Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
I think to have an early president of significant native ancestry, you need to go way back to the American Revolution to change things.
There is an OTL tribe that makes more sense, and I've pointed it out before actually.If the Iroquios (sp?) Confederacy throws in with the Colonials against Britain, they might end up being incorporated in their entirety as a U.S. state.
(There might have been talk of doing this, but I don't know how substantial it was. It might just have been AH.com gossip.)
If Jackson doesn't become president and the people who thought violating the treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes would have been an abominable sin (Schama's book showed there were many), perhaps they could turned into U.S. states as well?
It wouldn't have been that hard--they had written constitutions and all.
Entire Indian tribal states converted into U.S. states means, by law, Indian representatives and senators.
Also, someone theorized if Judah Benjamin ever became president of the CSA, he would be relatively weak because of him being Jewish and would have to be rather even more deferential to the planter elite than a Christian C.S. would have been.
In my scenario, one party or another might nominate a Native American, thinking that he'd owe his rise to the party bosses even more than a white candiate would, due to his race.
(It'd be hilarious if he took the bull by the horns, so to speak.)