wounded knee in 1890, so all the way up to that time here. >> we're at the general kirkhouse museum. -- general crook house museum. named for general crook, who was the commander of the platte here at omaha. the house was named after him because he was the first general who lived in the home. it was twartd -- started in 18878 and finished in 1879. he was back again from 1886 to 1888. the house is celebrating its

anniversary this year. it's a victorian italianate hope. had they deemed that it was going to be a permanent fort, part of the role was the homes would be brick rather than wooden structures and this was the first brick structure thats with built on the fort. after that the others followed and were built along the same kind of a victorian italianate style. one of the things the fort is known for holding standing bear during the standing bear versus crook trial. he was held here at the fort. >> standing bear was a leader of the ponka, which was a small, peaceful tribe. their hope lap wad up north of where we are now, in the nile river country. they had been there for generations. during a treaty that the

americans had made more with the sioux, their homeland was given away by mistake and they were forced to move to oklahoma. the original promise was we're going to send you down to oklahoma, if you like it, we know you're going to like it, but if you like it you can send the rest of the tripe -- tribe back up. of course that was never going to happen. they hated it, it was hot, the land was president what they were used to. they said no, we don't like it. well they said no, you can't go back. but they did anyway, had to walk back up. many died along the way, in fact, one of standing bear's daughters died on the trek down there as well as many children and older people. shortly after they were there, away and it was his son's dying wish that he be buried in the land of his braths -- fathers so his father

with a small group of about 20 people in the dark of night heading north traveling mostly by night and on foot made it all the way up to where we are now, in fort omaha to the omaha and winnebago reservations north of where we are now and it was there that they were finally caught by the army and the army demanded that they be sent back to oklahoma. and this is where general crook enters the picture. general crook had served in the sill war and rose to the rank of brig addeer general during the civil war. he was captured and held prisoner for about a month before he was released. but he really made his fame during the indian wars. he fought against ger on in -- geronimo, against crazy horse at the battle of rosebud and he actually started his career in the pacific northwest. he fought over a period of

several decades and over time he became sim pat elt -- sim t etic -- sympathetic to the american -- nate americans and tried to see that the treaties they made were honored. over time i just he just became interested in them and didn't think of them as many of his contemporaries did as less than human. he thought of them as human just as he was. i mean, that sounds ridiculous but at the time it was pretty unusual, so i think he saw that they had families and they loved their children, they loved their husbands and wives and he felt that they were treated very poorly and he wanted to try to do what he could to ensure that they were treated honorablely. he was asked to take them, send them back down to oklahoma with, you know, with no delay. he felt this was a injustice

and so he recruited a friend of his, a man named thomas tibbles, working for the "omaha world herald" at the time and said this is the story. he told the story and he said i want you to rally support and i want you to sue me. the end result was a trial was held to determine whether standing bear and his people could be moved back to oklahoma. what happened was the 14th amendment had been passed not too long before this and there was a couple of -- tibbles recruit aid couple of omaha poppleton, ster and and to be standing bear's lawyers and they decided they were going to use this 14th amendment, which was basically if you can be established as a person, then you have certain citizenship rights. native americans, as strange as

it sounds to us, were not considered persons under the law. so the attempt was to get the court to agree that yes, indeed, this man standing in front of them was a person and therefore has certain rights, including the right to live where he wanted to live. but the upshot of the trial was that judge dundee decided that yes, he was a person under the law and therefore had certain rights and could not be forcibly removed of the irony of it, of could, is that had this been held true to native americans all over the country, all these people living on reservations would have been able to go back to where they came from and it would have been mass chaos. so dundee limited the ruling to standing bear and his 20 or so followers. they used the weapons that were available to them. armed resistance was futile. they had never been a warlike people anyway. an the only, really,

opportunity dish think the reason it worked is because they used the whoit man's open weapons against him. they used the rule of law against him. if the white man were to say, well, to refute nr -- their own blaushgs it would have been almost a self-i flicked wound. so i think it was very clever by websterster and crook and everybody involved to use the white man's rules in order to get justice for this red man. after the trial, after this ruling thundered through the courts as some people would say, standing bear and his interpreter, a woman named suzette la flesh, her indian name was bright eyes, did along with thomas tibbles, who later married bright eyes, traveled cross the country in kind of a -- it was a fund-raising thing really. they would speak at all these

audiences, they would charge admission, they would raise money to try to hire lawyers to try to make this decision affect a lot more than just the small group it affected. to try to change laws for native american rights. there were several -- the poet longfellow became a follower and sympathizer and in fact he aid in his famous poem "hiawatha," the female character, he said when he saw bright eyes, i -- he said i see nute i ha ha, the -- minniehaha, the representation of the perp in his famous poem. the so the end result ironically was the severalti act, well tensioned, it was a senator who created this bill. it was intended to provide

citizenship for native americans and they were to be given, each would be given 160 acres and if they proved that they had worked it and everything, they would eventually be able to become citizens. well, what happens was these lands that were held by the tribe were then broken up into 160-acre parcels and of course there were some parcels that weren't claimed, so white settlers came in and took those or they would buy the 160 acres from native americans for a very reduced price, and the reservations were gutted because of the dodd severalti act. so while the intention might have been good, the result was horrific, disastrous. just another further irony of this whole attempt to gain equal rights for native americans was misused, abused and resulted in