African Cherokees In Indian Territory

Forcibly removed from their homes in the late 1830s, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indians brought their African-descended slaves with them along the Trail of Tears and resettled in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. Celia E. Naylor vividly charts the experiences of enslaved and free African Cherokees from the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma's entry into the Union in 1907. Carefully extracting the voices of former slaves from interviews and mining a range of sources in Oklahoma, she creates an engaging narrative of the composite lives of African Cherokees. Naylor explores how slaves connected with Indian communities not only through Indian customs--language, clothing, and food--but also through bonds of kinship. Examining this intricate and emotionally charged history, Naylor demonstrates that the "red over black" relationship was no more benign than "white over black." She presents new angles to traditional understandings of slave resistance and counters previous romanticized ideas of slavery in the Cherokee Nation. She also challenges contemporary racial and cultural conceptions of African-descended people in the United States. Naylor reveals how black Cherokee identities evolved reflecting complex notions about race, culture, "blood," kinship, and nationality. Indeed, Cherokee freedpeople's struggle for recognition and equal rights that began in the nineteenth century continues even today in Oklahoma.

Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South

Illuminating the historical development of race relations from African American, Cherokee, and Muskeg (Creek) points of views, this book weaves a rich tapestry from oral history accounts, manuscript census schedules, and ethnohistorical literature. The Cherokee and Creek tribes were two of the largest in the Southeast and their forcible removal to Indian Territory affected tens of thousands of Africans and Native Americans This innovative study describes Creek and Cherokee social organization and culture change in the early 19th century, uses oral accounts to examine the impact of Removal on black-Indian relations, and analyzes Creek-black Indian political alliances during the Green Peach War and the anti-allotment Crazy Snake Uprising. Two chapters contain analyses of samples from federal manuscript census schedules of 1900 and 1910, describing demographics, intermarriage patterns, and education The study also links African American and European American immigration to race relations in Creek and Cherokee history between 1880 and 1920, consulting many sources that have not been used before. The comparison between the neighboring Cherokees and Creeks in the Indian Territory shows different approaches to similar problems, documenting culture change that affected the two societies. The census figures at the beginning of the century are analyzed in terms of four population segments: black Indians, including freedmen, and post-1880 black immigrants, so-called fullbloods, and (white-Indian) mixed-bloods. The study shows how these categories became metaphors for political and social outlooks and attitudes about race and native Americans. The book ends with a detailed, comprehensive bibliography containing primary and secondary sources with guides to their locations. (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1994; revised with new preface and index)

This work explores the dynamic issues of race and religion within the Cherokee Nation and to look at the role of secret societies in shaping these forces during the nineteenth century.

House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story

Examines the origins, history, various manifestations, and long-term consequences of the different connections that have been established between Indians and Blacks

Over the generations, Cherokee citizens became a conglomerate people. Early in the nineteenth century, tribal leaders adapted their government to mirror the new American model. While accommodating institutional slavery of black people, they abandoned the Cherokee matrilineal clan structure that once determined their citizenship. The 1851 census revealed a total population nearing 18,000, which included 1,844 slaves and 64 free blacks. What it means to be Cherokee has continued to evolve over the past century, yet the histories assembled here by Ty Wilson, Karen Coody Cooper and other contributing authors reveal a meaningful story of identity and survival.

In Ties that bind, Tiya Miles explores the interplay of race, power, and intimacy in the nation's early days, providing a full picture of the myriad complexities, ironies, and tensions among African Americans, Native Americans, and whites in the first half of the nineteenth century.--book jacket.