LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – This week in history, a ground-breaking decision for the voting rights of American Indians was decided right here in Lake County.
June 2, 1924
On this day in 1924, Congress took the first step toward acknowledging the civil rights of American Indians in the United States by passing the Indian Citizenship Act.
At its core, the act was passed in partial recognition of those natives who fought bravely for the U.S. during the recent First World War. It is rather difficult to continue to suppress the rights of a people who share the same dangers of battle as their fellow countrymen.
The act finally acknowledged that American Indians were citizens of the U.S. – meaning they did not have to apply for citizenship and that they did not need to give up their tribal relations to receive it.
You might be surprised to learn that it was a Lake County Pomo man who first paved the way for similar rights here in California. His name was Ethan Anderson.
On Oct. 31, 1916, Ethan Anderson and George Vicente requested to be registered to vote in Lake County.
Since 1850, when the state constitution denied American Indians their right to vote, no native had successfully been registered in the state of California.
The Lake County Clerk, Shafer Matthews, gave the predictable response of “no,” and set off a legal battle that would find its way to the state Supreme Court (i).
The whole incident was supported – financially and in drummed-up public support – by the Indian Board of Cooperation, an organization created and headed by Methodist minister Frederick G. Collett and his wife in nearby Colusa County.
The Colletts actually got their start as part of the Northern California Indian Association, an organization that strove to improve the condition of American Indians in the area.
Signing a one-year contract with the NCIA in 1912 to provide education and missionary services to nearby tribes, the Colletts were well acquainted with the plight of Lake County Pomo.
But their motives were sometimes less than pure.
Tensions quickly arose between the NCIA and the Colletts, with the former claiming the latter were not actually doing the work they were contractually obligated to do.
Eventually, the Colletts split with NCIA and so was born the Indian Board of Cooperation, or IBC, in 1913.
Unlike the NCIA, the IBC charged American Indians “membership” fees for their service. It is therefore likely that Mr. Anderson and Mr. Vicente were charged for the support of the organization when they challenged Lake County’s decision to deny them the right to vote (ii).
In 1916 the question of American Indian voting rights revolved around a few key issues: whether or not the individual lived on an established reservation or rancheria and whether or not he had “met the requirement of the adoption of white customs.”
At the time, following the passing of the 1906 Burke Act, American Indians could not be considered citizens if they still lived as part of a recognized tribe. It was either citizenship to the tribe or citizenship to the U.S (iii).
Ethan Anderson and George Vicente, their lawyers argued, met these requirements.
By the time the California State Supreme Court granted the petition for a writ of mandate to be issued to the county recorder’s office demanding that Anderson be enrolled as a voter of the state in September of that year, Vicente was no longer one of the plaintiffs. This left Ethan Anderson alone in the test case.
His attorneys certainly did not have a hard time arguing in favor of Anderson, who by 1916 was at the very least a well-respected individual in the community if not yet a well-known one.
Anderson was born on Sept. 13, 1886, in Scotts Valley, but would live much of his life on the Upper Lake Rancheria (although he also claimed membership to Robinson Rancheria).
He attended the St. Turibius Mission school in Big Valley and served as a liquor suppression officer for the U.S. Indian Service in 1910.
After working for a year for the Indian Service he went to the then famous Carlisle Indian Institute in Pennsylvania, where he became a member of the debate team and made it on the honor roll (iv).
Although he initially entered Carlisle with the intention of going there for five years, he left for Lake County after three (v).
Upon returning to Lake County, Anderson met Collett and became the Secretary for the IBC in 1915 (vi).
Although Anderson lived on the Upper Lake Rancheria – and so technically “in tribal relations” – the land itself was the portion that had been privately owned by the tribe for decades. This caveat would be used by his defense to prove Anderson in no way lived as a ward of the federal government (vii).
The actual case was somewhat anticlimactic. After appearing before the Supreme Court in protest of the writ of mandate, Lake County Clerk Shaffer Matthews was quickly rebuffed.
Finally publishing its verdict in March of 1917, the court ruled that since Ethan Anderson was a non-reservation native and had adopted the customs of the white society, he was a citizen of California and therefore eligible to vote (viii).
In one lawsuit, Ethan Anderson had cracked the wall of American Indian disenfranchisement that had been built up for more than 60 years in the state of California.
The importance of the Anderson case went beyond granting natives the right to vote in the state.
The Anderson trial, although not directly having an effect on the passing of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, nevertheless served as a vital precedent in future court cases.
By admitting that they were citizens of the state, the court laid the foundation for the dismantlement of additional barriers to American Indians, including segregation in public schools.
For more stories of Lake County citizens and their role in national and state politics, go see the new exhibit at the Historic Courthouse Museum “Political Citizens: National Politics in Lake County.” It’s a must-see!
ENDNOTES
i. Lake County Bee, Sept. 6, 1916. Lake County Bee, Sept. 13, 1916.
ii. Larisa K. Miller. “Primary Sources on C. E. Kelsey and the Northern California Indian Association.” Journal of Western Archives 4, no. 1, Article 8 (2013): 4-5. Many sources who cover the growing political voice of American Indians in California mention the Colletts and the IBC, including the following: Jack D. Forbes. Native Americans of California and Nevada: A Handbook. (Healdsburg, CA: Naturegraph Publishers, 1969); and James W. Rawls. Indians of California: The Changing Image. (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).
iii. An act to amend section six of an act approved February eighth, eighteen hundred and eight-seven, entitled “An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians, and for other purposes.” Public Law 59-149, 59th Cong., 1st sess. (May 8, 1906), 182.
iv. Lake County Bee, June 23, 1938.
v. Application of Ethan Anderson for the Enrollment of himself in the Indian School at Carlisle, Pa. 1910. Carlisle Institute Archival Collection, Cumberland County Historical Society, Cumberland, PA.
vi. Lake County Bee, June 23, 1938.
vii. Khal Schneider. “Making Indian Land in the Allotment Era: Northern California’s Indian Rancherias.” Western Historical Quarterly 41 (Winter 2010): 446.
viii. For media coverage see Healdsburg Enterprise, March 17, 1917.
Antone Pierucci is the former curator of the Lake County Museum and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.
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