In the Circuit Court of the United States, District of South Dakota, Central Division, Jane E. Waldron, Complainant vs. The United States … Black Tomahawk and Ira A. hatch, as Indian Agent at Cheyenne River Indin Agency, Defendants.
[Legal Issues]. Waldron, Jane E. In the Circuit Court of the United States, District of South Dakota, Central Division, Jane E. Waldron, Complainant vs. The United States ... Black Tomahawk and Ira A. Hatch, as Indian Agent at Cheyenne River Indian Agency, Defendants. [NP: 1904].
8vo; 1037 pp.; light adhesive in the gutter of the first page from previous case identification affixed to the title page; all pages with three holes along the gutter edge; remnants of mounting in a ringed binder; very occasional pencil notation; rebound in half tan calf over marbled boards; leather edged in gilt; spine with decorative tooling and the case in gilt on a black field; age discoloration to the edges; very good.
Jane Elizabeth Van Meter [Waldron] (1861-1941) was a Sioux of mixed-ancestry born in the Dakota Territory. She was a pioneer and civil servant who fought for the rights of women and of persons of mixed-ancestry, and was the first Native American ever to bring a lawsuit against the US Government. Her father, A. C. Meter, a white soldier, settled in Vermillion in the mid-1850s and married Harriet Aungie, a Native American of mixed-ancestry. Both of Harriet's grandmothers were full-blooded Sioux. One grandparent had married Col. Robert Dickson, a British Liaison officer during the War of 1812 and later a famous Indian trader. The other grandmother married Augustine Aungie, himself part Native American and one of the founders of Prarie de Chien, Wisconsin.
On the frontier, Jane was brought up as a Native American. "As a young girl, she dressed, played, and lived like a full-blood Sioux, not learning to speak [English] until the age of eight. Her mother sat in the Yankton tribal circle with other family heads and drew rations and ammunition for herself and her children. Jane's white father had no official status whatever in these tribal matters …" (South Dakota History, 21:1) Later, she attended Ripon College, the expenses paid from a government fund administered by the Sioux mission school at Santee, Nebraska. In 1885, Jane married Charles Waldron, and together they set up a home on 640 acres near Fort Pierre, on the west bank of the Missouri River, an allotment granted to Jane because of her Native American ethnicity. As a married woman, Jane also held a ration ticket, enabling her and her relatives to receive annuities and other treaty benefits from the Cheyenne River Indian Agency.
The case, Jane E. Waldron vs. the United States, documented in this volume, was a landmark decision that established in broad and unassailable terms the equal status in matters of tribal affiliation of the Sioux of full and mixed-ancestry. Waldron's attorney was Charles F. DeLand, a Pierre lawyer whose scholarly interest in the history of the upper Missouri River and its Native American inhabitants made him uniquely equipped to try this case. He was well aware of the customs and laws of the Sioux Nation as he, also, was of mixed-ancestry.
This issue stemmed from the stipulations of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. This treaty ceded to the Sioux the Black Hills and acknowledged that white males living with Sioux wives and family were legally full-fledged members of the Sioux tribe. At the time of the treaty, the stipulation applied to but a few. In 1876, the Sioux Agreement that falsely ceded the Black Hills to the Federal Government made no specific mention of those of mixed-ancestry, though it implied that they were legally equal. Specifically, Article 7 stipulated that persons then residing among the Sioux who were of objectionable moral character could be excluded from benefits or expelled from the reservation, penalties that could not be incurred by those of un-mixed-ancestry. This set the background for the legal action pursued by Jane Waldron.
Jane's case arose because she and Black Tomahawk, a Sioux of full-ancestry, were both enrolled at the Cheyenne River Agency and both sought to receive the allotment covering the same trac
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