Marie Baldwin, Society of American Indians, racism, Ojibwa

The French/Ojibwa lawyer, activist, and Office of Indian Affairs employee, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin (1863–1952), often receives mention in scholarly works on the Society of American Indians (SAI). Very few, however, have examined her contributions in detail. Only one article focusing exclusively on Baldwin, Cathleen D. Cahill’s “Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin: Indigenizing the Federal Indian Service” (2013), has ever been published. Cahill’s flattering portrait depicts Baldwin as a devoted suffragette and leading SAI figure, whose roles as co-founder and treasurer promoted the cause of Indian rights and her own Ojibwa values concerning women’s equality. Baldwin’s sudden exit from the SAI, Cahill explains, was a result of attacks from male, anti-Indian Office “radicals” such as arlos Montezuma (Yavapai) and Philip Gordon (Ojibwa), who condemned her as disloyal for holding a government post. Closer inspection of the SAI’s conference proceedings and pistolary record reveals a much different story. In providing the first full account of Baldwin’s involvement in intertribal activism, this essay counters Cahill’s inaccurate interpretation of Baldwin’s withdrawal from the Society, and—more importantly—examines Baldwin’s under-reported yet openly racist campaign among key SAI members to ban African Americans from the Indian Service. Baldwin’s incendiary statements on race, in turn, provide a point of departure for scholars to study further how the Society of American Indians viewed African Americans during the Progressive era, with its intense segregation and prevailing social Darwinist theories of race.