The theory that marriage was integral to establishing paternity is as one attorney who argued before the Senate Select Committee on Affairs in Indian Territory; Webster Ballinger, correctly defined this type of thinking as “an abuse of intelligence.” The Dawes Commission though careful to scrutinize people on marriages and lineal descent, seemed to take a “crooked path” when it came to establishing African-Native ancestry.
In my next example we are confronted with another refutation of the idea that marriage was the path to citizenship in the application of Joe N. LOVE Chickasaw by blood card # 1717. His path to citizenship is not unlike those children of Chickasaw men and African descendant women, except in one crucial aspect……….he was enrolled as a citizen!
Some might say that it is the exception to the rule but even if that were true, it sets a precedent that tears at the fiction that a “legal marriage” was the law that determined “citizenship” and “race!”
African-Native people of Indian Territory were not “equally protected” by laws that were designed to circumvent their rights, IF they could get an attorney to represent them in these complex legal matters! Clearly the laws and procedures established by the Dawes Commission and the Five Slave Holding Tribes were designed to suppress information that established their ancestry based on the laws already on the books.
In our next example Joe N. LOVE states in a letter to the Dawes Commission that he is an “illegitimate” child of Robert H. LOVE a deceased Chickasaw Indian and his mother was a non-citizen “white” woman. Despite all of this and let me reiterate he was illegitimate, by definition there was no “legal” marriage and still, he was granted citizenship and his full rights AND land allotment because of his Indian father.