Editor’s note: Next Monday, Oct. 11, is Native American Day in South Dakota.
Did you know Kamala Harris is not the first person of color who’s served as vice president of the United States?
Charles Curtis was vice president under President Herbert Hoover. And his path to being one step away from the Oval Office is an intriguing one.
Curtis was born Jan. 25, 1860, in North Topeka, Kansas Territory. His father Orren Curtis was white; his mother Ellen Pappan, was a mix of Kaw, Osage, Potawatomi and French, according to Wikipedia. He spoke French and Kansa before learning English.
Curtis’ mother died when he was 3 and he lived with his maternal grandparents on the Kaw reservation while his father served in the Civil War. As he grew up, Curtis became known for his horse-riding skills.
“In 1873, the federal government forced the Kaw south to Indian Territory, which would later become Oklahoma,” according to smithsonianmag.com online.
Curtis’ grandparents, Louis and Julie Pappan were going, and he wanted to go too, but Julie had a talk with him.
“She invited him to her wagon and asked why he wanted to go to the Indian Territory. While she would have liked nothing better than to have him live with her, she told him that on the reservation he would end up ‘like most of the men on it,’ without an education or future prospects” and encouraged him to return to Topeka and attend school, according to senate.gov online.
Curtis would later say it was the best advice he ever received, claiming, “it was the turning point in my life,” according to senate.gov.
Encouraged by both sets of grandparents, especially his grandmothers, to get an education, Curtis became a lawyer and then a politician. By all accounts, he had personal charm aplenty and a willingness to work hard.
His charisma was part of the reason his race never held him back, according to Mark Brooks, site administrator for the Kansas Historical Society’s Kaw Mission site, on smithsonianmag.com.
“The one thing that might have lightened the persecution of Curtis was that he was half white. He’s light-complected, he’s not dark-skinned like a lot of Kanza. His personality wins people over – unfortunately, racists can like a person of color and still be a racist, and I think that’s kind of what happened with Charlie. He was just a popular kid,” Brooks said, according to smithsonianmag.com.
Curtis had enrolled in the Kaw Nation after its move to Indian Territory and never made a secret of his heritage, telling crowds he was “one-eighth Kaw Indian and a one-hundred per cent Republican,” according to senate.gov.
“He had an Indian jazz band play at the 1928 inauguration,” according to smithsonianmag.com, which also includes a Library of Congress picture of Curtis with the 13-tribe United States Indian Band at the U.S. Capitol.
Curtis’ background was recorded by the Emporia Gazette in 1891 by editor William Allen White.
“He was a handsome fellow, five feet ten, straight as his Kaw Indian grandfather must have been, with olive skin that looked like old ivory, a silky, flowing, handlebar mustache, dark shoe-button eyes …. a mop of crow’s wing hair, a gentle ingratiating voice and what a smile!” White wrote.
House Republican leader Thomas B. Reed took a liking to Curtis, called him “the Indian” and made him one of his lieutenants, according to senate.gov.
The Republican Party dominated in Kansas at the time and Curtis rode the wave, becoming a congressman, senator, and Senate majority leader. He was an advocate for women’s suffrage and child labor laws, according to smithsonianmag.com. “It is one of the proudest of his claims that he led the (Senate) floor fight for the Nineteenth Amendment,” which granted women the right to vote, according to senate.gov.
Although he had a favorable reputation for being able to work on both sides of the aisle, Curtis’ political career wasn’t without controversy.
He was considered an “assimilationist,” and supported some legislation that is now deemed to have harmed Indians, including the Dawes Act, which allowed the federal government to divide tribal lands, and he drafted the Curtis Act to extend the Dawes Act’s provisions, according to smithsonianmag.com. Curtis also supported Native American boarding schools, which took Indian children from the parents, sometimes by force.
Numerous reports of abuse have come to light since then.
Historian Jeanne Eder Rhodes, a retired professor at the University of Alaska and enrolled member of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, said Curtis was a product of his times and his position may have been political.
“At the time, however, Curtis’ positions were far from unique among Native Americans,” according to smithsonianmag.com, adding some were deadset against assimilation while others thought tribes must assimilate to survive.
Rhodes said if Curtis hadn’t supported assimilation, he wouldn’t have gone as far in politics.
“He’s proud of his heritage and yet he wants to be in a position where he can do something to support Native issues. I think he tried his best and I think he regretted, in the end, being assimilationist,” Rhodes said, according to smithsonianmag.com.
Vice presidency
Curtis’ political ambitions went all the way to the top. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge announced he would not run again, and Curtis planned to run for President. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, won the party nomination.
Apparently, the two weren’t fond of each other, according to smithsonianmag.com, but the Republican Party felt the combination would benefit its ticket.
“Hoover was tremendously unpopular with farmers. Curtis, Kansas’ beloved veteran senator, offered the perfect choice to balance out the Commerce Secretary,” according to smithsonianmag.com.
That’s how a Kansas-born Indian became Vice President of the United States in 1929.
“Curtis’ election as vice president made history because he was the only native Kansan and only Native American to hold the post, as well as the first person of color,” according to en.wikipedia.org. “The first person enrolled in a Native American tribe to be elected to such high office, Curtis decorated his office with Native American artifacts and posed for pictures by wearing Indian headdresses.”
After his term as vice president, Curtis stayed in Washington, where he died of a heart attack on Feb. 8, 1936, at age 76. His body was taken back to Kansas and buried next to his wife.
Facts about Charles Curtis, according to en.wikipedia.org:
• “Curtis was the first vice president to take the oath of office on a Bible in the same manner as the President.”
• “To date, Curtis is the last vice president who was unmarried during his entire time in office,” as his wife, Annie Elizabeth Baird, died in 1924. They had three children.
• “He was 69 when he took office, making him the oldest incoming vice-president at the time. He is now the second-oldest, behind Alben W. Barkley at 71.” Barkley served as vice president for Harry S. Truman.
For more about Curtis, read “In His Own Words: Kansan, Native American, Orphan, Jockey, Entrepreneur, Attorney, Politician, Senator and Vice President of the United States of America” by Charles Curtis; and “An Indian in the White House: The Story of Vice President Charles Curtis” by Tony McReynolds.
