Native American Citizenship and Competency During the Allotment and Assimilationist Era

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Franklin Knight Lane as Secretary of the Interior and tasked him with transforming the "Indian" into a self-sufficient and independent citizen. Subsequently, Lane initiated the first formal process for Native American individuals to become U.S. citizens, through competency commissions, a program of evaluation conducted by federally appointed inspectors between 1915 and 1920.¹

Land Allotment

The period between 1887 and 1934 is known to Native American historians as the Allotment and Assimilation Era. During this time, federal policies towards Native Americans focused on ending the special trust relationship between tribal nations and the U.S. government. To achieve this, the federal government focused on breaking up tribal land ownership and incorporating Native Americans into the dominant settler society. Lane's competency program built on the 1887 Dawes Severalty and 1906 Burke Acts to establish a formalized process for individual Native Americans to leave the trust status.

The U.S. government hoped to sever the special trust relationship with Native Americans because it sought a solution to the so-called "Indian Problem," the uncertain place of Native Americans following the period of repeated Indigenous-settler conflict in the West and the subsequent failures of the reservation system. In the wake of the American Civil War, Radical Republicans desired to permanently establish equality for all racial groups in the United States, and to rebuild a unified nation by bringing distinct and independent groups into mainstream American society.² For Federal Indian Policy, this meant that the former Reservation Policy, enacted under President Grant, was no longer in line with the goals of the nation because it isolated Native Americans and gave them a distinct political status.

The Dawes Act, passed in 1887, was the principal legislation enacted to break up communal ownership of land on reservations by dividing the reservations into 160-acre individually owned parcels and selling surplus lands to settlers. This process, known as allotment, also worked towards the second aim of federal Indian policy during the period: assimilation. Selling surplus lands to American settlers brought Native American families into greater contact with the dominant settler society, as their allotments often neighbored settler families, creating a checkerboarded pattern on reservations.

The allotment and assimilation policies put in motion during this time intended to transform Native Americans into self-supporting and independent members of American society, undoing their status as wards of the State, a group to which the federal government owed obligations. The U.S. government had long supported sending Native American children to boarding schools, hoping these institutions would erase Native American cultures and Americanize the children. Allotment worked in a similar vein, but for adults, as it transformed the structure of the Native American family and changed the gender dynamic, daily life, and economic beliefs of Native American individuals.

The 1906 Burke Act allowed Native Americans to end the trust period of allotment early, which also meant gaining full title to their lands and full political rights of U.S. citizenship. Instead of waiting 25 years, a Native American candidate needed to prove they were "competent" to handle their own affairs without government supervision. But the criteria for determining competency was ill-defined.

Competency Commissions

Secretary of the Interior Lane's competency commissions consisted of two inspectors who traveled the Western reservations, met with Native American candidates and their reservation agents, and toured their property. To determine whether an individual was ready for citizenship, competency commissions collected information on what they determined were essential attributes of an American, which were listed in the formal applications to the Secretary of the Interior. Once the inspector was convinced of a candidate's preparedness, they were encouraged to apply for fee simple title to their lands and U.S. citizenship.

When immigration to the United States spiked in the Progressive Era (1890-1920), reformers became concerned with the moral fiber of the nation. With so many new peoples entering American society, they used school curriculum to teach new generations key values perceived as essential for the model American citizen. Such values also informed Native American policies since, like the school curriculums aimed at the children of immigrants, Native American boarding schools also taught citizenship in a push to create a more homogenous society where every group contributed to the whole. Competency commissions, though framed as individualized assessments, were informed by racialized presumptions when they evaluated Native American applicants for U.S. citizenship. Native men and women were subjected to cultural measurements including dress, family structure, and economic habits, which reinforced white middle-class norms as the legal benchmarks of citizenship.

As seen in the sample set of three applications, women's submissions highlighted the following qualities as important for female citizenship: marriage to a person of the white race; childbearing and assimilating her children; purity; role as a domestic housewife; "appearance" of intelligence; furnished house. For men, applications used common descriptors, including "industrious" and "progressive." The form listed similar qualities as important across applicants: not addicted to intoxicants; large number of cattle and diversity; amount of acreage cultivated; blood quantum; "citizens dress" (wearing pants, suit, and short hair); married; size of farmhouse, barns, and amount of machinery present on the property. Once approved, the inspectors returned to the reservation to conduct the naturalization ceremony.

Naturalization Ceremony

One of the most glaring pieces of evidence towards the intersection between race and law in Progressive-era Indian Policy was the naturalization rituals designed by Secretary Lane which occurred once applications had been approved. As seen in the Ritual on Admission to Full American Citizenship, these ceremonies were designed as naturalization events, where the Native American individual exited federal trust status, gaining U.S. citizenship and land patents. Lane designed the ritual "to emphasize by emblems to the Indian's mind the change that was taking place in his life."³ These naturalization rituals demanded not only allegiance, but a visible enactment of whiteness: a legal and racial performance in which Native identity had to be symbolically and materially shed in favor of the national vision of a citizen.

Allotment encouraged Native Americans to take up farming, which brought them into the American economy and, policymakers hoped, would invite a capitalistic mindset. The ritual emphasized the importance of a changed lifestyle for Native citizenship when, having changed into citizens dress and been handed a plow, the government representative would say: "This act means that you have chosen to live the life of the white man—and the white man lives by work. From the earth we all must get our living." During the naturalization ritual, male citizen applicants received farming tools, purses, buttons, pins, and a flag in exchange for their former tool, the arrow. Through allotment, Native American men took on patriarchal roles when women had traditionally occupied the head of the family, and the ritual epitomized this concept; handed a purse, participants were encouraged to save their earnings to provide for their wives and children.

Allotment changed the gender dynamics within Native American families when it encouraged men to become yeomen farmers and women to remain in the home, completing domestic tasks such as sewing, caring for children, and creating a welcoming household. For Progressive Era white Americans, these changes mirrored the gender dynamics within their own society. Women were handed a sewing bag and a purse during the rituals, because, "This means that you have chosen the life of the white woman—and the white woman loves her home. The family and the home are the foundation of our civilization. Upon the character and industry of the mother and home maker largely depends the future of our Nation."

Lane's competency commissions put into operation a legal regime, set out in the allotment acts and the 1884 Supreme Court case Elk v. Wilkins, which used the law to evaluate racial identity and regulate access to U.S. citizenship. Federal policies regulated how Native Americans should look, labor, and live, and anchored citizenship eligibility to these racialized ideals. These policies fractured tribal landholdings and restructured Native identity to align with Progressive Era values of the model American citizen. Embossed with symbolism and ostentatious displays of loyalty, the citizenship ceremonies closed with a patriotic declaration of allegiance. The Native person declared, "I will give my hands, my head, and my heart to the doing of all that will make me a true American citizen."

Many Native Americans gained citizenship arbitrarily (without their consent), and a significant portion of Native-owned lands were lost because of changes in taxation. However, U.S. citizenship also offered Native Americans critical tools to assert greater individual rights, navigate federal oversight and protect tribal interests. Citizens could freely lease or sell lands, had independent control over their finances, access to legal representation, state civil and criminal protection, freedom from wardship, rights to create contracts, vote, and unrestricted movement off-reservation.

Discussion Questions

How did competency commissions fit with wider campaigns for nation-building in Progressive Era America?

How did competency commissions codify racialized norms as preconditions for U.S. citizenship, and in what ways did the legal construct of “competency” function as a performance of whiteness within that framework?

What does the legal ritual of naturalization for Native Americans reveal about Progressive Era beliefs about race, gender, and national identity?

In what ways did the federal government control and evaluate Native American appearance?

Can legal “inclusion” function as a form of erasure? How did policies granting citizenship simultaneously dissolve Native sovereignty and identity? Could citizenship also be used in positive ways for Native Americans?