Status Updates From La otra esclavitud: Histori...

1880 John elk, (Winnebago)left his reservation to live in Omaha Nebraska & tried to register to vote. the Supreme Court ruled against him in elk V. Wilkins (1884). “Any Indian tribes, or any member thereof, have become so far advanced in civilization that they should be let out of a state of pupilage, & admitted to the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.

Indian citizenship act of 1924

Only natives who left their communities enjoy the majority society were counted as “taxed.“ Making a distinction between wild and civilized that deprived the vast majority of Native Americans of basic citizenship, rights and protections. According to the census of 1870, only 8% of American Indians were classified as taxed, and even that small majority were eventually stripped of their citizenship rights. P305

The civil rights act of 1866 and the 14th amendment in 1868 also failed to bring relief to Native Americans held in bondage. The statues protected and conferred citizenship, rights on “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subjects to the jurisdiction thereof,“ but quite crucially excluded “Indians not taxed.”

California

Indian act of 1850
authorize the arrest of “vagrant” natives who could then be “hired out” to the highest bidder. This act also enabled white persons to go before a justice of the peace to obtain Indian children “For indenture.”
This act may have affected as many as 20,000 Californian Indians, including 4000 children kidnapped from their parents & employed as domestic servants & farm laborers

California

Despite being a “free soil“ state, American settlers were buying and selling Indians as a common practice.

1846, the first American commander of San Francisco said “certain persons have been and still are imprisoning and holding to service Indians against their will.”

He warned the general public, “Indian population must not be regarded in the light of slaves.“