Charles Curtis

Staying with the theme, “Can Indians be Modern and Maintain Their Identity,” I would like to write a bit about President Hoover’s Vice-President Charles Curtis. Born in Topeka, Curtis was almost a half-blood Indian and spent a majority of his youth on the Kaw Indian reservation where he learned the Kaw language. When he was still young, his white grandmother convinced him to leave the reservation and get an education so he would not end up “like most of the men on (the reservation).”

Curtis was elected to the US Congress in 1892 and quickly earned the respect of his peers in Washington. He had a "poker face" that masked his feelings, which some attributed to his Indian ancestry (major stereotype!). 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 titles to Kaw land in Oklahoma.

Eventually, Curtis became a US Senator and was one of the men who was involved in the infamous "smoke-filled room" meeting where the Republican Party nominated Warren G. Harding as their Presidential candidate. In 1928, Curtis made a bid for the Republican Presidential nomination but eventually settled for the Vice-Presidency under Hoover. However, Hoover and Curtis never really got along and Curtis often felt bored with his new position. But Curtis enjoyed the status of the vice-presidency and made much of his rise "from Kaw tepee to Capitol." As the first American of Indian ancestry to reach high office, he decorated his office with Native American artifacts and posed for pictures wearing Indian headdresses (talk about irony). After Hoover lost his re-election bid in 1932, Curtis left politics and died in 1936.

(I got the above information from: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Charles_Curtis.htm)

I find it shocking that Curtis, who greatly enjoyed his time on the reservation, not only turned his back on his ancestry but also used it to gain land for himself. Curtis was a respected man and had ability to win over crowds. Instead of using these qualities to help the people he enjoyed, grew up with, and the people who raised him once his mother died and his father went to prison (check the link for this info), he decided to backstab them. Maybe he could have downplayed his ancestry to help him rise in the political arena (I know this sounds bad, but it could very well be true), but once he had established himself, he could have used his position to help the Indians.