Tribal Enrollment Councils:
Lessons on Law and Indian Identity

Alexandra Harmon

Records from the Colville Indian Reservation reveal how government officials and Indians created some tribal rolls--an important basis of Indian identity. Law and racial ideology had limited influence in this process. Asked to identify fellow tribe members, Indians both yielded to federal law and helped to give it practical meaning.

On the Colville Indian Reservation in October 1915, Superintendent J. M. Johnson opened a special council of residents with these words: "There have been many councils and you all understand the purpose of this one." Then he described the purpose anyway. One by one, he would summarize the applications of nineteen people who wished to be on the official roll of Colville Reservation Indians. "You decide," he told the men in the room, "whether each applicant is a Colville Indian. If the applicant is of Colville blood he should be admitted, provided he has no established rights elsewhere. If the applicant is not of Colville blood or if long disassociated for generations from life among the Indians of the Colville Reservation the question is whether you desire to adopt the applicant into the tribe."1	1
A council member named Little Alex probably had the superintendent's words in mind when he said, "First time when we began this council business us Indians we don't know how to act on this. . . . Here now we learn and understand what this is for and for this reason we should do just right." Indians at the meeting did seem to understand what it was for, but they were not yet sure how to "do just right." What identified a Colville Indian? How should they categorize the people they called "breeds?" Some council members sympathized with the man who declared, "If only little Indian blood I don't want them." Others were inclined to agree with the man who asserted, "If now it is our relatives it don't matter if breeds or whites, it is all right. It is all the same in one branch." Consequently, the councilmen achieved unanimity on only three of the requests they considered.2	2
In the period from 1907 to 1917, ten such councils considered a total of several hundred requests for inclusion on the Colville Reservation roll. Records of each council's discussion and votes, together with comments of the superintendent, went from the Colville Indian agency in Washington State to the Office of Indian Affairs and on to the interior secretary for final decisions. In the government's view, the result was a membership roster for "the Colville Tribe." For historians, the result is a rich lode of information about a process that helped define one of the United States's major racial or ethnic groups. In particular, the Colville records shed welcome light on the law's role in the creation of an important element of modern Indian identity--tribal base rolls.	3
Indians are largely absent from recent scholarly literature on the evolution of American racial categories, probably because scholars know that Indians are the subjects of an exceptional body of law.3 Modern legal doctrine distinguishes "Indian" from other, disfavored racial classifications. According to the Supreme Court, the U. S. government deals with Indians "not as a discrete racial group, but rather, as members of quasi-sovereign tribal entities."4 This statement glosses over the fact that "Indian" has a racial connotation in law, as in everyday speech. Nonetheless race--that is, aboriginal ancestry--does not by itself identify someone as Indian for most legal purposes. The standard supplemental mark of Indian identity, which makes Indianness unique, is membership in a self-governing tribe.5	. . .