Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity

Charles Curtis, a mixed-blood member of the Kansa-Kaws, was one of the most important figures in the debate over federal Indian policy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the Indian expert in Congress, he had significant power in forumulating and carrying out the assimilationist program that had been instituted, particularly by the Dawes Act, in the 1880s. This book shows that without the cooperation of the mixed-bloods, dispossession of Indian lands by the U.S. government would have been much more difficult to accomplish. The relationship between the metis and the loss of Indian lands, never before fully explored, is revealed.