In the early 1900s, he became a backer of Fort Worth, Native Americans and more

Cato Sells (1859-1948) was a man of many talents and many causes, which included Native Americans, the Democratic party, Christianity, and Fort Worth.

Born in Vinton, Iowa, in 1859, he grew up without a father, went to Cornell College and read the law before passing the Iowa bar exam in 1880. A staunch Democrat, he was appointed by President Grover Cleveland as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa in 1894.

In 1907 he moved his family to Texas, taking up residence in Cleburne, but Fort Worth became like a second home. He quickly established himself as “a lawyer of reputation.” Sells was also a gifted public speaker. One of his most popular talks was “The Trial of Christ from a Lawyer’s Standpoint.”

He positioned himself as a power broker in state politics. He bet on the right horse in 1912 as an early supporter of New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson for president. As a member of the Democratic National Committee, he helped get Wilson nominated at the Baltimore convention and put Texas in the Democratic column in the presidential race.

The new president, who had a fondness for Texans, rewarded Sells by appointing him commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1913.

Sells lived in Washington, D.C., for most of the next eight years, but whenever he came home, he always found time to visit Fort Worth. He was the town’s biggest booster in the nation’s capital long before Amon Carter assumed that role.

Sells tried to get a new federal building for Fort Worth and urged Wilson more than once to come to Fort Worth, promising his visit would bring out “the largest gathering ever held in Texas.” After Wilson won re-election in 1916, Sells lobbied for the federal farm loan bank to locate its southwestern headquarters here.

Fort Worth showed its gratitude by making Sells an adoptive son. The Star-Telegram said the city was “particularly fortunate” to have him working for it in Washington, D.C.

He turned down the opportunity to run for political office to remain at the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. With the coming of Camp Bowie in 1917, he encouraged Oklahoma Cherokee to enter military service and served as their advocate with the Army. In March 1918 he toured the camp and spent time with the 300 Native Americans training there, posing for pictures that made it into newspapers and Army literature.

Whenever he came to Fort Worth, city fathers rolled out the red carpet, hosting banquets and public lectures. He was especially fond of the Fat Stock Show where he was a guest of honor on more than one occasion. He made large purchases of cattle at the Fat Stock Show for his Native American charges in Oklahoma and lobbied for Fort Worth as a distribution center for west Texas oil.

When in Fort Worth Sells and his wife Lola McDaniel Sells stayed at the Westbrook Hotel and attended First Presbyterian Church. And their daughter Barbara was the educational director for W.C. Stripling Dept. Store.

Sells may have been an old-fashioned assimilationist, but he genuinely cared about Native Americans in his own way. His white admirers referred to him as the “Godfather of the Red Man,” a title that we recognize today as being wrong in so many ways.

As Indian commissioner he urged his charges to adopt white ways and get an education. He sternly opposed polygamy among chiefs like Quanah Parker. Instead, he insisted they should have just one wife and “be good” to her and their children. This was his least popular reform among tribal leaders.

He also argued against the then current belief that American Indians were a “dying race.” He took a personal interest in their schooling as the path to assimilation in white society. His policies included banning all books from reservation schools that argued for Asian origins of American Indians. He declared they were a unique race tracing their origins from the Western hemisphere back to the Lost Tribes of Israel.

He favored technical schooling for boys and “home crafts” for girls to prepare them for the modern world. He also fought against the plague of alcoholism. His other causes included prohibition and overseas expansion.

When he left the Indian Bureau in April 1921, he and Mrs. Sells returned to Cleburne, sold their home and moved to Fort Worth. He remained active in the Democratic party in the years that followed and a spokesman for Texas on the national scene until his death in 1948. His last major project was chairing the Texas Centennial Committee that organized the celebration of Texas’s 100th anniversary in 1936.

Just weeks before his death in 1948, he donated his extensive collection of American Indian pottery and artifacts to the Fort Worth Children’s Museum. He is buried in Cleburne Memorial Cemetery.

Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.