In the 1930s, when political representation of minorities in the United States was practically non-existent, the proud Native American Charles Curtis became vice president.
The 2020 United States presidential election made history in many different ways. One of the most promising and exciting developments was the election of Kamala Harris, who became the first woman, and the first non-Caucasian woman, to be elected to the office of vice president. Harris is of African American and Asian American heritage and will be the first person from either group to hold the second-highest office in the United States.
Harris, however, is not the first person of colour to have reached this milestone: Charles Curtis, a Native American who grew up on a Kaw reservation in Kansas, served as vice president of the United States between 1929 and 1932. Curtis, an interesting historical figure who is often overlooked, was a charismatic politician with a successful career in Washington at a time when minority representation was far rarer than it is today. During his time in office, Curtis proudly displayed his Native American heritage and was an outspoken advocate of women's suffrage, while no contributions on his part to the fight for the socio-economic rights of Native Americans are remembered.
Curtis was born in 1860 in North Topeka, which at the time was part of the Kansas Territory, a region that had not yet been fully incorporated into the United States. In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, the eastern part of the territory was annexed to the Union of northern states (at the time the north and south were divided and engaged in a civil war) and named the State of Kansas. This name derives from Kansa, which is what European colonisers called the Kaw Native American people. Curtis's mother, Ellen Pappan, was the great-granddaughter of Kaw chief White Plume, who had provided assistance during the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804, a westward discovery mission undertaken by the colonisers after expanding their territory through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Ellen also had Potawatomi and French heritage, and one of her ancestors was chief Pawhuska of the Osage tribe. Curtis's father, Orren Curtis, was of English, Scottish and Welsh descent.
Charles Curtis spent his childhood living between the Native and white communities. His first words were in Kansa and French, reflecting his mother's roots, but Ellen died when Curtis was only three years old. His father was largely absent during his childhood, and so his grandparents shared the care of the boy. Curtis spent several years on the Kaw reservation: "I had my bows and arrows," he later recalled, "and together with the other boys on the reservation I shot arrows at coins that visitors would place on little sticks on purpose." Thanks to his knowledge of the Kaw language, Curtis fitted in well within the Native community and became an excellent bareback rider (that is, riding a horse without a saddle, ed.). During his adolescence he also gained a certain fame as a jockey in Topeka.
In 1873, when Curtis was thirteen, his maternal grandparents left Kansas with other members of the Kaw tribe, heading for the Indian territories of Oklahoma. Charles wanted to follow them and live on the reservation, but his grandmother Julie convinced him to pursue an education: Curtis therefore returned to Topeka to live with his paternal grandparents and later observed that this had been a turning point in his life. After secondary school, Curtis studied law and was admitted to the Kansas Bar at the age of 21.
From a young age he had shown a marked interest in politics, and had carried a torch during a Republican parade in 1880 for James Garfield's presidential campaign. In 1884 Curtis was elected prosecutor of Shawnee County; in 1889 he ran for a vacant seat in Congress and lost the nomination by a single vote. His political position was conservative, in favour of tariffs and prohibition, but over the course of his career he demonstrated a great ability to reconcile even opposing aspects and was remembered for his phenomenal memory — he could recall the names and life circumstances of the people he represented. "His politics were always purely personal. Issues never bothered him," journalist William Allen White once said. In 1884 the newly elected county prosecutor married Anna Baird, with whom he had three children.
Curtis was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1892. The first decade of his political career was centred on his work on the Committee on Indian Affairs, which culminated in the Curtis Act of 1898. This law, whose full title was "An Act for the protection of the people of the Indian Territory, and for other purposes," did not, however, have a positive impact on the rights of Native American tribes. It led to the allotment of tribal lands to private owners and the abolition of tribal courts and governments. With a single stroke of the pen, the tribes lost more than 36 million hectares of their lands.
The Curtis Act in practice paved the way for the incorporation of Oklahoma into the United States and laid the groundwork for subsequent land grabs by the United States government. As a Kaw member, Curtis ultimately benefited personally from another piece of legislation connected to the Curtis Act: in 1902, under the Kaw land allotment act (drafted by Curtis himself), he and his children received full ownership, known as "fee simple title," of Kaw lands in Oklahoma. This is undoubtedly the most controversial part of Curtis's legacy. It should be noted, however, that the legislator would have been very unlikely to be able to counter the appropriation and private allotment of Native lands by the United States government, a trend that had already been set in motion by colonisation. Considering the power of these forces, one could argue that Curtis would not have had a political career, let alone a successful one, had he been a staunch defender of Native American rights.
Charles Curtis served in the House until 1907, when the Kansas state legislature elected him senator. He served one term, continued to push for higher tariffs and heavily influenced the Payne-Aldrich Act, which resulted in an increase in tariffs on imported goods to the point of causing a split in the Republican Party. As a result of this rift, Curtis lost his Senate seat in 1913. However, the following year, with the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, the population was able to vote directly for its Senate representatives for the first time. Thanks to his legendary closeness to voters and the general tendency of the era towards conservative candidates, Curtis was able to win back his Senate seat. He was chosen for the key role of party whip, a position whose function is to ensure that representatives vote along party lines.
In 1918 the Republicans won a majority in the Senate and Curtis's role became even more important. Over the following two years, he was a staunch supporter of women's suffrage and played a fundamental role in the process that led to the extension of the vote to women in 1920. A journalist of the time said that "no one ever accused him of being a progressive, but feminists nonetheless saw in him an ally, and one of the political actions he was most proud of was his prominent role in the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment."
At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Curtis was part of a small group of influential figures who brought about the nomination of Warren G. Harding. When Harding won the presidential election, Curtis entered the inner circle of political power in the United States. In 1925 he became majority leader, and conservative Pennsylvania senator George Wharton Pepper observed that Curtis "showed a remarkable talent for achieving good results for his party through what in international parlance are called 'conversations' with the other side. He was unusually skilled at doing deals."
During the 1920s, Curtis began to harbour presidential ambitions and rumour had it that he was the most promising vice-presidential candidate in 1924. However, he withdrew from the race because his wife Anna had fallen ill. Anna died on 29 June 1924. In 1927, President Coolidge, who had assumed office following Harding's death and had been re-elected in the 1924 elections, announced that he would not be standing the following year. The majority of the population assumed that Coolidge intended to make Curtis his successor. The latter ran a rather low-key campaign for the 1928 Republican primaries, continuing to devote most of his attention to his work in the Senate. Herbert Hoover was the frontrunner throughout the campaign and ultimately won the election. Curtis had spoken out against him during a speech in Kansas, and the two had never been on particularly good terms. Nevertheless, the Republicans decided that Curtis would be the perfect running mate to accompany Hoover in the presidential race.
On 6 November 1928, American citizens elected Herbert Hoover as President of the United States. Thus Charles Curtis became the first vice president with Native American heritage, and the first person of colour (although this terminology was not in use at the time) in the country's history. It was a remarkable achievement, especially given that Curtis had been only the third Native American ever to be elected to the House and the second to win a Senate seat. During his term as vice president, he continued to demonstrate his support for women: his secretary, Lola M. Williams, was the first woman ever to reach a senior position in the United States.
Curtis always showed great pride in his cultural heritage, and adorned his office with Native American artefacts and posed for several photographs wearing traditional headdresses. Unfortunately, relations between Hoover and his second-in-command did not improve, and the latter was rarely asked to attend cabinet meetings and was never consulted on matters of state. Hoover was an intellectual, a political idealist, whereas for Curtis politics was a personal matter.
The Hoover presidency was marked by the market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, which the administration failed to mitigate. Curtis, shut out from the corridors of power, became almost a figure of ridicule. A caricature of him was even created in George and Ira Gershwin's Broadway musical "Of Thee I Sing", which featured the character of Alexander Throttlebottom, a vice president who could only visit the White House as a tourist. When Hoover and Curtis ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, they lost the election by a landslide. This marked the end of Curtis's political career; he decided to remain in Washington to practise law until his death in February 1936.
Curtis's vice presidency was not particularly active or decisive and, unfortunately, did not lead to an immediate increase in the political representation of Native Americans. Nevertheless, the very fact that he was able to reach such a position is a testament to his resilience and political abilities. His legacy as the first vice president of colour, second Native American senator and third indigenous member of Congress can still be considered an essential precedent for the increase in representation we have seen in recent years.
Native Americans remained without representation in the Senate until 1993, when Ben Campbell, a Colorado politician of Northern Cheyenne heritage, won a seat in the upper chamber. The situation in the House of Representatives has been slightly better; fifteen Native Americans have won a seat there since Curtis moved to the Senate in 1907. Notably, the last three are women: Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat elected in 2019, New Mexico Democrat Deb Haaland, also in 2019, and Yvette Herrell, a Republican representing New Mexico's second congressional district, who was voted in at the last elections on 3 November. Davids also made history by becoming the first LGBT Native American person to serve in Congress. Her story, just like that of Harris, gives us reason to hope that American society is finally moving towards a political representation that more realistically reflects the diversity of the social fabric of the United States.
