Native Races Act

In 1901 the Senate passed the Lodge Resolution (56Sdoc159), which was later commonly called the Native Races Act. It codified congressional opinion that aboriginal tribes and “uncivilized” people should be protected through laws and treaties that would prohibit selling them opium and intoxicating beverages. The Lodge Resolution did not carry the force of law, but it was an early legal victory for the growing temperance movement. The resolution, written by Protestant evangelistic crusaders at the Reform Bureau, was sponsored by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge introduced the resolution on December 6, 1900, and it quickly moved through the Foreign Relations Committee. Lodge brought the resolution before the Senate on January 4, 1901, where it passed with unanimous consent.

As precedent, the Lodge Resolution cited two African treaties: the Congo Treaty (1892) and the Treaty of 1899. Supported by the booming rubber industry and international evangelists, the treaties used prohibitions and taxes to dissuade native Congolese from alcohol consumption. The social forces that shaped the Lodge Resolution have roots at least as far back as the 1840s, when increases in urbanization, industrialization, immigration, poverty, crime, and drug use motivated the emergence of thousands of grassroots organizations whose main purpose was to eradicate alcohol, cigarettes, opium, and other drugs.

The temperance movement grew intermittently over the next decades, and gained support among capitalists, progressives, women's movements, many liberal Protestant groups espousing the social gospel, and some conservative Protestant groups such as the Reform Bureau, which had existed as a Washington, D.C., lobby since 1895.

When the Lodge Resolution passed Congress, the United States was still embroiled in the Philippine-American war, which Lodge fervently supported. Lodge and others believed that native Filipinos were incapable of self-government, and needed superior European colonization. Scientists of the time espoused white genetic superiority and the obvious solution of minority assimilation; religious leaders proclaimed superior races and nations had a Christian obligation to help inferior [Page 561]races and nations. The courts also upheld white racial superiority.

Some legal scholars have described Lodge's legislative work as Teutonic juridical racialism, a legal ideology proclaiming the special and singular ability of the white race to create states and administer laws. Teutonic juridical racialism was apparent in several Native American court cases, such as Johnson v. M'intosh (1823), where the Supreme Court decided American Indians had no legal right to own land; their right of occupancy was secondary to the U.S. right of discovery. The Indian Removal Act (1830) established treaties that appropriated 25 million acres and pushed the Indians west of the Mississippi River. Through the Dawes Act (1887, 1891), white settlers attained another 90 million acres of Indian lands. By 1901, when the Lodge Resolution was being considered, the courts and lawmakers had already created a permanent racial-legal hierarchy.

Public interest in temperance and a continuing Christian missionary zeal motivated a societal interest in helping the world's native races. The Reform Bureau subscribed to these dual motivations. When he started the bureau, Rev. Dr. Wilbur Crafts had already established a strong following as a Methodist and Presbyterian minister, as a religious journalist and the author of several moral reform books, as the successful campaigner who closed the World's Columbian Exposition on Sunday, as a critic of sins within Catholic and African American cultures, as an advocate of U.S. Christian theocracy, and as a successful lobbyist behind Congressional campaigns to limit pornography, abortion, and divorce. His fame allowed for national speaking tours, which funded the bureau's lobbying.

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