Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/67

 60 FEDERAL EBPOETEB. �cle 2, § 2, Con. U. S.) is another question of a more serious character. �The constitution of this state limits the privilege of suffrage to "white maies." Article 2, § 2, Con. Or. But by the oper- ation of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments this word "white" is, in effeet, stricken out of the constitution of the Btate. The fourteenth one provides that "ail persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the juris- diction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside;" and the fifteenth one declares that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on aceount of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The resuit is that citizens of the United States cannot be ex- cluded from the poils on aceount of color. Therefore, negroes born in the United States, being born "subject to the juris- diction" thereof, became citizens and votera. �But the Indian tribes in the United States, or the mem- bers thereof, are not born "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. McKay v. Campbell, 2 Saw. 132. There are no Indians in Oregon that were born subject to its jarisdiction or that have since become so. In the report of the senate judiciary committee, made by Mr. Carpenter, Deccniber 14, 1870, it was stated that the Indian tribes, or the members thereof, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and, therefore, such Indians are not made citizens by the fourteenth amendment. 1 Dillon, 348, note. �The state may make any Indian a voter, or the United States may make him a citizen, and then by operation of the fifteenth amendment he becomes a voter within the state where he resides, if he is otherwise qualified according to its laws. �By the treaty of January 31, 1855, (10 Stat. 1157,) the tribal organization and relation of the Wyandotte Indians, in Kansas, with the United States, was dissolved and termi- nated, and they were made "citizens of the United States to ail intents and purposes." ����