The first multi-racial Vice President.

November 12, 2020 1:57 PM

Charles Curtis, who served as vice president to Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. Curtis’s mother was a Native American who belonged to the Kaw Nation, and he was raised on a reservation by his maternal grandparents. There are reasons he is not embraced by Native Americans today.
posted by JanetLand (18 comments total)

Wowwwwwwwwwwww. Yeah, I can see why he's not "embraced" to say the least.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:02 PM on November 12, 2020 [2 favorites]

I spent my morning attending a zoom training session on Native history and culture, and much of it dealt with the various eras of control of the hearts and minds of indigenous americans. The assimilation era, which Curtis grew up in, was followed by the termination era, which Curtis helped to craft. Curtis was not mentioned (it was a broad survey of the last few centuries), but I can see why his legacy would be viewed with mixed emotions by Native Americans today.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:38 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

... wow. That's a whole journey right there.
posted by suelac at 2:58 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this! I had seen that news organizations got guidance against referring to Kamala Harris as the first POC VP (VPOC?) due to Curtis's native ancestry but had not yet found time to investigate further.
posted by the primroses were over at 3:01 PM on November 12, 2020

I am struck by the caption to the picture at the top of the article: Charles Curtis, center, and a Native American, right, in 1929. No mention of the woman whatsoever and they also ignore what I assume/hope is a lack of record of the name of the Native man.
posted by hoyland at 3:46 PM on November 12, 2020 [4 favorites]

Thanks for posting. I didn't know this bit of history, and was glad to learn.
posted by brambleboy at 3:46 PM on November 12, 2020

POC VP (VPOC?)

POCVPOTUS?
VPOCOTUS?
VPOTUSOC?
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:54 PM on November 12, 2020

Charles Curtis, center, and a Native American, right, in 1929

Charles Curtis, center, and Native American, right is the Title devised by Library staff for this LOC catalog entry from the Harris & Ewing Collection. Harris & Ewing was a major Washington DC photo studio.

A separate LOC image has an unverified caption identifying the man as Chief Eagle Feather.
posted by zamboni at 5:02 PM on November 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

From her body language, I suspect that the unidentified woman in the photo is Annie Baird, Curtis' wife.
posted by monotreme at 6:10 PM on November 12, 2020

Annie Baird Curtis died in 1924, so if the estimated photo date of 1929 is correct, that’s not her. It may be Dolly Gann, Charles Curtis’ sister and his hostess on social occasions. I think that’s her in another HEC photo, Charles Curtis and wife?.
posted by zamboni at 7:06 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Imagine growing up on an Indian reservation and then ultimately writing a bill that stripped your own home tribe of any sort of land or rights. I went digging and found some more information on specifics. I couldn't find the law itself or any context on how Curtis ended up being the one to write it.

This book summary has the most information

The authority of the Kaw tribal government had been undermined by federal policies such as the Dawes Act of 1887, which gave land to heads of Indian families who were willing to relinquish their tribal affiliation for U.S. citizenship. In 1902, the Kaw Allotment Act distributed the remaining lands and put an end to the legal identity of the Kaw tribe.

The Kaw Nation site says this

The Kaw Allotment Act was passed on July, 1, 1902. The Act provided approximately 400 acres of land under government trusteeship to 249 persons whose names were placed on the final allotment rolls. What was left of the tribe went through a period of weak leadership.

The US Senate site has a remarkably opinionated paragraph as well, all but accusing him of self-dealing

Curtis devoted most of his attention to his service on the Committee on Indian Affairs, where he drafted the "Curtis Act" in 1898. Entitled "An Act for the Protection of the People of the Indian Territory and for Other Purposes," the Curtis Act actually overturned many treaty rights by allocating federal lands, abolishing tribal courts, and giving the Interior Department control over mineral leases on Indian lands. Having reinstated his name on the Kaw tribal rolls in 1889, Curtis was able, through his position on the House Indian Affairs Committee, to calculate the benefits he might receive from government allotments to his tribe. In 1902, he drafted the Kaw Allotment Act under which he and his children received fee simple title to Kaw land in Oklahoma.

I can vaguely sympathize with a part-Native American man growing up in in the late 1800s deciding to pursue an assimilationist course. Certainly for himself, but maybe also for his people. Maybe he genuinely thought that was the best way forward for them. But to then completely deprive them of any legal sovereignty or existence as a tribe and to acquire some land for yourself in the deal. It's hard to see that as anything but evil.
posted by Nelson at 7:21 PM on November 12, 2020 [13 favorites]

That was a fascinating bit of history, and that his grandmother encouraged him to assimilate seems to add shades of grey to any simple characterization of his subsequent actions as VP, however poorly they turned out.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:54 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am struck by the caption to the picture at the top of the article: Charles Curtis, center, and a Native American, right, in 1929. No mention of the woman whatsoever and they also ignore what I assume/hope is a lack of record of the name of the Native man.

There was a worse option in the Harris & Ewing collection: Curtis beside an identified Native American man, with a Library of Congress caption which begins, "Vice President Curtis receives peace pipe from Chief Red Tomahawk, slayer of Sitting Bull."
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:35 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

I can vaguely sympathize with a part-Native American man growing up in in the late 1800s deciding to pursue an assimilationist course. Certainly for himself, but maybe also for his people. Maybe he genuinely thought that was the best way forward for them. But to then completely deprive them of any legal sovereignty or existence as a tribe and to acquire some land for yourself in the deal. It's hard to see that as anything but evil.

Not to defend them in their own right, but the actions you describe are entirely consistent with genuinely believing in assimilation. He gave them American citizenship and their own land, when it was a choice between that and tribal identity. Being American and not Native American is what assimilation meant.
posted by plonkee at 11:37 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

When asked on the phone how members of the Kaw Nation feel about Curtis today, a representative said it wasn’t her place to say. Then she hung up.

What a way to punctuate a story like this. “Just in case we hadn't documented enough existential horror for indigenous people here, we figured we'd send one more ‘screw you’ their way. For science.” The paparazzi of genocide.
posted by XMLicious at 3:00 AM on November 13, 2020

Surprised at how many folks are sympathetic to the assimilationist argument; I thought I was going out on a limb expressing any positivity about it.

Just to make it clear, another alternative to "the Indian problem" would have been to make treaties with the sovereign Indian nations and then honor them.

The Kaw Nation website has a pretty good short history of the tribe's various treaties. I won't try to summarize the whole thing, but to give you a sample

the Kaw leadership went to the treaty table again in 1846. Arrogantly, and tragically indicative of racial attitudes of that time, Indian Superintendent Thomas Harvey in St. Louis boasted to his superiors in Washington that he could work out a new deal with “the degenerate and docile” Kaws in a matter of five days. This he did with the help of Indian Agent Richard W. Cummins in 1846. The 1846 treaty required the sale of the 2 million-acre reservation to the government for just over 10 cents an acre. The money received was to be divided between a 30-year annuity at $8,000 per year, $2,000 for educational and agricultural improvement, a $2,000 grist mill, and a concentrated 256,000-acre reservation at present-day Council Grove, extending south into Lyon County, Kansas.

In 1859 that 256,000 acres got whittled down to 80,000 acres during another treaty "negotiation" in which the Kaw were threatened with eviction from Kansas entirely. Then in 1872 the Kaw were forced out of Kansas anyway, losing their 80,000 home acres in exchange for 100,000 acres of Osage land in Oklahoma which the Kaw had to buy themselves. Curtis' 1902 law was the final dissolution of almost any idea of Kaw Nation land, with that 100,000 acres being split up among 249 people. (I say almost because they retained 260 acres; at least until the 1960s when it was flooded by a reservoir.)

America's history with Native Americans is a history of genocide, plague, and broken treaties. Maybe by the time 1902 came along Curtis told himself that he was doing his people a favor by letting 249 families keep a little shitty land and become US citizens. Sure is a dismal outcome.

Just to complete the story, Modern Indian history is a story of resilience and fortitude. The tribe got reorganized and federally recognized in 1959. They adopted a constitution in 1990 and have a functioning government. They currently number 3585 people, from a nadir of 194 in the 1890s.
posted by Nelson at 8:38 AM on November 13, 2020 [6 favorites]

Senate majority leader? That's impressive. More impressive than VP, it seems.
posted by doctornemo at 8:55 AM on November 13, 2020

In the context of this discussion, I recently read "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI" (David Grann) and I'd recommend it to anyone who needs a fuller understanding of how things were not just unfair, but murderously duplicitous all the way down the chain.
posted by elkevelvet at 10:06 AM on November 13, 2020 [4 favorites]