Apply Root Motion with Animator and Animation Made INSIDE Unity

I'm making a top down 2D game using Sprites. Because of this, I'm not making my animations outside of Unity, but rather from inside using the Animation window. I'd like the character's motion to be driven by the root motion. My options seem to be:

1. Drive motion using Root Motion (check Apply Root Motion)

2. Drive motion using a curve attached to the animation and having my animations move in-place

3. Animate outside of Unity, which is silly because of the sprites

4. Drive motion without Root Motion, which I don't want to do

3 isn't an option, and I really don't want to do 4. I likewise would rather not do 2. When adding a new animation, I just want to hit the record button and move the character around.

My problem with 1 is that Root Motion isn't recognized. If I log animator.hasRootMotion it returns false.

My problem with 2 is I can't apply a curve to an animation made inside Unity, I can only apply it to animations that are imported through the model import inspector.

Is there a particular way I need to be assembling my character in order to get Root Motion to be recognized?