User:Richlevine00/sandbox5

File:Thomas L. Sloan.png

Thomas L. Sloan

Thomas L. Sloan (1863-1940) was the first Native American lawyer to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, and with his partner Hiram Chase, formed the first Native American law firm in the United States. Sloan was a founder and leader of the Society of American Indians (1911-1923), the first national American Indian rights organization run by and for American Indians. The Society pioneered twentieth-century Pan-Indianism, the philosophy and movement promoting unity among American Indians regardless of tribal affiliation.

Early Years

Thomas L. Sloan at Hampton Institute, c.1889

File:Hiram Chase1.png

Hon. Hiram Chase

Thomas L. Sloan was the first Native American lawyer to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas L. Sloan was born in 1863 on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, and raised by his grandmother. Historian Hazel Hertzberg reports that “at the age of seventeen, Sloan and his friend Hiram Chase were imprisoned in the agency blockhouse for protesting cheating by the reservation agent.” At the age of 23, Sloan attended the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. While at Hampton, Sloan was the manager of Indian student publication Talks and Thoughts, and in 1889 graduated valedictorian of his class. When Sloan returned to the reservation after graduation, he apprenticed with his friend Hiram Chase who had attended law school and was practicing in Thurston County, Nebraska. In 1892, Sloan was admitted to the Nebraska Bar and formed the law practice of "Sloan & Chase, Attorneys-At-Law", the first Native American law firm in the United States. Sloan and Chase specialized in cases involving Native Americans. On March 16 and 17, 1904, in Sloan v. United States, Sloan became the first Native American lawyer to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing an Indian allotment case involving the Omaha.

Society of American Indians

The first conference of the Society of American Indians, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1911. Rev. Coolidge center.

The Society of American Indians was the first national American Indian rights organization run by and for American Indians.

Sloan was a founder and leader of the Society of American Indians (1911-1923), the first national American Indian rights organization developed and run by American Indians. On April 3–4, 1911, at the invitation of Professor Fayette Avery McKenzie, six American Indian intellectuals attended a planning meeting at Ohio State University. The attendees were Sloan; Dr. Charles Eastman, (Santee Dakota), physician; Dr. Carlos Montezuma, (Yavapai-Apache), physician; Charles Edwin Dagenett, (Peoria), Bureau of Indian Affairs supervisor; Laura Cornelius Kellogg, (Oneida), educator; and Henry Standing Bear, (Oglala Lakota), educator. Arthur C. Parker, (Seneca), an anthropologist, was also invited to the meeting, but a fire at the New York State Capitol, which housed the New York State Museum where he served as an archeologist, precluded his attendance.From October 12–17, 1911, the Society’s inaugural conference was convened on the campus of the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, symbolically held on Columbus Day as a fresh beginning for American Indians. Approximately 50 prominent American Indian scholars, clergy, writers, artists, teachers and physicians attended the historic event, and was reported widely by national news media.

The Society pioneered twentieth-century Pan-Indianism, the philosophy and movement promoting unity among American Indians regardless of tribal affiliation. The Society was a forum for a new generation of American Indian leaders known as Red Progressives, prominent professionals from the fields of medicine, nursing, law, government, education, anthropology, ethnology and ministry, who shared the enthusiasm and faith of white reformers in the inevitability of progress through education and governmental action. The Society met at academic institutions, maintained a Washington headquarters, conducted annual conferences and published a quarterly journal of American Indian literature by American Indian authors. The Society was one of the first proponents of an "American Indian Day", and forefront in the fight for Indian citizenship and opening the U.S. Court of Claims to all tribes and bands in United States. The Society of American Indians was the forerunner of modern organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians, and according to Hertzberg, “anticipated by decades important Indian reforms: a major reorganization of the Indian school system in the late 1920s, the codification of Indian law in the 1930s, and the opening of the U.S. Court of Claims to Indians in the 1940s.”

In 1916, Sloan published an article "Settle Tribal Claims" in the American Indian Magazine. In 1919, Sloan was elected President of the Society, and in 1920 became Editor-in-Chief of the American Indian Magazine.

In 1923, Society met in Chicago for its thirteenth convention. By this time, the Society was almost completely inactive and differences regarding the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Peyote religion had alienated most of the leadership. Hertzberg reports that “Sloan, accompanied by Society colleagues, visited Chicago Bar Association and attempted to drum up interest in Indian affairs. But the meeting Chicago was overshadowed by the Indian encampment held in connection with the conference in the forest preserve in the city. Thousands of Chicagoans journeyed to the camp to see the Indians ‘in full regalia' and watch Indian dances and ceremonials. Obviously the citizenry was much more interested in the exotic Indian past the reality of the Indian present “ At the conclusion of the inauspicious meeting, after years of diminished participation, the Society disbanded with little fanfare. While the Society lacked the internal consensus necessary to fulfill its visionary role, Sloan and other former Society leaders would assume influential roles in the American Indian Defense Association, the Committee of One Hundred and the Meriam Report.

Peyote hearings

Peyote ceremony tipi

Sloan was an adherent of the Peyote faith “which among the Omaha attracted the younger, better educated, more acculturated members of the tribe, and which was active in combating alcoholism.” Hertzberg reports that in 1906, a “Mescal Society” with a Christian orientation was organized on the Omaha Reservation, by 1909, “more than half the tribal members belonged”, and by 1915 the church was reorganized as the Omaha Indian Peyote Society. Both Sloan and Chase were members.

In February and March, 1918, prominent Society leaders argued both sides of the peyote issue before the U.S. Congress House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs on the "Hayden Bill", legislation proposed by Congressman Carl Hayden from Arizona to suppress liquor and peyote among Indians. American Indians opposed to the use of peyote included Gertrude Simmons Bonnin and Charles Eastman, while those opposed to the Hayden Bill included Thomas L. Sloan, ethnologist Francis LaFlesche, Paul Boynton, Cleaver Warden, Fred Lookout and Arthur Bonnicastle. Opposition to the bill was bolstered by James Mooney of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Sloan and Chase asserted that the peyote religion was an “Indian religion” or an “Indian version of Christianity’ and entitled to the Constitutional right to religious freedom. Hertzberg reported that “according to Henry Roe Cloud, who was a Winnebago, the religion attracted ‘the younger men of the tribe because it offered more leadership to them, whereas the conservative Medicine Lodge is composed largely of the old men of the tribe and does not offer much opportunity to the younger men.”

Hertzberg records Sloan's description of the peyote religion among the Omaha and Winnebago. "It changed a large number of men from drunkards decent people. It has been reported that there was some immorality connected with the ceremony. I am convinced that there is nothing of the kind. The old-time medicine men are opposed to the use of peyote. There they are some of the persons to make detrimental remarks and spread rumors against it. Some opposing the use of peyote have grown rich selling liquor to Indians. There is now an active wave of Christianity among the Omaha and Winnebago Indians and it is a growth among the Indians themselves, and due in part to the religious use of peyote.”

By 1934, the Native American Church of Oklahoma ”was the most important Pan-Indian religious movement in the United States” and church leadership founded affiliated churches in other states. In 1945, the church was incorporated as "The Native American Church of United States." The church is now known as the Oklevueha Native American Church.

Committee of One-Hundred

The Meriam Report (1928)

In May 1923, Sloan and other Society leaders joined with reformer John Collier founding the American Indian Defense Association, a powerful new lobby in Washington. Responding to effective lobbying of the Association, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work formed the "Advisory Council on Indian Affairs", which became known as the "Committee of One Hundred", to review and advise on Indian policy. The Committee included Bernard M. Baruch, William Jennings Bryan, David Starr Jordan, Gen. John J. Pershing, William Allen White and Oswald Garrison Villard. Also included were John Collier of the American Indian Defense Association and M.K. Sniffen of the Indian Rights Association. Former Society leadership was well represented by Sloan, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, Arthur C. Parker, Dennison Wheelock, Charles Eastman, Father Philip B. Gordon, Henry Roe Cloud, J.N.B. Hewitt and Fayette Avery McKenzie. Recommendations by the committee prompted the Coolidge administration to commission Lewis M. Meriam and the Brookings Institution to conduct a two year study of the overall condition of Indians in the United States. In February 1928, findings and recommendations of "The Problem of Indian Administration", known as the Meriam Report, were published. The Meriam Report marked an ideological shift in American Indian policy and laid the foundation for the Indian New Deal under the Bureau of Indian Affairs leadership of John Collier during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration.

Later years

Historian Hertzberg reports that Sloan retired to Los Angeles In the late 1930s, where he served as an attorney for the controversial American Indian Federation. The American Indian Federation was an Oklahoma-based organization that lobbied to repeal the Indian Reorganization Act, remove Indian Commissioner John Collier and abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Thomas L. Sloan died in 1940.

Additional Resources

Omaha Tribal Historical Project

Oklevueha Native American Church

Thomas Louis Sloan grave