Image: Stockbridge Munsee Indian soldier for the American Revolution, posted in a Town Hall in Hudson Valley NY, photo by the author.
That may seem obvious, or may not. Our citizenship may go back a paragraph further to the Preamble, as in “We the people of the United States.”
Truth be told, the Constitution never defines citizenship in racial terms. Later local laws and even Supreme Court decisions tried to define citizenship by racial whiteness, or lack of racialized blackness, but these have all been struck down.
So, did the framers of the Constitution conveniently “forget” to write “We the White men of the United States?” Or did they remember that free men of color, as in the Rhode Island Colored battalion (comprised of Narragansett Indians and Free Negroes), and other Black soldiers, and other Indians, had helped George Washington defeat the British and win independence for the United States?
As Black and Indian people, we are more likely to cite the 13th Amendment (which ended slavery), or the 14th Amendment (which granted birthright citizenship) as the foundation of our citizenship in the United States.
But I argue that many “black” people were already de facto citizens in 1789, often listed as Free People of Color or even Free Indians. They were already “people of the United States,” if we take the Constitution at its word.
Closeup of Stockbridge Munsee Soldier in Hudson Valley Town Hall, NY
As for the Three-fifths Compromise, slavery is not actually mentioned in Article One of the Constitution. “Slaves” are defined by exclusion as “All other persons” (other than free persons) who are to be counted as three-fifths of a person.
“Indians not taxed” were not counted at all in the 1790 census, but Indians who were taxed were counted as free citizens. American Indians of the original 13 colonies were among the soldiers and officers of the Continental Army that won the U.S. War for Independence. The most successful US-allied general was Joseph Louis Cook, aka Louis Atiatoharengwen, who solidified US victories for what became the US northeast. Atitioharengwen was known to be half-Black and that seems not to have lowered the respect he received from the US military.
President Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law in 1924, granting citizenship to all American Indians, who had not yet received it. Kaw Indian Charles Curtis was already serving as a Kansas senator (and would be the next Vice-President), and was presumably considered a citizen.
Before 1924, countless other Indians were living in the US as citizens, even if land thefts, reclassification as “negroes” or some other local shenanigans chipped away at their constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms. Countless other Indians of mixed ancestry used their White ancestry to gain acceptance and enjoy the rights of full citizens.
Which leads to another question, how many free "White" in the early US population were actually mixed-bloods with some Black or Indian ancestry? Perhaps that is why “whiteness” is never defined in the Constitution.
The Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the war with Britain and recognized U.S. independence, gave the US jurisdiction from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River. That victory was not possible without the economic and military cooperation of Black and Indian people.
We were part of the foundation of this nation-state called the United States of American, right from the beginning, even if the founding documents only hint at our importance.
Poster accompanying image of Stockbridge Munsee Indian soldier, detailing the Wappinger and Mohican Indian sacrificial role in American victory over the British in the Revolutionary War. Photo by Author
Source:
Richard W. Hill Sr, "Rotihnahon:tsi and Rotinonhson:ni: Historic Relationship between African Americans and the Confederacy of the Six Nations," published in indiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas," Smithsonian Institutions's National Museum of the American Indian, edited by Gabrielle Tayac, 2009.
