A Vice-President who was not a "Natural Born Citizen"

With all the controversy about whether Barak Obama is a "Natural Born Citizen", it is often overlooked that, if these theories are valid, then a previous Vice President of the United States was not a "Natural Born Citizen".

Yet, Charles Curtis (1860-1936), who was Vice-President from 1929 to 1933, was not a "Natural Born Citizen" for three reasons. First, he was a Native American Indian and Indians did not become citizens until the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 or until the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. See Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884), a United States Supreme Court case. Secondly, he was born in Kansas Territory before Kansas became a state in 1861. Thirdly, he lived virtually his entire life on an Indian Reservation. His home in Kansas was an Indian Reservation and during his 16 years in United states Congress, 14 years in the United States Senate and four years as Vice-President of the United States, he never owned his own home in Washington DC. Instead, he stayed as a guest in the home of his half-sister, Dolly Gann.

In spite of all this, his right to hold office as Vice-President of the United States has never been questioned. He also remains the only non-European besides Barak Obama ever to hold such a high office in the United States.

Here is the biography of this interesting but nearly forgotten man.