The first Native American to be Vice President of the United States of America was a Republican.\u00a0 Charles Curtis was born in the Territory of Kansas to a Kaw Nation mother and a Civil War veteran.\u00a0 He grew up speaking English, French, and Kaw.\u00a0 Although his mother died when he was three, he spent a significant portion of his childhood with her family on the Kaw Indian reservation while his father fought and was imprisoned during the Civil War.\u00a0 His childhood nickname was \u201cIndian Charley\u201d.\u00a0 He later moved to Topeka to live with his paternal grandparents while attending high school.<\/p>\n
Both his grandparents had a profound effect on Charles Curtis encouraging him to pursue his education.\u00a0 After high school, he worked part-time in a well-established law firm as an intern \u201creading law\u201d until he was able to pass the bar exam in 1881.\u00a0 This was the established method of obtaining a law license before the dawn of law schools.<\/p>\n
Charles Curtis entered politics in 1893 with his election to the House of Representatives.\u00a0 He was subsequently re-elected for six terms.\u00a0 He resigned in 1907 after being selected by the Kansas legislature to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by Senator Joseph R. Burton.\u00a0 At the time, the Kansas legislature voted to elect Charles Curtis to serve the next full term of the US Senate.\u00a0 At the end of that term in 1912, he was unsuccessful in getting the Kansas legislature to reelect him to the US Senate.\u00a0 After the passage of the 17th<\/sup> Amendment, he was elected to the US Senate in 1914 by the popular vote.\u00a0 He was re-elected for subsequent terms and remained in the US Senate until 1929 when he resigned to become the Vice President of the United States.\u00a0 His leadership in the US Senate was renowned as the Republican Whip from 1915 to 1924 and as the Senate Majority Leader from 1925 until his resignation in 1929.<\/p>\n In 1928, he ran on the Republican ticket with Herbert Hoover as Vice President. As fate would have it, soon after he took office, with the crash of 1929, the Great Depression set in.\u00a0 He promoted the idea of a five-day workweek with no wage reduction to promote job sharing and reduced unemployment.\u00a0 The negative impact of the Great Depression led to the defeat of the Republican ticket in the following election.\u00a0 Charles Curtis returned to private law practice.<\/p>\n Charles Curtis time in the House of Representatives was controversial.\u00a0 Based on his personal experience on the reservation, he saw it as beneficial to Native Americans to become educated and assimilate into general society.\u00a0 As a result, while in Congress, he authored and helped pass the Curtis Act of 1898.\u00a0 This legislation completely extinguished Indian land titles which allowed for Kansas to become a State.\u00a0 The communal lands were allotted to individually enrolled tribe members of various tribes.\u00a0 The tribal courts and self-government were also eliminated.\u00a0 The native populations were encouraged to accept individual land titles and agree to citizenship as a means of assimilation.\u00a0 \u00a0This gave enrolled members private property rights and all of the rights of US citizenship.<\/p>\n Charles Curtis also has the distinction of being the first Vice President to use the Bible to take his oath of office in the same manner as the President.\u00a0 He is also the first Vice President to be unmarried when he took office as his wife passed away in 1924.\u00a0 He took his half-sister to Washington DC to serve as his hostess.<\/p>\n The Republican Party has always been the party of opportunity, allowing anyone from anywhere to work their way to a place of prominence in the party based solely on principles and character.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first Native American to be Vice President of the United States of America was a Republican.\u00a0 Charles Curtis was born in the Territory of Kansas to a Kaw Nation mother and a Civil War veteran.\u00a0 He grew up speaking English, French, and Kaw.\u00a0 Although his mother died when he was three, he spent a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5842,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical"],"yoast_head":"\n