Charles Curtis

Kansas senator of Kaw ancestry who became Senate majority leader and then vice president under Herbert Hoover.

Overview

Curtis, who spent part of his childhood on the Kaw reservation, served in the House from 1893 to 1907 and then in the Senate, where his skill at counting votes and managing colleagues made him party whip and, from 1924, Republican majority leader. In the House he sponsored the Curtis Act of 1898, which dissolved tribal governments in Indian Territory and pushed the allotment of their lands, a policy later judged harshly. Elected vice president with Hoover in 1928, he became the first person of acknowledged Native American ancestry to hold that office. The two were defeated by Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.