Basic Information
An important leader to the suffragist movement, Marie Bottineau Baldwin was born in Pembina, North Dakota into the Chippewa tribe on December 14, 1863. She became the first person of color to graduate from Washington College of Law with a law degree and was passionate about using her unique position to speak up for the rights of Indigenous people (Cahill, 2020, p. 83).
Background Information
Though Marie Bottineau Baldwin was born part of the Obibwe, otherwise known as the Chippewa, she happened to be part French as well. Marie had trouble being able to assimilate with either ethnicity as both referred to her as an outsider to some extent. For instance, she was considered a “halfbreed” in the eyes of a White American; however, within her Objibwe community she was seen almost as one of their kind but linked with the term “free people” (Cahill, 2020, p. 83). She had an upbringing that combined both of her cultures which may have been both a benefit to understanding the differences between White Americans and Indigenous people. Even so, it made her feel isolated from true belonging anywhere. With the influence of the French aspect of her family, Marie Bottineau was closely connected to the Catholic faith by attending Catholic schools as well as nearby public schools during her childhood. Later she would go on to graduate with a college degree at the St. John’s Ladies College where she would work as a store clerk for cigars and tobacco (Cahill, 2020, p. 85).
Prior to her successes fighting for women’s rights, Marie Bottineau had a strong connection to law from a young age from her family’s active contributions to fighting for Indigenous people’s rights. Her father, Jean Baptiste Bottineau, and her grandfather were lawyers who fought for fellow tribesmen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa that were located either in North Dakota or Minnesota (Cahill, 2013, p. 69). After a falling out between Marie Bottineau and her husband Fred S. Baldwin, she decided to regain stability in her life by working as a clerk for her father’s law firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota (MNHS, n.d.). Though she may not have realized it then, her engagement with her father’s law firm may have been a pivotal moment in how she became more actively involved with the women’s suffrage movement, especially towards Indigenous people.
Contributions to the First Wave
Her father’s influence on her may have been a primary factor to her overall interest in law, but Marie became more active in learning about the rights of her people when she moved to Washington D.C. Her family moved because J.B. Bottineau’s skills were needed in order to defend Indigenous leaders their rights in the Agreement of 1892, otherwise known as the Ten Cent Treaty (Cahill, 2013, p. 69). For a decade before this meeting, the U.S. government fought against the tribesmen of Chippewa in how large their reservation should be. As a large tribe, it became continuously harder for them to regroup as the U.S. government shrunk their size in preference to using the space for the general public. President Chester Arthur forced the Chippewa people from an already small reservation of 460,800 acres to 46,080 acres. This triggered the tribe to fight for their rights in Washington D.C (North Dakota Studies Project Team, n.d.). Throughout this time, Bottineau Baldwin still worked as a clerk for her father. She was able to help organize and speak at her father’s meetings that pertained to the treaty. After fighting for their case for a substantial amount of time, her father decided to work with a congressman named James O’Grady to fight for a better deal. Instead, O’Grady did not advocate for the Chippewas and instead accepted the terms without any resistance. By doing so, Mr. Bottineau sued him. During this period, Marie Bottineau Baldwin saw the potential in her becoming a lawyer while testifying for her father (Cahill, 2020, p. 87-88). Not only was there not nearly enough women lawyers being represented in the trial, but she found that being a minority would also be able to give her people more of a voice. It would not be until 1904 in the McCumber agreement where the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas that Bottineau helped fight for would receive their original 9 million acres they had lost (North Dakota Studies Project Team, n.d.).
In the year 1904, Baldwin was offered a job at the US Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) and worked hard as a clerk. Within this office in Washington D.C, she realized that she was not only the second Indigenous person working in the OIA, but also the first woman (Spruill Wheeler, 2021, p.35). As a clerk for the OIA, Baldwin was able to take control in allocating resources like food to different populations in Indian reservations. By doing this, she was making sure that her people were not being cheated out of their promised resources (Cahill, 2020, p. 89). Lots of women during these times were not getting nearly enough money for their labor as Americans hired them at an “Indian rate” which made it hard for them to make any sort of living (2020, p. 88). By making sure that Americans did not abuse their powers by sneakily taking away funds for Indian resources, Marie Bottineau Baldwin was a key figure in being able to track their activity and rightfully give back to her community.
Whilst working at the Office of Indian Affairs, Marie Bottineau Baldwin also helped found the Society of American Indians (SAI). This was an organization aimed to educate Americans what Indigenous people were truly like instead of the racist, depictions they commonly had. Within this organization, the founders believed that if they could establish a working committee without the help of any White Americans, it would prove their ability to work just as well without needing the constant idea of help from Westerners. The SAI traveled to host a conference in 1911 in Columbus, Ohio to meet with fifty other members of different tribes to speak on what needed to be done to improve their image. These people ranged from working as doctors, authors, anthropologists, and other higher-leveled careers that could use their power to make a change (Cahill, 2020, p. 91-92). Bottineau Baldwin held a speech about “‘Modern Home-Making and the Indian Woman,’’’ which helped make the point that in the past, Indigenous women were able to be seen as equal to their male counterparts. Now they are being subjugated to being mere housewives with the rise of modern Western society influencing their day to day lives (2020, p. 93). Shortly after this conference Marie’s father died. Bottineau Baldwin became inspired by her previous experiences in the OIA and SAI to change the fate of her people. She decided that she could be an asset to her community had she also gotten a law degree like the generations before her.
Marie Bottineau Baldwin became the most engaged with her work as a suffragist in the SAI when she had gone to law school by actively participating in rallies and talks to convince others of the importance it is to uphold the rights of Indigenous women. At age forty-eight, Bottineau Baldwin applied to the Washington College of Law, founded by feminists in order to retaliate against the male dominance of legal practice (Cahill, 2012, p. 73). Most of the women who studied law at the Washington College of Law were White suffragists. Therefore, her accomplishment of being able to graduate the program within two years while being a very active SAI member was an incredible feat (Cahill, 2020, p. 95-96). She did interviews that helped illustrate how much more modern the ideas behind women were in Indigenous culture than that of Western culture. As a working woman herself, Bottineau Baldwin advocated for labor rights, specifically the rights of equal pay for all genders. Not only that, but she wanted to assert the idea that there should not be a male-dominated industry and how women should have more opportunities to sustain themselves in the workforce. She fought an uphill battle as not only did she confront the lack of women’s rights, but the lack of respect Westerners gave to Indigenous people. In a quote that referenced her family’s ability to do embroidery work as well as a White woman, Bottineau Baldwin replied, “‘ I know that the Indian woman can compete with the woman of any race in any industry if she but will,’” (Cahill, 2012, p. 75-78). It is clear that her work within the SAI was able to give her opportunities to travel around the United States to give talks about the modernity of Indigenous people to all who would listen. She would later retire from her work both at the Indian Office and her SAI work in 1929 due to health risks and died in 1952 from a cerebral hemorrhage (Cahill, 2012, p. 82).
“The trouble in this Indian question which I meet again and again is that it is not the Indian who needs to be educated so constantly up to the white man, but that the white man needs to be educated to the Indian.”
– Marie Bottineau Baldwin (Cahill, 2012, p. 77)
Analysis and Conclusion
Marie Bottineau Baldwin was successful in her work as an espoused Society of American Indians member who dedicated most of her life to advocating for not only the rights of women, but the rights of Indigenous people. By helping create the SIA, she gave a foundation to arrange multiple tribes into working together to repair the damaged outlook their people had on Westerners. Being at the uprising of the suffrage movement, her accomplishments of being the first Indigenous person to obtain her law degree is one that is marked as a goal for other minority women to follow her lead. With her family’s influence, she was able to make strides legally to assist tribes while also being able to fight cases from the perspective of an Indigenous person. She fought valiantly in relating Native women as modern instead of rugged savages that Americans saw them to be. As an example, Bottineau Baldwin flaunted the modernity of being a Native woman when she said in an interview that she took great pride in being able to say she had been not only in a canoe and prairie schooner to attend the talks she has given, but also in a plane. The fascinating thought of a Native woman in a plane was an illustration that was very uncommon to imagine to American people (Cahill, 2012, p. 77). By reimagining the life of a Native being modern, it starts to destroy the constant bad stereotypes Americans had.
Even though Bottineau Baldwin had righteous desires for her people, there are critiques that can be made to her methods, such as her refusal to work with African Americans in their suffragist movements. As part of a campaign for SAI, she advocated for the removal of African Americans to either be on reservations or hold a position in the Office of Indian Affairs at all (Lewandowski, 2020, p. 77). It is shameful that although she had great ambitions to fight for her people, she did not think to partner with another suffering minority. Had she not been publicly racist towards African Americans, there is a possibility that joining forces would have been of benefit to both of their causes. This could be a similar mindset that Susan B. Anthony had to align White women’s lack of rights alongside African Americans rights. Susan Anthony was another women’s rights activist who said to Fredrick Douglass that it seemed that suffrage was a competition and that those who are more intelligent should have those rights first (Kerr, 2021, p.104). Similar to Anthony, Bottineau Baldwin felt that Native people still held over African Americans in this conceived racial hierarchy. This is why her stance was not nearly as open-minded as it could have been in pushing for suffrage for all minorities.
In summary, though Marie Bottineau Baldwin was a strong pioneer in fighting for Indigenous people to keep their rights through her work as a law clerk and active member of the SAI, her ambitions could have aimed to have been a bit more inclusive. Without her father hiring her as a clerk while fighting against the Ten Cent Treaty, she may not have had another opportunity to go to Washington D.C. to pursue her law degree or start her engagement with the SAI. Whilst at the capital, her job as a clerk for the Office of Indian Affairs was equally important in ensuring that reservations filled with struggling women got the supplies they needed to keep themselves afloat. Within the SAI, Bottineau Baldwin sought to keep the modern image of women’s rights alive in Indigenous communities while also changing the perception of her people to Westerners. In retrospect, her advocacy could have been more inclusive to have included the suffrage of African Americans and being more welcome to supporting another struggling minority. Having said that, she was able to make a name for herself while doing so independently depicted her strong will in fighting for her causes.
References
Bain News Service. (1914 Aug. 22). Mrs. Marie L. Baldwin. Library of Congress, Washington 1. Retrieved February, 3, 2022 from Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014697069/
Cahill. (2013). Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin: Indigenizing the Federal Indian Service. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 25(2), 65–86. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.25.2.0065
Cahill, C. D. (2020). Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement. University of North Carolina Press.
Kerr, A. M. (2021). White Women’s Rights, Black Men’s Wrongs. In M. J. Spruill Wheeler (Ed.), One Woman, one Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (2nd ed., pp. 96–113). essay, New Sage Press.
Lewandowski. (2020). Marie Baldwin, Racism, and the Society of American Indians. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 44(1), 35–52. https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.44.1.lewandowski
MNHS. (n.d.). Marie Bottineau Baldwin. Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.mnhs.org/votesforwomen/marie-bottineau-baldwin
North Dakota Studies Project Team. (n.d.). Section 12: Turtle Mountain. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.ndstudies.gov/gr8/content/unit-iii-waves-development-1861-1920/lesson-1-changing-landscapes/topic-4-reservation-boundaries/section-12-turtle-mountain
Spruill Wheeler, M. J. (Ed.). (2021). How Women Won. In One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (2nd ed., pp. 1–53). essay, New Sage Press.