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UNEVERS OF
=,
NEBRASKA
Curly Hair and Big Feet: Physical Anthropology and the Implementation of Land
Allotment on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation
Author(s): David L. Beaulieu
Source: American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 281-314
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
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American Indian Quarterly
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CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET: Physical Anthropology and
the Implementation of Land Allotment on the White Earth
Chippewa Reservation
by
David L. Beaulieu
"Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion but it is needed for
decision-making. The genesis of ideas and the authentication of knowledge
are a part of a continuous process which ultimately brings knowledge to
bear on decision. What matters is the knowledge actually used at the decision-
making point not the knowledge in process of development or authentication
nor even the knowledge clearly apparent to particular individuals or organizations somewhere in society."
Thomas Sowell Knowledge and Decisions
Introduction
THE TERMS MIXED-BLOOD, half breed and Indian have had many
various meanings. We are familiar with the common uses of these
terms. We are less familiar with their formal political-legal meanings and the destructive impact their official usage has had upon
tribal societies and communities in America.
For the most part contemporary political legal definition and
scholarly discussion regarding people of mixed Indian-European descent has been subsumed under the more generic term "American
Indian." Yet this has not invariably been the case. The implementation
of the land allotment policy among the Chippewa of the White Earth
Reservation in Minnesota represented a focused political legal and
scholarly discussion concerning mixed-blood Indians in the years 1906–
1915. The interaction and relationship of the political legal debates and the scholarly discussions in this example focus significant attention
on broader questions concerning the role and function of scholars in
the development and implementation of federal Indian policy and the particular relationship of the social sciences to American Indian
societies.
The provisions and intentions of the General Allotment Act of
1887 are generally known to most students of Indian-European relations in the United States.2 The implementation of the allotment policy at
the White Earth Reservation, however, represents a little known and
281
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AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
282
unique combination of the tragic and absurd. Perceived initially by
government policy makers as among the most desirable locations in
the United States available for the "civilization of American Indians,"
the White Earth Reservation was to become the example of what a
civilization could accomplish with a dependent people to despoil
through fraud and corruption.
Into the middle of what has been labeled the "tragedy of White
Earth"—almost as if they were thoughtfully provided for the slapstick,
comic relief, of future generations of students too burdened by the
conclusions of the scholarship to cry—two anthropologists came to
White Earth Reservation to measure, to scratch the skin, pull the hair
and otherwise physically examine the Chippewa people living there
to determine who was a mixed-blood Indian and who was full-blood
Indian. Given the legislative history associated with the White Earth
Reservation, the determination of who was mixed-blood and who
was full-blood was initially necessary to facilitate the allotment and
disposition of the lands and pine resources of the reservation. Full-
blood Indians and minors were considered legally incompetent and
were by this definition unable to sell their allotments, and by theory
also in need of the government's protection and representation. The
appeal to the science of physical anthropology to aid in such a de-
termination became essential for the United States Attorney who
sought to bring charges against individual entrepreneurs, lumber
companies and banks in the state who had illegally obtained allotments
from Indians ineligible to sell their allotments.
The records of the National Archives contain transcripts of the
Federal court proceedings in the land allotment fraud cases of the
White Earth Chippewa Reservation. Among the witnesses were Dr.
Albert E. Jenks, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Min-
nesota, and Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of the Division of Physical
Anthropology of the United States National Museum of the Smithsonian
Institution. It is a rare moment in the historiography of the relationship
of anthropology and the other social sciences to American Indians to
find an example where the colonial nature and political purposes and
uses of the academic enterprise seem so obvious and direct. The land
allotment fraud cases by ironic paradox also provide a rare opportunity
where the Indian subjects of research were able, through their govern-
ment attorneys, to examine and cross-examine the experts, the
expertise of their science, and the morality of their purpose and function.
Professor Albert E. Jenks Lecture
Professor Albert E. Jenks entered his advanced course in anthro-
pology at the University of Minnesota in 1909, evidently confident of
the importance of his topic, and assured by the critical acclaim given
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283
his courses in the 1907 American Anthropologist that the new discipline
of anthropology would most likely have a long tenure at the University
of Minnesota. "There is a growing demand for the professional an-
thropologist in our universities, " asserted the editor of the American
Anthropologist whose article, "Anthropology at Minnesota University",
presented syllabi of the courses of the Department of Sociology of
the University of Minnesota. As an illustration of the value of an-
thropology to university students, the editor noted the increasing
enrollment in the course 'Anthropology by Name' that Professor
Jenks had founded in 1906.
Thomas Uzzell, who sat through Professor Jenks' course in his
senior year, must have had a similar sense of the importance of his
topic for he saved and preserved his lecture notes to give them back
to the University of Minnesota in December of 1966. As Mr. Uzzell sat
to record the lecture, Professor Jenks began with a discussion of the
stages of culture and the order of hierarchy of the five races of man
It was noted that the enlightenment state of culture, which stressed
the development of the individual, was the highest stage of culture
and was represented by the example of America. This stage was followed
in order by civilization, barbarism and lastly by the primitive stage.
Important to this ranking was the presence of reading, writing and
agricultural development.
It was also noted that the races were ordered in a hierarchy that
placed the white race on top followed by the yellow, the brown, the
red and lastly, the black race. Cultural advance and racial advance
went hand in hand and depended, according to Professor Jenks, on
cultural opportunity. Despite the assertion that the yellow race was
ahead of the white race in economy of living and nerve energy and
in being less susceptible to diseases, Jenks felt that the white race
was due to lead because of its greater originality and initiative and
because of the greater comingling of races in white countries.
Jenks defined race as a group of people having many variations
grouped about one definite type. It was noted that head form was the
most persistent trait in races and that the cause of head form was a
great anthropological problem. Even so it was understood that head
form and mental characteristics follow the example of the father and
that the color of skin and eyes and the texture and color of hair
generally follow the example of the mother.
In 1908 Dr. Jenks, in commenting on the value of his research at
the University of Minnesota, felt that his work in Physical Anthropology
was important because "when the scientific fact of human heredity
becomes common knowledge such educated public opinion will gradu-
ally impel people toward a rational improvement of the race of
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284
AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
man.' His research in the cultural study of foreigners was viewed
with similar logic. Taking what was described as 'the new advanced
position,' Jenks felt 'American civilization should not destroy the
peculiar valuable characteristics of her various immigrants, but should
foster and accentuate all the different worthy ones.' In order to un-
derstand social life at the 'high steps up the ladder,' Jenks saw his
research among primitive peoples as essential; 'never before has the
student of present social conditions so appreciated the necessity of
starting at the bottom of the ladder of human culture.'
Albert E. Jenks received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison in 1899. After a year with the Bureau of American Ethnology
at the Smithsonian Institution, he received a position with the Bureau
of Non-Christian Tribes, United States Commission, Philippine Islands.
The bureau's name was changed to The Ethnological Survey for the
Philippine Islands, enlarging the scope of work to include the Christian
and Mohammedan peoples of the Philippines in August of 1903, a few
months before Dr. Jenks was appointed chief of the survey. Part of Dr.
Jenks' responsibility in the Philippines included 'investigating and
reporting on practical operations of all legislation for such people.'
In connection with his work in the Philippines and for bringing 'Columbus style' natives from the Philippines to the United States for
a living exhibit at the St. Louis Exposition, Jenks received four gold
medals of recognition.
In the fall of 1913 Jenks, now a professor of
Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, was asked, as part of a
$22 million endowment for research by the Carnegie Institution of
Washington, to make a report upon the Western Hemisphere and
islands of the Pacific as a field of anthropological investigation.
In viewing anthropology as an applied science, Jenks noted in his report
to the Carnegie Institution, 'It must not be supposed that the anthropologist is limited in his interest and his field work to man's
evolution of the past. He knows man is still in the making. He studies
man's present-day evolution in its individual and ethnic aspects. He
makes his studies of both the past and the present, with an eye on
the future, in order that those things which vitiate or benefit it today
may serve as guides for future generations.'
Mr. Nelson's Act
The editor of the 1907 American Anthropologist in commenting
on Professor Jenks' curriculum saw the value of anthropology in uni-
versities 'as a culture study, a professional study and as a foundation
work for the other sciences especially the social sciences ...' However,
Jenks' focus on the applied role of anthropology in solving modern
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 285
problems and molding a desirable future, was to combine with the
broad institutional mission of the university to the state, to make
available to them his ideas and concepts regarding race and culture—
an unusual and singular application of significant value to the state
of Minnesota.
The broad social and economic mission of the University of Min-
nesota as articulated through the work of various professors and ac-
ademic departments, was well understood by United States Con-
gressman Knute Nelson as a member of the Board of Regents at the
University of Minnesota in the 1880s. Congressman Nelson, who actively
solicited his appointment to the Regents ‘‘to promote interest in Scan-
dinavian literature and culture at the University of Minnesota,” ag-
gressively supported the development of Agricultural Science and
education at the University to increase the economic potential of
agriculture to Minnesota.'5
Regent Nelson not only sought to increase the economic potential
of agriculture but also the economic interests of European agricul-
turalists with regard to Chippewa land and pine resources in Minnesota.
In claiming that sixty-thousand people in his congressional district
desired the opening of the Chippewa reservations to settlement and
the colonization of the Chippewas, Nelson introduced in 1889 “An
Act for the Relief and Civilization of the Chippewa Indians of Min-
nesota.’’'© The desires of Nelson’s constituency not only included the
more obvious interests of entrepreneurs and speculators in land and
pine or the needs of individual settlers. They also included the less
obvious and rarely reported desires to simply have cheaper pine where
freight cost from Minneapolis was considered a major problem for
the residents of the Red River Valley, and to affect an increase in the
property value of non-Indian lands surrounding the Chippewa reser-
vations. The intention was also to significantly increase state revenues
which would result through taxation, from both the alienation of title
of the Chippewa reservations into fee patent land and from the im-
provements made upon the land by principally European farmers.'’
In calling for the cessation and sale of “unalloted” lands and surplus
pine, the Nelson Act of 1889 laid a legislative foundation which would
enable the congressman's constituents to have their desires fulfilled.
The passage of the Nelson Act was not unlike opening an upstream
floodgate during the Minnesota spring. What occurred at White Earth
was clear from the tenor of the House Committee report on Indian
Affairs at White Earth in 1913:
“Considering their (the Indians) unsophisticated character, the operations
of great and greedy lumber concerns and anxious speculators in farming
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286 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
lands, the march of settlement, and the great influence such interest
could wield with the government, particularly in the legislative and
executive branches, it is natural that results such as we found were likely
to follow sooner or later. In this instance, it was sooner.'®
The story of the fraud and corruption associated with the appraisal
and sale of the pine lands that were ceded as a result of the Nelson
Act, seem incredible in and of itself.!9 The situation however was
severely aggravated by Congress itself, which began to enable the loss
of allotments reserved for Chippewas under the act. An act of 1902
provided that heirs of deceased Indian allottees might, with the ap-
proval of the Secretary of Interior, sell and convey lands they had
inherited; minors could do the same through court-appointed guard-
ians.”° In 1904 a rider to the Indian appropriation bill authorized the
Chippewas of Minnesota to sell the timber on their allotments.?! The
Steenerson Act of 1904 increased the allotment size from 80 to 160
acres originally promised for White Earth allottees in the agreements
negotiated by the United States Chippewa Commission under the
Nelson Act and by the 1867 treaty? And in 1906 and 1907 Congress
removed restrictions to the sale, incumbrance or taxation of allotments
held by adult mixed-bloods of the White Earth Reservation.
As if the legal provisions between 1902 and 1907 were not enough
to provide ample pine and land for speculators, there was massive
fraud in the purchase of allotments from mixed-bloods and illegal
buying of allotments from full-bloods and minors, as Marsden C.
Burch, a special representative of the United States Attorney General,
discovered at White Earth late in 1909. Burch filed complaints in the
United States District Court at Fergus Falls, Minnesota, beginning in
the summer of 1910, involving 142,000 acres of land worth $2,000,000
and with a timber value of $1,775,000.
a
Toward Political-Legal Definition of Mixed-Blood
In order to prosecute the cases, Burch needed to know who was
full-blood and who was mixed-blood. In order to establish who was
mixed-blood it was first necessary to establish a political and legal
definition of what was a mixed-blood.
In the fall of 1910 Burch, with the help of John Hinton, a special
Indian agent, developed a roll which noted the blood status of each
White Earth Chippewa. This roll was rapidly discredited for its in-
accuracy. Many brothers and sisters found themselves designated
mixed-blood and full-blood.25 Ranson J. Powell, the attorney for the
defendants in the government cases, began extensive inquiries, in
1908, into the geneological history of approximately 1,000 different
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287
BEAULIEu: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET
Indians at White Earth in preparation for the defense. The Department
of Justice taking the same course independent of Powell began its
genealogical research with a corps of assistants in 1911 after Burch's
efforts to develop a roll was discredited.
In comparing his genealogical research with that of the Department
of Justice, Ranson Powell found remarkable consistency in results as
well as considerable complementary evidence. It was decided in 1913
to combine and broaden the genealogical work through formation of
a commission to enroll all members of the White Earth Reservation
by sex, age and blood status.
Burch assumed, given the common meaning of the term at White
Earth, that mixed-blood meant those persons having one-half or more
white blood, and full-blood meant those persons have one-half or more
Chippewa blood. To resolve the question, test cases were presented
to the United States District Court. The court ruled that the term
mixed-blood meant persons having one-eighth or more white blood.
Relating “competency” to the amount of white blood present, the
court determined that the assumed competency of a mixed-blood
Indian required at least one-eighth white blood. Judge Page Morris
felt that in the case of Indians with less than one-eighth white blood,
"The white blood would not affect the capacity of the Indian to manage
The defendants in this case, the First National Bank
of Detroit (Detroit Lakes), The State of Minnesota and the Nichols
Chisholm Lumber Company, appealed the case to the United States
Circuit Court of Appeals. The Circuit Court reversed the District Court
decision declaring that an Indian having any identifiable blood other
than Indian was a mixed-blood. The government then appealed the
case to the United Supreme States Court which affirmed the decision
of the Circuit Court on June 18, 1914. With this decision, everyone
was mixed-blood who wasn’t 100 percent full-blood.
The arguments presented by the government attorneys in the
Supreme Court case not only presented significant principals of federal
Indian law, but also presented two distinct definitions of the term
mixed-blood. There existed in Chippewa a definition which the govern-
ment argued should prevail and there also existed a definition
found in the prevailing notions of race and culture in American society.
This latter view which asserted the need for varying amounts of
white blood to render an Indian competent to manage his own affairs,
and in stimulating a sense of paternalism, has often been used to
protect the land rights of “incompetent” Indians despite the justice
and logic of other reasons.
The differences between Chippewa and white definitions of mixed-
bloods was stated by May zhuch ke ge shig, a chief of the Mississippi
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AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
288
Band and a signer of the 1867 Treaty. On the subject of mixed-bloods
he stated, "We do not think as the people do that bought our land.
They have said that if the Indian had a cousin that was mixed-blood
that made the Indian mixed-blood. We have two words for what we
want to say, one for Indian, one for mixed-blood."35
The terms mixed-blood and half-breed in Ojibwa language were
the same word regardless of percentage of blood. The Chippewa classi-
fied a person Indian if he lived with them and adopted their habits
and mode of life and classified him a half-breed if he adopted the
white man's life.36 Some Chippewas in using this general rule tended
to focus on style of dress as the main feature in distinguishing Indian
and mixed-blood. Indians wore breechcloths and had braids in their
hair whereas mixed-bloods wore hats and pants.37 Some noted economic
style in trapping; when Indians trapped they only trapped enough to
pay off exactly what was due the trader whereas mixed-bloods trapped
the entire season in an effort to gain a surplus.38 To others this general
rule was more precisely determined by the nature of intermarriage
whereby children of Indian and white parents and children of persons
who were both mixed-blood were defined as mixed-blood. Children
of mixed-bloods and Indians were considered Indians or "Anishinabe"
or of "our people."39
The terms Indian, Anishinabe, "our people," were used inter-
changeably by Chippewas for the English word full-blood. Percentage
of Indian and white blood was not a determining factor in distinguishing
a mixed-blood or Indian. For the most part the distinction was cultural
reflecting the various roles for distinguishing children by nature of
intermarriage.
When May zhuch ke ge shig stated that an Indian having a mixed-
blood cousin didn't make the Indian a mixed-blood, he was most
likely referring to himself and his cousin, Robert Fairbanks. Sophie
Roy, a daughter of Robert Fairbanks and Catherine Beaulieu Fairbanks,
spoke of a woman named Bemo sah dum who was the grandmother
of May zhuch ke ge shig. Her description happens to illustrate the
subtle and complex sense of kinship and distinction which provide a
source of meaning to the terms mixed-blood and Indian.
Bemo sah dum always lived around home there at Crow Wing. My mother
always kept her around the place. She did not live in my father's house.
She had a little wigwam right beside the house. She was considered
family. My deceased father and her grandchild May zhuch ke ge shig
always called each other cousin. My father called her aunt. She lived
alone in the wigwam beside the house. My mother always took care of
her. She was very old then. She lived as an Indian. She spoke no English
and did not understand English. She was lighter complected than my
mother but not as light as my father.40
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 289
Just as the Chippewa referred to children of mixed-blood and
Indian marriages as Indians or Anishinabe or as “our people,’ there
was a growing distinction in the early to mid-1800’s among the mixed-
bloods of a sense of ‘‘our people.’”” Nancy Pluff who had lived at Crow
Wing and had removed to White Earth referred to herself and others
as sense
who had white fathers and Indian mothers “us people.” This
of “our people” centered on the type of father one had, and was a
common way of distinguishing totems or clans among the Ojibwe.
Nancy Pluff, in stating that she and another woman living at Crow
Wing had the same totem was asked, ‘‘Did you ever hear her say that
she had white blood?” In response she said, ‘‘We had the same totem.
You folks ought to understand what I mean when I say this... We
had the same kind of father.’’*! This totem for the half-breeds or mixed-
was as
bloods designated Eagle (Meegazee).*?
The process of amalgamation and incorporation between the
Ojibwa and Europeans had two features: 1) the traditional clan system
among the Ojibwa whereby an individual inherits his clan affiliation
from his father, and 2) the distinction of mixed-blood and Indian based
on intermarriage without reference to the sex of the parents. This
process was both interrupted and intruded upon by United States
governmental involvement, initially through treaties which attempted
to render fixed and static definitions of mixed-bloods and Indians not
only for the people living at that time but for their descendants. Part
of the distinction between half-breed or mixed-blood and Indian or
full-blood took on a new meaning after the application of official
labels by the government. For example, consider the testimony of an
Indian man whose mother at first declared to her son’s surprise that
she was a mixed-blood and later in tears under cross-examination,
conceded that she was after all a full-blood. To the question, ‘““would
you be a full-blood if you had sold your land,” the son answered, ‘‘I
would have been an Indian if I had not sold my land. I tried to be,
but if it (sic) had not been given to me that I was a half-breed why I
could not have sold my land?’
The definition of mixed-blood which developed in the prevailing
notions of race and culture in American society, focused on a direct
relationship between white blood and competency. When Congress
passed the General Allotment Act in 1887, it was intended that the
allotments issued to Indians would be held in trust by the United
States for the “sole use and benefit of the Indian” for a period of
twenty-five years. The act assumed a need for Indian adjustment and
adaptation through education and experience in order that Indian
allottees would be able to maintain and use the allotment ‘‘the gov-
ernment had granted him.’”* In 1906 Congress passed the Burke Act
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290 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
which gave the Secretary of Interior power to issue a patent in fee to
an Indian allottee before the expiration of the 25-year trust period
“whenever he is satisfied that any Indian allottee is competent and
capable of managing his or her affairs.’
The ‘Clapp Act’ of 1906 and its amendment in 1907 which was
made retroactive, removed ‘‘all restrictions as to sale, incumbrance
or taxation for allotments within the White Earth Reservation here-
tofore and hereafter held by adult mixed-bloods.’** The ‘Clapp Act’
(by legislative association) defined an adult mixed-blood as an Indian
competent and capable of managing his or her affairs. Even so there
existed neither a description of the specific attributes of competency
or of being mixed-blood.
In the district court case which first sought to determine the
definition of the word mixed-blood for purposes of the ‘Clapp Act’,
Judge Page Morris struggled to associate the meaning of competency
with the meaning of mixed-blood.
I think we must presume that Congress intended to do what was right
in this matter, having in full view its heretofore assumed relation as
guardian for these allottees. At the same time the great difficulty here
encountered is as to where to draw the line in reference to the guardian
of white or foreign blood in a fair and proper construction of this act. I
can not bring myself to believe that Congress meant to say that any
a
admixture of white blood, however slight, would furnish conclusive
presumption of the competency of the allottee to manage his own affairs.
On the contrary, after careful reflection, I can not help coming to the
conclusion that it meant by the term “mixed-blood Indian” any Indian
having a reasonable (quantum) of white or foreign blood; in other words
that the so called Clapp Amendment should receive a reasonable con-
struction.”
Judge Morris admittedly “anxious to avoid what might be inter-
preted as judicial legislation,’ defined reasonable construction of the
Clapp Amendment to include within the meaning of mixed-blood all
those who had at least one-eighth degree or more white blood. When
the decision of the district court was reversed the government attorneys
attempted to provide an even more reasonable construction.”
The government attorneys relying on an 1891 Supreme Court
decision which noted that the language of a particular act of Congress
“if construed literally, evidently lead to an absurd result,’ used a
principle established in this case that “‘if a literal construction of the
words of a statute be absurd, the act must be so construed as to avoid
the absurdity. The court must restrain the word.’
To restrain the word mixed-blood in order to avoid absurdity in
the construction of the Clapp Amendment, the government attorneys
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 291
applied simple logic to prevailing ideas of race and culture. With the
assumption that the white man is competent and the Indian incom-
petent, the government argued that it was reasonable to include within
the competent class all who had one-half or more white blood.
The situation surrounding the need for a legal definition of a
mixed-blood was complicated by a deepening political controversy
and division among the Chippewa who were severely aggravated by
the implementation of the allotment policy at White Earth. Though
affecting complex issues having diverse and tangled the roots in the
history of the tribe, issues were increasingly felt and divided the
population along a growing perception of social, economic and political
distinctions—between those “who wore hats and pants’’ and those
“who wore breachcloth and braids’’-—between mixed-bloods and full-
bloods.
The issue took form with a petition representing the views of a
large number of full-bloods protesting the favorable assignment of
allotments to mixed-bloods, generally, and to certain mixed-bloods
considered ineligible. The petition further requested that full-bloods
instead of mixed-bloods be given the first opportunity to select al-
lotments. By the time of the Justice Department investigation and
resulting need to determine a legal definition for the term mixed-
blood, the issue had intensified with another petition “for the puri-
fication of the White Earth Roll.” Though naming only 86 individuals,
the petition, if successful, would have affected the rights of over 1,000
mixed-blood members of the tribe.*!
From the petition as well as federal court cases brought by certain
mixed-bloods to have their rights recognized, there seems to be three
types of mixed-bloods whose claim to an allotment on the White Earth
Reservation was disputed: (1) mixed-bloods of the Mississippi Band
more as
of Chippewas who should properly be identified Chippewa
of the Lake Superior Band; (2) mixed-bloods who for various reasons,
such as marrying a white man or residence off reservation, had their
legal standing as ‘Indian’ disputed by the federal government; and
(3) “foreign mixed bloods,” or those who could not prove a direct
social or political relationship to the various bands party to the agree-
ments made under the Nelson Act of 1889.5?
Toward a Scientific Definition of Mixed-Blood
Though the legal question of what constituted a mixed-blood was
determined by the Supreme Court decision, who specifically fit that
definition remained a very significant problem for both the government
and defendants in the land allotment fraud suits. Ranson Powell com-
mented:
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AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
292
We have found, after nearly ten years of investigation and controversy
over this unfortunate situation, that it is much easier to determine a
legal proposition relative to what constitutes a mixed-blood under the
Act and what powers and duties the government may possess with relation
to the mixed-bloods, than it is to determine who are the mixed-bloods
in cases where the allottees are close to the line.
By the fall of 1914 it was determined that the genealogical histories
developed by Powell and the Department of Justice now formalized
in the work of the enrollment commission did not represent substantive
legal proof of the blood status of Indians. Also in cases where
the genealogical record was meager or unsatisfactory the need for ad-
ditional evidence became very necessary.
Powell's search for sources of additional evidence and substantive
legal proof led him to a meeting with Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of
the newly established Division of Physical Anthropology in the United
States National Museum at the Smithsonian Institution.
Dr. Hrdlicka was Curator of the Division of Physical Anthropology
and was responsible for the preservation and safe-keeping of collections
related to physical anthropology and their use for the advancement
According to one of his biographers, the study of bones
was probably the happiest aspect of his career in physical anthropology.
The museum's collection of bones, regarded as among the most complete
of its kind, was certainly the result of a man happy with his work, if
not also a tenure of forty years in his position, from 1903 until his
death.
Hrdlicka had two medical degrees and had initiated his formal
study of anthropology in Paris at the Broca Institute. Prior to that
time he worked at the Middletown State Hemopathic Hospital for
the Insane where he attempted to determine the relationship between
mental and physical characteristics similar to the contemporary
questions posed regarding criminals, prostitutes and the like. In com-
paring the 1,000 inmates of Middletown with its 100 employees, Hrd-
licka found no difference in physical characteristics that would
explain their respective status.
Hrdlicka was apparently given his first opportunity to examine
rdlicka was invited to attend the autopsy of Kishu, an adult male
Eskimo, who died of tuberculosis at New York's Bellevue Hospital.
Kishu, along with six other Eskimos was brought from Greenland by
Lieutenant Robert Perry to be studied at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York. Harlow Brooks of the Pathological
Institute of New York, who invited Hrdlicka to assist, removed Kishu's
brain and prepared the body in order to preserve the skeleton for the
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 293
collections of the American Museum. Following this inspection Hrdlicka
then examined the remaining and yet living Eskimos at the American
Museum. Each of these Eskimos also had contracted tuberculosis and
all were dead within a year.**
In the same year that the United States Supreme Court determined
the legal definition of mixed-blood and full-blood, Hrdlicka published
an article describing the history of the discipline of physical anthro-
pology that would be used to provide the scientific definition and
a
description of mixed-blood and full-blood.*? Admitting dependency
of the discipline upon its American Indian populations and their phys-
ical remains, Hrdlicka suggested an early social-political function of
his science:
For the fertilization of the field (of physical anthropology) in this country,
nothing could have been more effective than the presence on the American
continent of a race whose identity, composition and origin were problems
that from the date of discovery interested the whole world, a solution of
which, however, never advanced beyond a maze of hypotheses. To this
toward the beginning of the nineteenth century, was added the fact that
the white man’s contact with the Indian in North America was becoming
extensive and the need of knowing the race better, physically as well as
culturally was felt with growing intensity.
The history of American physical anthropology through much of
the nineteenth century is primarily a history of the gathering of Amer-
ican Indian skulls and attempts at their description and comparison.
The significant scientific questions concerned the relationship of the
‘mound builders’ and Peruvian, Mexican and Central American Indian
skeletal remains with modern North American Indians as well as
racial origin of American Indians.*' Hrdlicka writing in 1912 shortly
before he was contacted by Ranson Powell showed that he retained
his interest in the question of Indian origins. He evidently did not
expect, however, that further American data would illuminate the
question of origins. To Hrdlicka reflecting on the collections of the
Smithsonian at this time, which consisted of 11,000 crania and skel-
etons, 1,600 human and animal brains and thousands of photographs,
casts and other objects relating to physical anthropology, the explo-
ration of the question of Indian origins was more dependent on mea-
surements of living subjects and skeletal material from other parts
of the world, than America.
After determining that the Justice Department had no objection,
Powell attempted early in the month of November 1914 to hire Dr.
Hrdlicka “in his professional capacity as an expert witness to examine
certain Indians in the state (of Minnesota) for the purpose of determining
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294 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
their blood status.” In this regard Powell urgently proposed bringing
two Indians to Washinton, D.C. for an examination. When it was
learned that Hrdlicka might be passing through Chicago on his way
west, Powell proposed meeting Hrdlicka with the two Indians in Chi-
cago. Despite Hrdlicka’s willingness to serve as an expert witness
for the defendants if approval could be obtained from the Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution, his busy schedule prevented this.
Nonetheless, Hrdlicka gave a formal deposition at the Department of
Justice in Washington, D.C., describing the characteristics of the pure-
blood American race.“
Mr. Powell then turned to Dr. Albert E. Jenks, a local and more
accessible expert, who was Professor of Anthropology of the University
of Minnesota. In mid-November, Powell brought the two Indians to
Dr. Jenks for his examination. Powell provided Jenks with of
a copy
Hrdlicka’s deposition and arrangements were made for Jenks to conduct
the necessary examination.® Right from the beginning it seemed that
the call to science would have its difficulties. In a letter to Jenks,
Powell writes:
I beg to hand you herewith a copy of the testimony given by Dr. Ales
Hrdlicka relating to the characteristics of the pure-blood American race.
I note that he calls attention to the fact developed his observations, that
the whiskers of the pure-blood are likewise straight. Judging by the
standard the darker of the two Indians I had before you the other day
would be doubtful as to his blood status because of the fact that the
whiskers of his is pretty curly.
In May of 1915 Dr. Hrdlicka, now retained by the Justice De-
partment, had to make a rapid but extended trip to the Leech Lake
and White Earth reservations to determine as far as possible the
extent of mixed-bloods and full-bloods among the Chippewa and to
verify the blood status of certain families and individuals.” Dr. Jenks
found it necessary to request a six month leave of absence from the
University, beginning in August, 1915 in order to continue his ex-
aminations in the employ of Mr. Powell, attorney for the defendants.®
The first cases to be tried using the expert opinion of Jenks and
Hrdlicka, occurred in the summer of 1915. The Minneapolis Journal,
in noting the significance of the Cabanne case, bannered their story
with the headline, “1000 Land Titles Hang By a Hair, If Curly Indians
Lose.’’®* The case involved an Indian woman who claimed to be full-
blood and a man named Cabanne who bought her allotment. Testimony
by many witnesses prior to the trial had enabled the development of
a geneology running back five generations, including the names and
identities of all eight of her great-grandparents.” Witnesses who might
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 295
have seen or heard about these great-grandparents were asked to
testify about their physical characteristics. The expert opinion of Jenks
and Hrdlicka was used to evaluate the meaning of these characteristics
relative to defining the great-grandparents as mixed-blood or full
blood. One such great-grandparent was described as having curly hair,
which according to expert testimony, was a definite sign that the
person in question was a mixed-blood. Testimony, however, revealed
that the Ojibwe word for curly could also describe a matted condition
of the hair. The woman was declared a full-blood and the defendant
appealed the case.”!
Outside of the possible precedent-setting value of the case in
establishing the rules for evaluating human characteristics to determine
who was a mixed-blood and who was a full-blood, the case was also
significant for revealing just how time consuming and expensive it
would be to resolve all the questions, case by case.
The Justice Department attorneys at this point tried an entirely
different approach by formally raising the question of the constitu-
tionality of the Clapp Act of 1906. However, almost as soon as Mr.
C.C. Daniels had submitted the question to the district court he found
himself relieved of his duties in Raleigh, North Carolina. Needless to
say, the questions regarding the constitutionality of the Clapp Act of
1906 were formally withdrawn by the Justice Department.”
Due to political pressure from almost all sides, an out of court
agreement was reached between the Justice Department and the de-
fendant's attorney, whereby the entire situation could be resolved,
including the many cases of fraud. The agreement allowed for genuine
full-bloods to have their lands restored to them by court decree. Mixed-
bloods competent to sell would have their cases dismissed. The de-
fendants would pay the Indian office the difference between the actual
value of the original payment and the fair market value of the property
at the time of sale as agreed upon, plus 6% interest. Dissatisfied
parties could go to court.”
The Cabanne case and the nature of this out-of-court settlement
also revealed the need for a more focused and direct involvement of
expert opinion in determining precisely who was full-blood. The experts
who were called upon to state what physical characteristics constituted
a full-blood were asked to declare upon physical examinations of
specific individuals whether the individual be full-blood or mixed-
blood. Interestingly both Dr. Jenks and Hrdlicka found it necessary
to develop new and deciding tests to give them more authority for
the necessary judgments.”
Dr. Hrdlicka was again retained by the Justice Department, and
in the summer of 1916, with a list supplied by him by the Justice
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AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
296
Department, he examined 800 individuals and declared 693 to be full-
blood. Hrdlicka, in describing his work, stated that it was not only
possible to detect and separate all mixed-bloods from full-bloods, but
to form a fair estimate of the proportion of white blood wherever
mixture existed. Many individuals continued to press their cases in
Federal court despite Dr. Hrdlicka's pronouncements. Such a course
was not to be fruitful for many. In the 1920's Judge Morris dismissed
cases before they started without reference to geneological evidence,
based on his personal impression and assessment of the plaintiff's
physical characteristics as they stood before the bench.
Anthropological Theory and Method on Trial
Despite their expert status, both Hrdlicka and Jenks had very
little direct experience with Indians generally, and Chippewas par-
ticularly.
In his deposition, Hrdlicka testified that though he examined
individuls of 40-50 tribes, he had never made a scientific investigation
of subjects from the Chippewa tribe. Having never visited the territory
of the Chippewa, the closest he had come was one visit to the Menominee
of Wisconsin. In his response to a question concerning his experience
with Chippewa, Hrdlicka answered, "Those (Chippewas) that I saw
came to Washington to see the Commissioner of Indian Affairs or the
President. Such parties are sent to us and we take their picture or
casts if we can and in some cases they are examined in detail."80
Question: "In what connection did you make any personal investigation
to ascertain whether or not those subjects were full-blood
samples of Chippewa or not?"
Answer (Hrdlicka): "There were certainly full-bloods among them."
Question: "When you say that they were certainly full-bloods, upon what
do you base your theory?"
Answer (Hrdlicka): "Upon my knowledge based on extended experience
of what constitutes a full-blood Indian and on the
fact that we took facial casts of some which we only
take of full-bloods."81
Professor Jenks testified that he had spent five weeks with the
Cheyenne and Arapaho in Oklahoma, one week with Montauks, two
months with the Menominee and Winnebago in Wisconsin, ten weeks
with the Pima and Papago in Arizona and a few days with the Sisseton
Sioux. His experience with Chippewas included a summer vacation
in northern Wisconsin while in graduate school at the University of
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297
BEAULIEu: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET
Wisconsin, two 3-to-4 week visits with the Chippewa of Lake Vermillion
in Minnesota and six to seven days prior to the trials with the Chippewa
His experience with American Indians prompted
the government attorney to ask the rhetorical question, "So you have
not spent as much as a year of your life with the Indian." Answer
(Jenks): "I have not figured it up, probably not."
Question: "Have you examined any full-blood Chippewa Indians?"
Answer (Jenks): "I don't know that I have."
Question: "Have you examined any full-blood Indians of any tribe?"
Answer (Jenks): "I believe I have."
Question: "Do you know?"
Answer (Jenks): "No."
Question: "You cannot say as a fact though that you have ever examined
any full-blood Indians, can you?"
Answer (Jenks): "It is absolutely impossible to distinguish always in an
Indian whether he has other blood. It may be there and
in the visible characteristics be not revealed."
Dr. Jenks later changed his view after he took a leave of absence
from the University of Minnesota to hire on with Mr. Powell, the
attorney for the lumber companies. It was at this time that Jenks
advanced the theory that he could indisputably tell full-bloods from
mixed-bloods by a cross-section analysis of the hair of an Indian.
Besides hair type Jenks noted other characteristics which marked a
full-blood Indian. "There is no typical form of the Indian nose as is
commonly supposed," Jenks told a reporter of the Minneapolis Journal,
except their noses are coarse and crudely molded rather than finely
chiseled. Contrary to popular opinion, the pure Indian has slight,
delicate hands and feet, the natural form of people who do little
manual labor."
With regard to the examinations of the hair, Professor Jenks and
Mr. Powell collaborated with Dr. Hal Downey in the Department of
Animal Biology in the College of Science, Literature and Arts at the
University of Minnesota. Samples of hair were gathered by Dr. Jenks
and were then examined by Dr. Downey whom it appears simply
Mr. Downey reports the development
of a Pima standard against which to measure Ojibwe hair in a February
25, 1916, letter to Ranson Powell:
... enclosing notes on the measurement of hairs of Domingo Blackwater
full-blood Pima. You will notice that I have measured ten hairs and that
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AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
298
I have made several measurements along each hair at distances of one-
half centimeter.
It seems to me that we must measure at least this number of hairs
for each individual who we are using for the preliminary work of estab-
Both Hrdlicka and Jenks, in admitting little familiarity with
lishing a standard. If satisfactory I shall proceed.
Chippewas, full-blood or mixed-blood, stated that they used as the
basis for determination of full-blood Indians the "Pima Standard"
because it was reported that the Pima killed all non-full-blood Pima
children of mixed marriages prior to the federal government's admini-
stration of their affairs.
It is not surprising that Hrdlicka should, in using standards developed from his research in the Southwest
among the Pima and other tribes, claim that Pima from a physical
standpoint were racially closely related to the full-blood Chippewa.
Dr. Hrdlicka's favorite and deciding test was the skin reaction
test. Hrdlicka reports:
An interesting test developed by the writer during the preliminary work
and one which proved of much diagnostic value, both as to blood status
and as to the general health of the person, consisted of drawing with
some force the nail of the fore-finger over the chest, along the middle
and also a few inches to each side. This creates a reaction consisting of
reddening, or hyperaemia, along the lines drawn. In the full-bloods the
reaction as a rule is quite slight to moderate, and evanescent, or of only
moderate duration; in mixed-bloods, unless anaemic, it is more intense
as well as lasting.
In order to be fully prepared and to try out his new test, Hrdlicka
went first among the Standing Rock Sioux before coming to White
Earth to conduct his 1916 investigations.
A significant scientific question in American physical anthropology
in the early 1900's concerned the racial origin of American Indians.
Such a question was to enter into the cross-examination of Dr. Jenks
in reference to the ability of science to detect and separate mixed-
bloods from full-bloods, particularly if the mixture is distant. As the
government attorney pressed Dr. Jenks on just how far back a white
ancestor might have to be to still leave a physical trace, questions
concerning human creation and racial origins seemed a logical extension of cross-examination. The Biblical interpretation regarding
the origin of man, theories regarding the distinctiveness and origins
of the race of mankind and the idea of evolution, natural selection
and an animal origin of humanity; seemed by the testimony of Dr.
Jenks to represent a competition of ideas, too intense to be contained
in any singular world view or field of study. After reversing himself
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 299
a
number of times, Jenks, in seeming frustration offered a common
racist version of the ancestry of “some people.”
Question: “Doctor, do you accept the Bible interpretation as to the origin
of Man, that man came from Adam and Eve?”
Answer (Jenks): “I think there was a first man and first woman. I believe
the word ‘Adam’ in the Hebrew, means ‘the first man,
and ‘Eve, the first woman, ”’
Question: ‘Then you accept the interpretation that the entire race sprung
one
from couple?”
Answer (Jenks): “No, I do not.”
Question: ‘‘Then you do not accept the Bible interpretation that the new
race came from Adam and Eve?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘Well pardon me, I suppose I would have to bea theologian,
to understand what you mean. I accept the scientific
interpretation of the origin of man.”
Question: “You do not accept the Bible interpretation of the origin of
man?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘Probably not as the average theologian does.”
Question: ‘‘What is your scientific view as to where Man sprang from,
how many couples?”
Answer (Jenks): “Probably a very large number”
Question:: “Is it your interpretation that each separate group sprung
a
from different couple?”
Answer (Jenks): “No.”
Question: “Is it your scientific interpretation that the human race came
from other animals?”
Answer (Jenks): “Yes, sir.”
Question: ‘‘The Darwinian theory is the basis upon which you proceed?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘I accept the physical origin of man as animal.”
Question: “And that the monkey was the origin of man or some other
animal.”
Answer (Jenks): “Perhaps some people’s ancestors but probably not
mine.”
The science of Jenks and Hrdlicka, of course, required actual
measuring, observations, scratching of the skin and pulling of hair
of
real people to make the necessary scientific determinations. Hrdlicka,
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===== page 21 =====

300
AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
in
reporting on his 1915 investigation at White Earth and Leech Lake
states:
The method of procedure was to drive from dwelling to dwelling over
the reservations and to examine the Indians whose blood status was in
doubt by all means at the disposal of the anthropologist practical in field
work of this nature. Particular attention was directed to the skin of the
body, especially that of the chest, to the hair and eyes, physiognomy and
a number of other features, such as the nails, gums and teeth.”
By witness of the following testimony, the subjects of such ob-
servations certainly did not passively allow such personal intrusion.
The experts, however, in the face of adversity and resistance seemed
flexible both in theory and method.
Answer (Jenks): “No. I had her mother out on the back stairs leading
somewhere from the front door, and examined her for
about an hour.”
Question: “Did you examine the daughter?”
Answer (Jenks): “Yes, I did. I was going to explain it to you. I had the
mother half an hour on the back stairs, examining her
and her daughter was the interpreter and sat with her
head in the room, and I made a partial examination of
the daughter. I wished to complete it the next day, and
I never completed it, because she objected to it when
she came back the next morning.”
Question: ‘‘Why did you take strands of the hair of Chief Mayshuckegeshig's
head when he asked you not to do it?”
Answer (Jenks): “I don’t believe I have taken no hair from any man’s
head who objected to it.”
Question: “Don’t you know you went to the Chief's house with John Carl,
and his daughter told you not to take a hair, and you cut a
lock of the old Chief's hair from his head, and he became very
indignant about it?”
sir, never any
Answer (Jenks): “No, I did such thing—I took the hair.’
Question: ‘Don’t you know he wrote a letter in which he expressed great
indignation that he had been treated with such discourtesy?”
Answer (Jenks): “No, sir, that is the first I heard of it.’
Though Jenks asserted that he could determine whether or not
an
individual Indian was a mixed-blood or a full-blood by an ex-
amination of hair, the ability of this method or combination of methods
to determine the blood status of an individual without knowledge of
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===== page 22 =====

BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 301
the persons family history was admittedly limited. Jenks, under cross-
examination in the following testimony, denies the essential rationale
for the use of physical anthropology in the determination of the blood
status of individual Indians associated with the legal purpose of White
Earth.
Question: ‘‘What is the standard by which you compare Margaret Roy
to express the opinion that she is a mixed-blood?”
Answer (Jenks): “It is the family as a whole, so far as I saw them, rather
than upon the appearance of Margaret White or Margaret
Roy individually.”
Question: ‘And, without having seen the members of her family, you
would not have expressed the opinion that she was a mixed-
blood?”
Answer (Jenks): “I would not be sure of it.”
a
When Dr. Jenks took leave of absence from the University and
hired on with Mr. Powell, the attorney for the defendants, Jenks, in
turn, used Mr. Nunn, a merchant, and a man by the name of Jim
Bunker as interpreters. Mr. Nunn was himself a defendant in some
of the suits, being charged with illegally obtaining allotments. Mr.
Bunker, a bootlegger, was serving time in Detroit (Detroit Lakes, Min-
nesota) for illegally selling liquor at the time Jenks was called upon
to describe the field method he, Mr. Nunn and Mr. Bunker used in the
case of the old woman, Nubinaygahbowequay, who refused to have
her picture and measurements taken.”
Question: ‘Well, you three went there, Doctor?”
Answer (Jenks): “Yes sir.”
Question: “The old lady was making a mat in a little warehouse, when
you got there, was she not?”
Answer (Jenks): “She was making a rush mat, in a building. I suppose
it was her home.”
Question: ‘‘What was said about (sic) meats or groceries, there in y your
presence? my
Answer (Jenks): ‘‘Mr. Nunn told something about provisions.”
Questions: ‘What did he tell you in your presence?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘‘She stepped outside of her house, and, pointing to the
lands to the south said she wanted to sell them, because
she was destitute, had nothing to eat; and Mr. Nunn told
her he would give her some provisions and flour, pork,
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===== page 23 =====

302
AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
sugar, coffee, and so forth, that he could not buy her
lands, he was not buying lands.”
Question: ‘‘When was it you patted her on the back, ‘come on I want to
have your picture?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘I don’t know I asked her several times for her picture
and her measurements.’
Question: ‘‘Did she tell you she didn’t want to have anything to do with
you?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘She said she didn’t want to have her picture taken or
measurements made.”
Question: ‘‘Did she say she didn’t want to have anything to do with you?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘‘The substance was that she said she didn’t care to be
or
photographed measured.”
Question: ‘‘Did you prepare a place to take her picture?”
Answer (Jenks): "I prepared the background, yes sir.’
Question: “Did you go over and pat her on the back again, and say, ‘Come
on, there is nothing wrong in it?’ ”
Answer (Jenks): “I don’t think I did.”
Question: ‘Then she went off, put a shawl over her head, and went off?”
Answer (Jenks): ‘‘She started away from her house?’
In examining the twin sister of this woman, Jenks evidently made
a
mistake in the measurement of her skin color.
Question: “I believe you said she was darker than her sister, the allottee?”
Answer (Jenks): “As the sister appeared here today, she is lighter than
her twin sister was when I saw her. This woman today
was evidently washed, slicked up, hair combed, so she
looked a good deal lighter than she looked when I saw
her at home.”’”
Afterwords
Given today’s standards, the testimony of Hrdlicka and Jenks
reveal many areas where criticism seems obvious and appropriate.
However, at the time that the disputed full-blood cases went to trial,
the
application of anthropometric evidence in legal proceedings as
well as the use of physical anthropologists as experts, was rare. The
only other case in the recollection of the parties involved at the time
was a professor of anthropology at Columbia University by the name
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===== page 24 =====

of Dr. Bohay who was called to testify in a divorce case concerning
the wife of a white man who was said to have Negro blood. The
purpose of this particular case seems to have been of the same character
as the government’s intention relative to its relationship with White
Earth mixed-bloods.99
Complex legal and political situations requiring description, def-
inition and the rationalization of human affairs into a form under-
standable and usable to dynamic political and legal processes, have
often required academic experts. Though it may seem necessary to
criticize the role of social scientists in the political-legal process, this
relationship seems a natural extension of the role and function of
anthropology and the other social sciences to American society. Hinsley
argued that:
anthropology was reflexive, an exercise in self-study by Americans who
sensed but were unable to confront directly the tragic dimensions of
their culture and their lives. The utility of anthropology was moral. . . Born
into an increasingly secular world of change and diversity, they found
solace as well as aesthetic pleasure in the vision of progressively evolving
humanity. Beneath the appearance of chaos, their science would surely
reveal unity and purpose in human affairs.100
In discussing the importance of education to early American leaders
who desired to “render the American Revolution a blessing to Mankind”,
Lawrence A. Cremin describes a broader social-political function and
purpose of anthropology and the other
They urged a genuinely useful education, pointedly addressed to the
improvement of the human condition. At its head would be the new
sciences through which citizens might come to know the immutable laws
governing nature and humankind and on the basis of which they might
build a society founded on reason and conformity to moral truth. Through
botany, chemistry and geology, Americans would unlock the secrets of
their virgin continent, with incalculable gain to agriculture, trade and
industry. Through economics, politics and ethics they would discover the
customs of peoples and nations, with consequent benefit to the conduct
of domestic and foreign affairs. And through the systematic application
of science to every realm of living, they would learn in countless ways
to enhance the dignity and quality of their daily existence.101
The educational and scholarly institutions and academic experts which
were essential to the implementation of allotment at the White Earth
Reservation clearly operated from these views of education and the
sciences.
When Professor Jenks requested a leave of absence from the University of Minnesota, the official reason given was to engage in a study
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===== page 25 =====

AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
304
of racial amalgamation as manifested on the Indian reservations of
Minnesota.76 Jenks, as it has been noted, viewed anthropology as an
applied science important to solving modern problems, improving
the race of man, helping to select the valuable cultural characteristics
of European immigrants and enabling a better future. Somewhat
saddened in tone in a 1921 article on “The Practical Value of An-
thropology to our Nation,” Jenks noted a peculiar failure of anthro-
pology with regard to American Indians.
The American plant breeder has long made use of hardy native plants
to make his more prolific hybrids more resistant to cold, drought, disease
and insect pests. Had we been as intelligent in the matter of the Indians
as we have been with plants and animals, there is little question that
conditions would have been better for the Indians, and they might have
The “practical value” of anthropology to the state of Minnesota,
added desirable strength to our nation.77
with regards to Jenks’ study of “racial amalgamation as manifested
on the Indian reservations” was stated by the editor of the University
of Minnesota’s Alumni Weekly who reported on Professor Jenks’ work
while on leave of absence in 1915-1916.
So far 90% of the 300 Indians examined show unmistakable evidence of
mixed-blood. The results of the government suits so far tried with aid
of anthropological evidence are decidedly favorable to the citizens of
Minnesota; if the defendants continue to win their cases, farming lands
now valued at more than 1,500,000 will it is conservatively estimated
within ten years increase in value by improvements four hundred percent.
Ranson Powell wrote a short letter to Mr. Fred R. Snyder of the
University of Minnesota Board of Regents, expressing his appreciation
They will be worth 6,000,000 and taxable by the state.78
of the “action of the Regents in liberating Dr. Jenks.”
While the time was not sufficient to enable Dr. Jenks to give the extensive
examinations which might be necessary were he to be used as a witness
in each case, it had the effect of demonstrating the unreliability of the
Indians’ testimony, and has led the Government to adopt the same line
of investigation for arriving at the facts in these cases.79
Though the role and function of the social sciences and scholars
involved with the American political and legal process is an area of
special interest, the potential of the social sciences to “represent” the
Chippewa perspective was essentially eliminated by the Supreme
Court decision of 1914 which determined the legal definition of mixed-
blood. Though it was recognized that the Chippewa had particular
ideas about the term mixed-blood, these ideas were not officially
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305
BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET
recognized. These Chippewa notions of race and culture had no legal
standing in resolving this particular issue and determining the meaning
of the term mixed-blood. This has not, however, invariably been the
case. The view that Indian treaties should be interpreted as Indian
tribes understand them, a position asserted by the government at-
torneys in the mixed-blood case before the Supreme Court, has been
successfully argued in other cases both before and since.
Though the relationship of the social sciences to governmental,
political and legal processes involving American Indian societies may
beg criticism from a number of perspectives, the relationship seems
natural and vital to the processes involved and in greater need of
description and study. Within this context a significant criticism can
be made concerning the illusion that social scientists and scholars
are involved for primarily scientific purposes which happen to be
useful to the political or legal process. Before his work for the Justice
Department Hrdlicka admitted that the significant scientific questions
in physical anthropology would not be aided by further examinations
of American Indian subjects. In characterizing his own work in ex-
amining full-bloods for the Justice Department, Hrdlicka stated that,
"on the whole there is no question but a detailed anthropological
examination in cases of this nature could be of considerable assistance
to the law. Scientific results of the work, on the other hand, would
prove disappointing."103
Another criticism concerns the need of the political-legal process
to have the illusion provided by expert opinion that all decisions,
however complex, are fairly and logically made. Though both Hrdlicka
and Jenks found the need to develop new scientific tests to aid in
determining the blood status of specific individuals, a major criticism
can be made concerning the legitimacy of the expertise if it rises to
such occasions. Though Jenks had provided "anthropological evi-
dence . . . decidedly favorable to the citizens of Minnesota" and had
the "effect of demonstrating the unreliability of the Indians' testimony",
Jenks in a March 1917 letter to Ransom Powell commented on the
enduring legitimacy of his expert opinion:
You will be interested to know that your micrometer is revealing some
very new and interesting facts concerning the nature of human hair.
Among the things revealed are the following: Both Hrdlicka and myself
have hair of the most typical negro type and the Scandinavians have hair
more circular in cross-section than our pure blood Pima Indians. I am
not sure yet what these facts mean; but either the old classification
of human races by hair texture is not of scientific value or Dr. Hrdlicka and
I are related to the negro and the Scandinavians are simply bleached
out Mongolians. Interesting, isn't it?"104
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AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
306
Another criticism more substantially made by Stephen Jay Gould
in his book, The Mismeasure of Man, concerns an erroneous view of
how knowledge develops. Gould's book illustrates "the scientific
weaknesses and political contexts" of biological determinism—the
field of knowledge in which Jenks lectured in 1909 and from which
Hrdlicka had received his formal training—criticizes the "myth that
science is an objective enterprise, done properly only when scientists
shuck the constraints of their culture and view the world as it really
is. My message, "Gould asserts, "is not that biological determinists
were bad scientists or even that they were always wrong. Rather I
believe that science must be understood as a social phenomenon"105
In seeing a relationship between the idea of unilinear progress
which he suggests lies beneath racial rankings, Gould suggests the
concept also lies beneath a false idea of how science develops. This
false idea is the assertion that "any science begins in the nothingness
of ignorance and moves toward truth by gathering more and more
information, constructing theories as facts accumulate." Instead Gould
states that "The barrel of theory is always full; sciences work with
elaborated contexts for explaining fact from the very outset. . . . Science
advances primarily by replacement not by addition."106
Hrdlicka's view of how knowledge develops seems by the descrip-
tion of his biographer to be not only subject to Gould's criticism but
also explains the personal rewards for Hrdlicka of science as a "socially
... Hrdlicka was consumed, as he was to be for the rest of his life, by an
embedded activity."107
loved. While others were to collect money and property, Hrdlicka would
overwhelming desire to succeed, to be recognized and respected . . . even
collect knowledge. What money and property he did accumulate during
his life was acquired as an investment to finance the achievement of his
dreams for anthropology. Knowledge in Hrdlicka's mind was a reflection
of human endeavor and its acquisition came only from personal labor:
the effort of which seems to be directly proportional to ones character
and thus reputation. From the acquisition of knowledge sprang the notion
of power and the authority gained by its possession. Never plagued by
philosophical doubt, Hrdlicka naively assumed, like so many others that
the reality of the human condition would be miraculously revealed after
an undetermined amount of data collection.108
Consistent with his role in the American administration of the
Philippines and the need to provide justification for the legitimacy
of the discipline he founded at the University of Minnesota, Professor
Jenks stressed an applied role for anthropology. Though sharing many
of the characteristics of his colleagues, Jenks was not satisfied to
simply await the revelation of the reality of the human condition.
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 307
Jenks viewed and promoted anthropology as a necessary tool of Amer-
ican social and political policy.’
Anthropology of late has taken responsibility, after some urging
from American Indian critics, to look at itself and the morality and
appropriateness of its methods. Recent efforts, however, seem more
an effort to replace the study of the Indian with more directed and
focused self-study. The purpose and utility of this effort remains none-
theless moral.''° Such efforts, however, are not useful for understanding
the development of theory or more importantly the relationship of
theory, Gould’s “elaborated contexts,” with social political policy. Sydel
process in
Silverman explains, “The of theory making anthropology
has not received the scrutiny that has been given to fieldwork which
has been examined in a long series of personal accounts aimed at
demystification of ‘the field.’ As anthropological theory becomes cod-
ified ...” and ‘‘as each generation of anthropologists and students
becomes further removed from the seminal figures of the field, an
understanding of their work as part of a life, a career, a personality,
and a social and cultural setting becomes more and more elusive.”
Though Silverman asserts that most anthropologists view as self evident
the notion that “the development of theory is a social process, a
product of life histories embedded in time and place,” these life histories
also deeply embedded dynamic social and political
are in processes
of the society directly related to the groups being studied."! Professor
Albert E. Jenks’ 1909 lecture on race and culture in his advanced
course in anthropology at the University of Minnesota and University
of Minnesota Regent Knute Nelson's “Act for the Relief and Civilization
of the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota” were buds on the same in-
tellectual tree. This tree being deeply rooted in American society and
culture provides reference for the political as well as the scientific
and explains the essential relationship incumbent in the institutional
function and mission of the University in society.
The matrix of institutions, decision makers and ideas concerning
race and culture carried within, and necessary to, the political and
legal processes which converged to implement the allotment policy
at White Earth remained long after the land allotment fraud cases.
From this meeting ground both Jenks and Hrdlicka published scholarly
articles using the data they had collected contributing to the ‘‘ad-
vancement”’ of knowledge within their field. A critical review of Jenks’
article “Indian-White Amalgamation: An Anthropometric Study” noted
the infancy of of hybrid study and commented that “‘a valuable be-
ginning has been made” and that “broad and special stress must be
laid following such studies.”!!?
on up
From this meeting ground both Jenks and Hrdlicka became in-
volved with public policy issues affecting government's relationship
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308 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
and responsibilities to American Indians. In the same year that Hrdlicka
published his physical description of the Chippewa full-bloods in
Anthropology of Chippewas, he gave an address on the Indian service
before the Thirty-Fourth Annual Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends
of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples.''* Hrdlicka defined the
Indian service as that ‘‘function of the American body politic which
is
deals with the Indian and ultimate object of which his complete
emancipation.” In keeping with the reform ideas of the day, Hrdlicka
called for better paid, trained and qualified Indian service workers,
particularly teachers and physicians, as well as more modern and
efficient organization of the service.''*
The platform of the Conference to which Hrdlicka gave his pre-
sentation called for justice and protection of the Indians while the
country attempted to accomplish the “ultimate solution” to the Indian
problem.
The ultimate solution to the perplexing Indian problem will be reached
only when the Indians by an academic, industrial and moral education
have been prepared to receive all the privileges and assume all the duties
of American citizenship. Until that time such Indians as are not prepared
are the wards of the nation. The nation is duty bound to protect their
rights, promote their interests and provide for their education.'*
Professor Jenks who was chairman of the Committee on Anthro-
pology and Sociology of the National Bureau of Research at Washington,
D.C. and who had earlier appeared at Lake Mohonk shortly before
his return from the Philippines, was appointed by Dr. Hubert Work,
Secretary of Interior to the Committee of One Hundred. This committee
of one hundred persons of eminence who were generally known to
have special interest and knowledge regarding American Indians, in-
cluding ten professional anthropologists, was charged to investigate
Indian conditions and recommend necessary changes and reforms in
line with federal Indian policy.'"*
The committee gave its report in 1923 noting that ‘we found
ourselves beset by many of the same problems which have faced the
government for nearly 50 years. Regardless of the progress actually
made, the great objectives of our benevolent desires have not been
attained. This situation and this history shows the extravagance of
all efforts which are not directed by the best ability supported by
or
adequate funds maintained by sufficient consistency.”!!” Professor
Jenks, for his part, felt that the policy of the United States in “pampering
the Indian, providing houses, lands and a living for them is the worst
thing the government can do for the Red Man and ina few generations
will result in their extermination. All but one in every thousand are
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 309
and want to be paupers,’ said Jenks. “Now that hunting’s largely
gone, the government cares for them and they get no exercise. As a
result two or three generations will! see the last of them.’’!!*
Neither the ‘problems’ to which the Committee of One Hundred
made recommendations nor the people Professor Jenks had measured
for extermination disappeared. Indeed the specific issues which Jenks
and Hrdlicka lent their reputation and opinion have endured and
remain current. Issues remain concerning the rightful ownership and
status of numerous parcels of reservation lands on the White Earth
Reservation.''? Issues relating to the definition of ‘Indian’ combining
various notions and criteria relating to race and culture are ever more
essential to federal Indian policy and official definition of the limits
of federal responsibility. Indeed the terms ‘Indian Race’ children and
‘Indian Ancestry’ children have recently been used in discussions con-
cerning federal obligations in Indian education to give contemporary
significance to the classifications full-blood and mixed-blood and the
government's desire to emancipate certain classes of individual In-
dians.!2°
These particular issues, though specifically related to those issues
which brought Jenks and Hrdlicka to the White Earth Reservation
are not the only issues between American Indian tribes and American
society requiring the use of expert knowledge. The number of issues
and types of expert knowledge required in the matrix of decision-
making processes affecting American Indian tribes has grown tre-
mendously.
This need for expert knowledge has also been increased by a
general trend, noted by Sowell, in the social application of knowledge
where “decision making has tended to gravitate away from those most
immediately affected toward institutions increasingly remote and in-
. . warns im-
sulated from feedback. .” This trend, Sowell, has “grave
plications not only for individual freedom, but also for the social ways
in which knowledge is used, distorted or made ineffective.’’!?!
Notes
1. See, Cohen, Felix. Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Section 2, Chapter 1, “‘Def-
initions of Indian,” pp. 2—4; Section 8, Chapter 8, ‘‘The Meaning of Incompetency,” pp.
167-169) University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1972.
Forbes, Jack D. Native Americans of California and Nevada: A Handbook. (Basic
concepts for understanding Native History and Culture, “Who is Indian,” pp. 122-124)
Naturegraph Publishers, Healdsburg, California, 1969.
Opinions of the Solicitor of the Department of Interior Relating to Indian Affairs,
1917-1974, Volumes I-II, United States Department of Interior, U.S. Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., 1974. See opinions relating to tribal membership, enrollment,
citizenship, termination; Getches, Rosenfeldt, Wilkinson, Federal Indian Law Cases and
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310 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
Materials, American Casework Series, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, 1979. Chapter 8,
“The Rights of Individual Indians.”
2. See, Otis, D.C. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands. Edited by
Frances Paul Prucha, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1973 (originally published
1898).
Washburn, Wilcomb. The Assault on Indian Tribalism, The General Allotment Act
(Dawes Law of 1887), J.B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1975.
Fritz, Henry. The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890, University of Penn-
sylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1963.
3. “Tragedy of White Earth” phrase used as subtitle in Folwell, William Watts,
History of Minnesota, Volume IV, Minnesota State Historical Society, St. Paul, 1969,
pp. 261-283. The phrase is used to describe events in the history of the White Earth
Reservation surrounding the implementation of the allotment policy. To Folwell the
phrase describes not only the use of fraud and corruption but remarks on the disparity
between the initial hopes of government policy makers with the results of the imple-
mentation of the Policy.
4, ______. “Anthropology at Minnesota University,’ American Anthropologist,
n.s. Vol, 9, 1907, 431.
5. Uzzell, H. (compiler). Notes on Course in Anthropology by Professor
Jenks Senior Year, 1908-1909 Second Semester University of Minnesota. Manuscript in
the collections of the University of Minnesota Archives.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. _______. “Dr. Albert Ernest Jenks,” The Minnesota Alumni Weekly. Vol. IX,
No. 8, November 8, 1909, p. 4.
9, ____. ‘Recent Progress in American Anthropology: A Review of Activities
of Institutions and Individuals from 1902-1906,” American Anthropologist, n.s. Vol. 8,
No. 3, 1906, p. 525.
10, ______. “Professor Jenks a Gold-Medalist in Anthropology,’ The Minnesota
Alumni Weekly, Vol. 7, no. 9, November 11, 1907; ____. American Anthropologist,
n.s. Vol. 6, 1904; “Recent Progress in American Anthropology,’ American Anthropologist,
n.s. Vol. 8, No. 3, 1906, p. 441.
11, _____.. “Receives Distinguished Recognition,” The Minnesota Alumni Weekly,
Vol. XIII, No. 2, September 29, 1913.
12. Rivers, WH.R., Jenks, A.E. and Morley, S.G. Reports Upon the Present Condition
and Future Needs of the Science of Anthropology. The Carnegie Institution of Washington,
November 1, 1913, p. 54.
13. Ibid., p. 59.
14, ______. “Anthropology at Minnesota University,’ American Anthropologist,
n.s. Vol. 9, 1907, p. 431.
15. Odland, Martin W. The Life of Knute Nelson. The Land Press, Inc., Minneapolis,
1926, pp. 134-135.
16. Ibid., pp. 132-147:
Folwell, William Watts, A History of Minnesota, Vol. 4, Revised Edition, Minnesota
Historical Society, St. Paul, 1969, pp. 223-224.
17. Resolution and Petition adopted by the Chamber of Commerce, Grand Forks,
D.T., December 29, 1883; Resolution of the Citizens of Hallock, Kittson Co., Minnesota,
February 18, 1884; “Pine Land Frauds on the Reservation’; Resolution of the Citizens
of Crookston, 1884’; “Resolution of the Citizens of Minnesota Residing in the Immediate
Vicinity of White Earth and Leech Lake Indian Reservations’; estimates of the value
of proposed allotment bills; Nelson Papers, Box 4, Collections of the Minnesota Historical
Society.
18. House of Representatives, Report in the Matter of the Investigation of the
White Earth Reservation, 62nd Congress, 3rd Session, Report No. 1336, Serial 6336,
p. v (hereafter cited as Graham Report).
19. See, Folwell op cit., pp. 235-261, Graham Report Ibid., pp. iii-xxii, pp. 239-
257 for summaries.
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 311
20. United States, Statutes at Large 32:275.
21. United States, Statutes at Large 33:204.
22. United States, Statutes at Large 33:359.
23. United States, Statutes at Large 34:353, 1034.
24. Folwell op cit., pp. 284-285, Graham op cit., pp. 239-259,
25. Folwell op cit., pp. 285-286.
26. Ranson J. Powell to Mr. Daniel B. Henderson, May 27, 1913, Powell Papers,
Minnesota Historical Society.
27. Ranson J. Powell to Mr. Daniel B. Henderson, May 27, 1913, Powell Papers,
Minnesota Historical Society;
House of Representatives Report No. 1459, Sixty-Second Congress, Third Session,
Serial 6334.
28. 234 US. 245, p. 251.
29. 208 Fed, Rep. 988, 234 U.S. 245.
30. 234 U.S. 245, pp. 252-253.
31. Ibid., pp. 253-257.
32. Ibid., pp. 257-258.
33. Ibid., p. 251.
34. Ibid., p. 262.
35. Testimony of Mayzhucegeshig, United States vs. First Bank of Detroit, et al.,
United States District Court, p. 103, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
36. Testimony of George Morrison, United States vs. First Bank of Detroit, et al.,
United States District Court, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
37. Testimony of Day-Dah-Bah-Saush, United States vs. Nichols Chishom Lumber
Co.,
Harvey C. Clark and Minneapolis Trust Co., United States District Court, Powell
Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
38. Testimony of George Morrison, op cit., Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical
Society.
39. Testimony of Maheenguance, United States vs. First Bank of Detroit, et al.,
United States District Court, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
40. Testimony of Sophie Roy, United States vs. John C. Cabanne, United States
District Court, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
41. Testimony of Nancy Pluff, United States vs. John C. Cabanne, United States
District Court, Testimony of Marry Donnell, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
42. Testimony of Jack Porter, Box 6, File 34, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical
Society.
43. Testimony of Shi-yah-gose-jung, United States vs. Fred Sanders, et al., United
States District Court, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
44, 24 Stat. 338 Act of February 8, 1887.
45. 34 Stat. 182 Act of May 8, 1906.
46. 34 Stat. 353; 34 Stat. 1034.
47. United States vs. First Bank of Detroit, Minnesota, United States District Court,
District of Minnesota, Fifth Division, Transcript of Record, p. 119.
48. Ibid., pp. 119-120.
49. 143 US. 457.
50. 234 U.S. 245, pp. 252-253.
51. Folwell op cit., p. 271:
Graham Report, op cit., pp. 568-574.
Court of Claims of the United States. In the Matter of the Petition of Charles T.
Wright et al. for the Purification of the White Earth Roll, Request for Findings of Fact and
Brief of Petitioners. Washington, D.C., 1914.
52. United States vs. Waller et al., 243 U.S. 452:
Oakes et al. vs. United States, 172 Fed. 305:
House of Representatives Report No. 993 and 993 pt. 2, Sixty-Fourth Congress,
First Session.
In the matter of the Petition of Charles T. Wright, Ibid.
53. Powell to Editor of the Tribune, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
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312 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
54. Powell to Hrdlicka, Nov. 7, 1914.
Powell to Editor of the Tribune, Ibid.
Powell to Daniel Henderson, May 27, 1913, op. cit.
55. Records of the United States Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Land Al-
lotment Fraud Cases at White Earth, deposition testimony, p. 103. In collections of The
National Archives, Chicago Regional Branch.
56. Mead, Margaret and Bunzel, Ruth L. The Golden Age of American Anthropology.
George Braziller, New York, 1960, p. 432.
57. Spencer, Frank. Ales Hrdlicka M.D. 1869-1943: A Chronicle of the Life and
Work of an American Physical Anthropologist, Vols. I and II, Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Michigan, 1979, pp. 50-51, 102-103.
58. Ibid., pp. 161-162.
59. Hrdlicka, Ales. ‘Physical Anthropology in America: An Historical Sketch,”
American Anthropologist, n.s. Vol. 16, 1914, pp. 508-554.
60. Ibid., p. 510.
61. Ibid.
62. Hrdlicka, Ales. ‘‘The Bearing of Physical Anthropology on the Problems Under
Consideration. The Problems of the Unity or Plurality of the Probable Place of Origin
of the American Aborigines,” American Anthropologist, n.s. Vol. 14, 1912, p. 8.
63. Hrdlicka to Powell, November 14, 1914.
Powell to Hrdlicka, November 7, 1914.
Powell to Hrdlicka, November 2, 1914.
Powell to Hrdlicka, November 3, 1914.
64. Hrdlicka to Powell, November 14, 1914.
Gates to Powell, November 18, 1914.
65. Powell to Jenks, November 16, 1914.
66. Powell to Jenks, November 16, 1914.
67. Hrdlicka, Ales. “Trip to the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota,” Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 66, No. 3, 1915.
68. Presidents Report to the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota 1915—
1916; Executive Committee Minutes, The University of Minnesota Board of Regents
1915-1916; “Jenks on Leave of Absence,’ The Minnesota Alumni Weekly, Vol. 15, No. 1,
1915, p. 20.
69, _______. “1000 Land Titles Hang By a Hair, If Curly Indians Lose,” Minneapolis
Journal, June 24, 1915, p. 1, col. 4.
70. United States vs. John C. Cabanne, United States District Court, District of
Minnesota, Sixth Division.
71. Ibid.
72. “Declare Daniels Used Suits for Personal Gain,” Minneapolis Journal, December
19, 1915, 6Ns, p. 6, col. 1; “Clapp Act Alleged Void; 15,000,000 of Land Involved,”
Minneapolis Journal, December 24, 1915, p. 1, col. 1, p. 2, col. 3; “Discuss Plan to Settle
All Indian Land Litigation,” Minneapolis Journal, January 19, 1916, p. 18, col. 3; “Daniels
is Moved But will Stay in Federal Service,’ Minneapolis Journal, January 27, 1916, p.
2, col. 2; Powell to Hon. Porter J. McCamber, January 22, 1916.
73. Powell to Theo. H. Beaulieu; Folwell op cit., p. 290-291.
74. Hrdlicka, Anthropology of the Chippewa, op cit., pp. 202-203.
Records of the United States Attorney General deposition testimony, pp. 144-145.
Jenks, Albert E. ‘Indian White Amalgamation: An Anthropometric Study.” Studies
in Social Science, Number 6. The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1916. Jenks
reported that ‘‘detailed examination of the hair could not be made in the field. It is
being prosecuted at the present time;” testimony in case No. 280 by Albert E. Jenks,
Land Allotment Fraud Cases. Records of the U.S. Attorney General, op cit.
75. Powell to Theo. Beaulieu, February 12, 1916.
American Anthropoligst n.s. 18, 1916, p. 452.
Hrdlicka, Ales. “Anthropological Work Among the Sioux and Chippewa,” Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 66, No. 17, p. 93.
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BEAULIEU: CURLY HAIR AND BIG FEET 313
Hrdlicka, Ales, Anthropology of the Chippewa—Holmes Anniversay Volume. EW. Hodge,
Editor, December 1, 1916, Washington, D.C., p. 200.
76. Executive Committee Minutes, The University of Minnesota Board of Regents,
1915-1916.
77. Jenks, Albert. “The Practical Value of Anthropology to our Nation.” Reprinted
from Science, n.s. Vol., p.4, in Albert E. Jenks papers, University of Minnesota Archives.
78. ________. “Professor Jenks Returns to the University,” The Minnesota Alumni
Weekly, Vol. 15, No. 21, February 21, 1916, p. 12.
79. Ranson Powell to Fred B. Snyder, March 6, 1916, Powell papers, Minnesota
Historical Society.
80. Records of the United States Attorney General, disposition testimony, Ibid.,
11.
p.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid., p. 137.
83. Ibid., p. 138.
84. Ibid., pp. 138-139.
85. See 74. Jenks, Albert E.
86. Hal Downey to Powell January 31, 1916; Downey to Powell February 8, 1916;
Powell to Downey March 6, 1916, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.
87. Downey to Powell February 25, 1916, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical
Society.
87. Downey to Powell February 25, 1916, Powell Papers, Historical Society.
88. Records of the United States Attorney General deposition testimony, op cit.,
144-145.
pp.
Hrdlicka, Alex. ‘Physiological and Medical Observations Among the Indians of
Southern United States and Northern Mexico,” Bulletin 34, Bureau of American Ethnology,
1908.
89. Records of the United States Attorney General, op. cit.
90. Hrdlicka, Anthropology of the Chippewa, op. cit., pp. 202-203.
91. “Popular Picture of Indian Upset by Investigation. Eagle Beak Nose Belongs
Not
to Redman but to Fiction,” Minneapolis Journal, April 9, 1916, C.S. p. 3, col. 12.
92. Ibid., p. 8.
93. Hrdlicka Ales. “Trip to the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota,” Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 66, No. 3, 1915, p. 73.
94. Records of the U.S. Attorney General, Case No. 23, pp. 33-34.
95. Records of the U.S. Attorney General, Case No. 260 op cit., pp. 4-5.
96. Records of the U.S. Attorney General, Case No. 23 op cit., p. 35.
97. Records of the U.S. Attorney General, Case No. 260 op. cit.
98. Ibid., pp. 27-29.
99. Ibid., pp. 33-34.
100. Hinsley, Curtis M., Jr. Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and
the
Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910. Smithsonian Institution Press,
Washington, D.C., 1981, p. 8.
101. Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education; The National Experience 1783-
1876. Harper and Row, New York, 1982, pp. 3-4.
102. Strickland, Wilkinson, et al. Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law
1982 Edition. Michie Bobbs-Merrill, pp. 221-222.
103. Hrdlicka, Ales. ‘‘Trip to the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota,” Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 66, No. 3, 1915, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C., p. 74.
104. A.E. Jenks to R.J. Powell, March 21, 1917, Powell Papers, Minnesota Historical
Society.
105. Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. WW. Norton and Company, New
York, 1981, p. 21.
106. Ibid., pp. 321-322.
107. Ibid., p. 21.
108. Spencer, op cit., p. 49.
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314 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, FALL 1984
109. See Rivers, Jenks and Morley, 1913, op. cit., Jenks, 1921, op. cit.
110. Rosen, Lawrence. “The Excavation of American Indian Burial Sites: A Problem
in Law and Professional Responsibility,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 82, 1980.
Cassell, Joan. “Ethical Principles for Conducting Fieldwork,” American Anthropologist,
Vol. 82, 1980.
Willner, Dorothy. “For Whom the Bell Tolls: Anthropologists Advising on Public
Policy,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 82, 1980.
111. Silverman, Sydel (Ed.). Totems and Teachers: Perspectives on the History of
Anthropology. Columbia University Press, New York, 1981, pp. ix—x.
112. Getteking, Bruno. “Review of Indian-White Amalgamation: An Anthropometric
Study by Albert E. Jenks.” American Anthropologist, n.s. Vol. 18, 1916, p. 582.
113. Hrdlicka, Ales. “The Indian Service,” 34th Annual Report of the Lake Mohonk
Conference of the Friends of the Indians and Other Dependent Peoples, October 18, 1916,
pp. 26-33.
114. Ibid., p. 26.
115. Platform of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Lake Mohonk Conference on the Indian
and Other Dependent Peoples, 1916. Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Indian Rights
Association, 1917, Philadelphia, 1917, pp. 67-68.
116. _______. “Jenks One of Three Named from State; Head of Anthropology
Department to Assist in Forming Indian Policy,’ Minnesota Daily, 1 January 1923. Jenks
Collection, University of Minnesota Archives. Wise, Jennings C. The Red Man in the
New World Drama. Revised and edited by Vine Deloria, Jr., Macmillan Company, New
York, 1971, pp. 334-379.
117. Ibid.
118, _____.. “Indian Vanishing Due to Pampering: Professor Jenks says Only
Chance is to Work,” Minneapolis Journal, January 20, 1916, p. 12, Col. 6.
119, _______. White Earth Reservation, § 2415 Land Claims Report, Lenee Ross,
Project Director, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, 1982.
120 Mr Terrell Bell, United States Secretary of Education to Vice President Bush,
September 30, 1982. Submitting a ‘Revised Report on the Definition of Indian.”
121. Sowell, Thomas. Knowledge and Decisions, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1980,
pp. 163-164.
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