Charles Brent Curtis, first Native American Congressional member

Yesterday, January 25, was the birthday of Charles Brent Curtis, first Native American congressional representative, senator, and the first and only Native American Vice President. Born in 1860 in Kansas to a Kanza mother and a European American father, he was a registered member of the Kaw Nation and was also part Osage and Potawatomi.  He spent part of his childhood in the Kaw Nation, raised by his maternal Kanza grandmother, before he returned to Topeka in his teens. He worked at as many odd jobs as he could find to fund his way through high school, including working as a hack driver and a jockey, and was frequently called “Indian Charley” (Seitz, 144, and Unrau, 97). When he was nineteen, Curtis made an agreement with a Topeka lawyer A.H. Case to work as the custodian for Case’s law firm offices. Curtis read the firm’s law books—Blackstone and Kent’s Commentaries on American Law — in his off time (Unrau, 96). With no formal…

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