The Earliest Native American President of the US

I think to have an early president of significant native ancestry, you need to go way back to the American Revolution to change things.
 
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.)
There is an OTL tribe that makes more sense, and I've pointed it out before actually.

IOTL 1778, a treaty of alliance, the Treaty of Fort Pitt, was signed with a sizeable portion of the Lenape(Delaware) Tribe in Ohio. You can make all kinds of points about whether Congress intended to actually live up to the treaty, and IOTL it wasn't treated as honorably as it should, but that treaty was the first treaty the USA ever signed with a native nation and it set the precedent for later ones. The treaty encouraged the idea of the Lenape and other friendly native American tribes gaining a state in the Ohio territory. Although white settlers will probably outnumber them in a few years, just that small amount of time with Indian senators and political equals could do wonders for some tribes' status in the country and allow earlier integration.

For that to happen, though, you need to keep White Eyes from being murdered by a frontiersman while scouting for the Americans, and the treaty needs to be treated a little better. But it would be the earliest and best point to create better relations and get Native Americans in politics, and eventually the presidency, earlier.

I actually considered writing a TL about it, but when I posted the idea to try and get some feedback nobody seemed interested.
 
As others have said, it would be politically impossible for a person who self-identified as a member of a native tribe to become president prior to the time when Indians became US citizens. From 1930 on, a number of Oklahoman's come to mind - all of whom either had substantial amounts of native blood or were citizens of recognized tribes: Will Rogers - 1920-30s Cherokee and widly popular entertainer and columnist, "Alfalfa Bill" Murray - 1930's Oklahoma governor and citizen of the Chickasaw nation - was also one of the drafters of the constitution of the stillborne native american state of Sequoyah. Murray had only limited native blood and probably did not self-identify himself as "Indian", so one might not want to include him. Fred Harris - 1960's Democratic US Senator, supposedly some Cherokee blood but did not self-identify as Indian, - ran for democratic presidential nomination in 1972 or 1976. Tom Cole, current Republican US representative and citizen of Chickasaw Nation. Of all these folks, I am only aware that Cole strongly self-identifies as an American Indian.
 
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What if John Rolfe didn't move back to England with Pochahontas? And even in OTL, their son Thomas lived in North America.

It's not too hard to imagine a descendant there rising to the Presidency, if the rest of the timeline stays on track, or even giving rise to the first President, depending on the existence of an alt-George Washington.
 
That doesn't seem likely to me. Between Rolfe's marriage to Pocahontas and American Independence was a period of very nearly two hundred years. For one thing, that's a long time for the bloodlines to mix with other Englishmen and produce descendants who are barely Native at all.

But an even bigger problem I see is that influence and public esteem have never been particularly hereditary in America, at least not for more than a generation or two. In a monarchy, of course, you often find the same family in charge two hundred years after the really important guy appeared, but Americans always want to know what your so-called bloodline has done for us lately. How many people important in the Founding got where they were because they were related to John Rolfe or John Winthrop or Walter Raleigh? And how many people important today got where they are because they're related to John Adams or Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson? I just don't think people would have been impressed enough to elect somebody president just because they could show that Pocahontas was in their family tree hundreds of years ago.
 
Again, depending on your definition, it could be quite early. IIRC, Sam Houston was adopted into the ?Cherokee?. Since Native concepts of Indian-ness had far more to do with 'who do we say is one of us' than 'what DNA do you have', that might count - among the Indians, even if not among whites....
 
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