P
led by Lewis M. Meriam, to survey the living con-
ditions of Indians in the United States. After eight
months of fieldwork, the Meriam Commission as-
semble an 872-page report. Officially titled The
Problem of Indian Administration, the document be-
comes known popularly as the Meriam Report.
The Meriam Report is a scathing indictment
of federal Indian policy. It finds that the living
conditions of Native Americans are the worst of
any American ethnic group and far worse than
those of the average non-Indian American. Indian
diet, housing, and education are deemed sub-
standard, but even more alarming is the state of
health care among Indian populations. The report
maintains that diseases such as measles and tuber-
culosis are epidemic on reservations and that the
overall infant mortality approaches an appalling
19 percent.
The work with and for the Indi-
ans must give consideration to
the desires of the individual In-
dians. He who wishes to merge
into the social and economic
life of the prevailing civilization
of this country should be given
all practicable aid and advice in
making the necessary adjust-
ments. He who wants to remain
an Indian and live according to
his old culture should be aided
in doing so.... Whichever way
the individual Indian may elect
to face, work in his behalf must
be designed not to do for
him but to help him to do for
himself.”
—the Meriam Report’s
general recommendations for
reforming Indian policyThe Meriam Commission places the blame
for Indian poverty squarely on U.S. government
policies toward Indians. It is particularly critical of
Allotment, which in the 50 years since the passage
of the General Allotment Act (see entry for FEBRU-
ARY 8, 1887) has dispossessed Indians of more than
90 million acres of land. The report recommends
that the United States reevaluate its federal Indian
policies and that it overhaul the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. The findings of the Meriam Commission
will pave the way for radical reforms in the govern-
ment’s treatment of Indians in the 1930s (see entry
for JUNE 18, 1934).NovemberKaw Indian Charles Curtis is elected
vice president.
With the election of 1928, vice-presidential nomi-
nee Charles Curtis, on the Herbert Hoover ticket,
becomes the only person of Indian ancestry ever
chosen to occupy the second-highest position in the
U.S. government.
Curtis is one-eighth Kaw Indian on his moth-
er’s side. He also has distant relatives among the
Osage, owing to his great-great-grandfather’s mar-
riage to an Osage woman. Curtis spent some of his
youth on Kaw lands in Kansas, but he was elimi-
nated from the tribal roll in 1878 at age 18, because
he had not permanently settled on the Kaw reser-
vation in Indian Territory. He was reinstated as a
tribal member in 1902, just in time to receive plots
of land for himself and his children when the reser-
vation was allotted.
Curtis, trained as a lawyer, spent 37 years in
the U.S. Congress (1892–1907 in the House of
Representatives, 1907–29 in the Senate). As a Re-
publican congressman, he became an important
figure in the formation of federal Indian policy.
A stalwart supporter of Indian Assimilation into
non-Indian society, he most notably sponsored the
Curtis Act, which led the way for the dissolution of
the governments of the Five Civilized Tribes and for
the allotment of their lands in Indian Territory (see
entry for JUNE 28, 1898). Throughout his one term