In re Camille

• Decision Date: 02 November 1880
• Citation: 6 F. 256
• Parties: In Re CAMILLE.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Oregon

6 F. 256

In Re CAMILLE.

United States Circuit Court, D. Oregon.

November 2, 1880

DEADY D.J.

Frank Camille petitions to be admitted to become a citizen of the United States, under section 2167 of the Revised Statutes, as an alien who has resided in the United States the three years next preceding his arriving at the age of 21 years, and without having made the declaration of his intentions in that respect required in the first condition of section 2165 of the Revised Statutes.

From the evidence it appears that the applicant was born at Kamloops, in British Columbia, in 1847, and at the age of 17 came to Oregon, where he has ever since resided, and that he is otherwise entitled to admission, if he is a 'white person,' within the meaning of that phrase as used in section 2167 of the Revised Statutes, as amended by the act of February 18, 1875, (18 St. 318.) His father was a white Canadian, and his mother an Indian woman of British Columbia, and he is therefore, of half Indian blood.

In re Ah Yup, 5 Sawy. 155, it was held by Mr. Justice Sawyer that the words 'white person,' as used in the naturalization laws, mean a person of the Caucasian race, and do not include one who belongs to the Mongolian race. In the course of the opinion he says: 'words in a statute, other than technical terms, should be taken in their ordinary sense. The words 'white person,' as well argued by petitioner's counsel, taken in a strictly literal sense constitute a very indefinite description of a class of persons, where none can be said to be literally white, and those called white may be found of every shade from the lightest blonde to the most swarthy brunette. But these words in this country, at least, have undoubtedly acquired a well-settled meaning in common popular speech, and they are constantly used in the literature of the country, as well as in common parlance. As ordinarily used everywhere in the United States, one would scarcely fail to understand that the party employing the words 'white person' would intend a person of the Caucasian race.'

From the same reasons it appears that the words 'white person' do not, and were not intended to, include the red race of America.

Chancellor Kent, in considering this subject, (2 Com. 72,) says that 'it may well be doubted' whether 'the copper-colored natives of America, or the yellow or tawney races of the Asiatic,' 'are 'white persons' within the purview of the law.'

In all classifications of mankind hitherto, color has been a controlling circumstance, and for that reason Indians have never, ethnologically, been considered white persons, or included in any such designation.

From the first our naturalization laws only applied to the people who had settled the country-- the Europeans or white race-- and so they remained until in 1870, (16 Stat. 256; 2169 Rev. St.,) when, under the pro-negro feeling,...