Native American Citizenship

Introduction

It is easy for most of us to become a citizen of the United States. For most U.S. citizens, the simple fact that we were born within the country’s borders makes us citizens. We become citizens at birth. But it was not until well into the 20th Century that a large group of Native-born people were given citizenship. The road to citizenship for Native people was even longer than for African Americans and women. Native Americans did not become citizens until 1924, and it would be even longer before Native Americans gained the right to vote.

How did Native Americans finally acquire citizenship? Was it by Congressional law, a Constitutional amendment, Presidential decree, or a Supreme Court decision? There is no one answer. There was a patchwork of approaches before Congress finally tried to fashion an answer for all Native peoples.

The full meaning of citizenship was debated early in the 20th century. Women weren’t allowed to participate fully in our democracy with the right to vote until 1920. African Americans were given citizenship after the Civil War, but discrimination and racial tensions prevented them from voting until well into the new century. The struggles of women and African Americans point out that citizenship does not automatically ensure voting rights.

For Native Americans, the journey on the road to citizenship by was marked by travels through a maze of U.S. Federal Indian policies. They left the Indian nations exhausted and nearly extinct by the time they were given citizenship. And it was another 20 years before they had the right to vote throughout the U.S.

Key Dates in the History of Relations between the United States and Native American Tribes.
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U.S. Indian Policy Timeline

Long History of Treaties

From 1778 to 1871, the U.S. federal government tried to determine its relationship with the various Native tribes by creating treaties. There were hundreds of these treaties, which were formal agreements between two independent nations. So Native American people were citizens of their tribe, living within the boundaries of the U.S. The Native tribes would give up their rights to hunt and live on huge pieces of land in exchange for trade goods, yearly cash payments, and promises that no further demands would be made on them. Most often, part of the land would be "reserved" only for the tribe’s use. The obvious effect of the treaties was to speed the transfer of Indian land to white settlers.

Select a tribe and year to read the text of each treaty or law summary that ceded land to the U.S.

NET Learning Services Based on an original Map of Native American land cessions via treaties in what became Nebraska Courtesy Bureau of American Ethnologies, Smithsonian Libraries, 1899

The obvious effect of the treaty process was to speed the transfer of Indian land to white settlers. As early as 1803, Thomas Jefferson recognized that the American people wanted land and that it might be difficult to get the land needed as long as Native people continued their current lifestyles. In Jefferson’s confidential letter to Congress asking for funds to explore the new territory.

The treaties led to a policy of Indian removal. Indians who resisted attempts by the whites to get Indian land by using treaties were often "removed" and sent further westward. The white settlers created Indian territories in Oklahoma and the western half of present-day South Dakota where the Indians would be out of the way of westward expansion. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson convinced the U.S. Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act. It provided money to relocate Native Americans by force if necessary.

However, the Cherokees in the state of Georgia, fought their removal in the federal Supreme Court. They thought they had won when Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokees were a "domestic dependent nation" that could not be forced by the state of Georgia to give up its land against its will. Unfortunately, President Jackson and the state of Georgia ignored the decision and moved the Native Americans to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. The Cherokees refer to their trip as "The Trail of Tears."

The Reservation System

Under the reservation system, American Indians kept their citizenship in their independent tribes, but life was harder than it had been. The reservations were designed to encourage the Indians to live within clearly defined zones. The U.S. promised to provide food, goods and money and to protect them from attack by other tribes and white settlers. Also, some educators and protestant missionaries felt that forcing the Indians to live in a confined space would make it easier to "civilize the savages."

Native Indians, after 1830, found themselves being confined to reservations. But, even the Indian Territory was not safe from white settlers. In 1854, the Federal Government closed the northern half of Indian Territory and created the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. They were immediately opened up to white settlement. Many of the tribes living on the land ended up on much smaller reservations.

The reservation system was a disaster for the Indians as the government failed to keep its promises. The nomadic tribes were unable to follow the buffalo, and conflict among the tribes increased, rather than decreased, as the tribes competed with each other for fewer resources.

Lands Sold Under Dawes Act

By 1871, the federal government stopped signing treaties with Native Americans and replaced the treaty system with a law giving individual Indians ownership of land that had been tribal property. This "Indian Homestead Act", official known as the Dawes Act, was a way for some Indians to become U.S. citizens.

There were two reasons why the treaty system was abandoned.

First, white settlers needed more and more land, and the fact that tribes were treated as separate nations with separate citizens made it more difficult to take land from them and "assimilate" them into the general population. Assimilation had become the new ideal. The goal was to absorb the tribes into the European-American culture and make Native people more like mainstream Americans.

Second, the House of Representatives was angry that they did not have a voice in these policies. Under the Constitution, treaties are ratified by the U.S. Senate, not the House, even though the House has to appropriate the money to pay for them. So Congress passed a compromise bill in 1871 that, in effect, brought an end to the treaty system. The bill contained the following language buried in an appropriations law for the Yankton Indians:

"PROVIDED, That hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe , or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty. . ."

American Indian Schools

As the Dawes Act was allocating tribal lands to individuals and selling other land to whites, Sen. Dawes was also instrumental in a system of Indian schools that were consciously designed to take the Indian out of Native American children. Richard H. Pratt was a cavalry officer who spent eight years in Indian Territory commanding a unit of African American Buffalo Soldiers. He was involved with the campaign to keep Indians on their reservations and would track down hunting parties and return them to the reservation. He was appalled by the desperate conditions he saw.

Pratt’s solution was to take Indians off of the reservation and integrate them into white society through education. His intentions were probably good, although he often characterized his approach in stark terms:

"I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked . . . Kill the Indian and save the man."

He got support from Sen. Dawes and from groups of Indian reformers like the Quakers. In 1879, the federal government turned over a deserted military barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to Pratt along with money to start his school. Pratt wasted no time in hiring a staff and teachers. Then, he traveled west to the Rosebud and Pine Ridge agencies just across the Nebraska border to convince reluctant parents to send their children halfway across the country to become white men. That first year, 82 children went to Carlisle to be educated. Some were from families who wanted the education, others were from poor families, and some were orphans who had lost their parents.

The school grew, in part because Pratt used ingenious "before and after" photographs to demonstrate his success to potential white supporters. Over 10,000 Indian children went through the Carlisle program in the 39 years it was open. Eventually, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Thomas Morgan, expanded the educational effort and built a total of 19 schools across the country. One school was built in Genoa, Nebraska.

But the schools gradually developed critics. For one thing, many of the children died at school as they were exposed to diseases for which they had no natural immunity. Few graduated during the eight available years of schooling. Many young students were so homesick that they tried to run away, despite the fact that it might be over a thousand miles back home. Punishment was harsh for those that ran or for those who could not follow a set of militaristic rules. They were punished for speaking their Native languages. There were disagreements over the kind of education that was best to teach. And despite all the punishment and intensive living experience, the children tended to maintain their sense of Indian identity. Most did not assimilate.

Finally, in 1928, the Brookings Institute was hired to study "The Problem of Indian Administration". That report criticized the poor conditions of buildings in the system, the care for students and a poor curriculum. The Hoover administration was embarrassed by the report. It increased spending on Indian education, but began to press for better schools on the reservations. It was just too expensive to ship kids halfway across the country. Throughout the 1930s, most of the Indian schools, including Carlisle and Genoa, closed.

Citizenship for Native Veterans

During World War I, about 9,000 American Indians served in the armed services. They fought and died in defense of a nation that still denied most of them the right to participate in the political process. Congress, as a result, enacted legislation on November 6, 1919, granting citizenship to Indian veterans of World War I who were not yet citizens.

The 1919 American Indian Citizenship Act did not grant automatic citizenship to American Indian veterans who received an honorable discharge. The Act merely authorized those American Indian veterans who wanted to become American citizens to apply for and be granted citizenship. Few Indians actually followed through on the process, but it was another step towards citizenship.

1924 Indian Citizenship Act

Until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Indians occupied an unusual status under federal law. Some had acquired citizenship by marrying white men. Others received citizenship through military service, by receipt of allotments, or through special treaties or special statutes. But many were still not citizens, and they were barred from the ordinary processes of naturalization open to foreigners. Congress took what some saw as the final step on June 2, 1924 and granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.

Granting citizenship was not a response to some universal petition by American Indian groups. Rather, it was a move by the federal government to absorb Indians into the mainstream of American life. No doubt Indian participation in World War I accelerated granting citizenship to all Indians, but it seems more likely to have been the logical extension and culmination of the assimilation policy. After all, Native Americans had demonstrated their ability to assimilate into the general military society. There were no segregated Indian units as there were for African Americans. Some whites declared that the Indians had successfully passed the assimilation test during wartime, and thus they deserved the rewards of citizenship.

Dr. Joseph K. Dixon, an active proponent of assimilating the "vanishing race" into white society, wrote:

"The Indian, though a man without a country, the Indian who has suffered a thousand wrongs considered the white man’s burden and from mountains, plains and divides, the Indian threw himself into the struggle to help throttle the unthinkable tyranny of the Hun. The Indian helped to free Belgium, helped to free all the small nations, helped to give victory to the Stars and Stripes. The Indian went to France to help avenge the ravages of autocracy. Now, shall we not redeem ourselves by redeeming all the tribes?"

So, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 proclaimed:

"BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and house of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all non citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property. (Approved June 2, 1924)"

What Citizenship Meant

Not all Native Americans viewed citizenship as something wonderful. Their experiences in dealing with Washington and the states did not give them much confidence in the government or desire to participate in it. Some tribes feared they would have to give up their own sovereignty and the federal government would deny its treaty obligations. In the words of one Native American:

"United States citizenship was just another way of absorbing us and destroying our customs and our government. How could these Europeans come over and tell us we were citizens in our country? We had our own citizenship. By its [the Citizenship Act of 1924] provisions all Indians were automatically made United States citizens whether they wanted to be so or not. This was a violation of our sovereignty. Our citizenship was in our nations."

On the other hand, there were Native Americans who saw voting as a right that had been denied to them too long. Maine was one of the last states to overturn state legal barriers to Indian voting. That rankled Henry Mitchell, an Indian canoe maker:

"The Indians aren’t allowed to have a voice in state affairs because they aren’t voters. All they [the politicians] have to do out there is to look out for the interests of the Indians. Just why the Indians shouldn’t vote is something I can’t understand. One of the Indians went over to Old Town once to see some official in the city hall about voting. I don’t know just what position that official had over there, but he said to the Indian, ‘We don’t want you people over here. You have your own elections over on the island, and if you want to vote, go over there.’ "

Did the 1924 Act really mean the end of the journey in the Native American’s march to equality or was it merely a rest stop? By the time the 1924 Citizenship Act was passed, two-thirds of all Indians had already gained citizenship. And while all Native Americans were now citizens, not all states were prepared to allow them to vote. Western states, in particular, engaged in all sorts of legal ruses to deny Indians the ballot. It was not until almost the middle of the 20th century that the last three states, Maine, Arizona and New Mexico, finally granted the right to vote to Indians in their states. And the policies of the federal government towards American Indians continued to change and evolve.