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"If you believe people have no history worth mentioning it is easy to believe they have no humanity worth defending"
-William Loren Katz
Alex Haley's successful tracking of Kunte Kinte gave the hunt for African ancestors a needed shove forward. But driven by their stubborn will and searching eye, as researchers fanned out in pursuit of African connections, another vision appeared. First as a recurring distraction, then a source of wonder, geological detectives stumbled on Native American ancestors. Alex Haley was hardly alone when he also discovered Native American roots to his family tree.
Though often unmentioned except in family circles, this biological legacy has been shared by such figures as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Langston Hughes, Lena Horne, Alice Walker, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson and L.L. Cool J. Today virtually every African American family tree boasts an Indian branch.
This uniquely "only in America" relationship began with the earliest foreign landings in the New World. From Nova Scotia to Cape Horn, and along the jewel-like islands of the Caribbean, Europeans imposed a slave system first on Native Americans. Then, as millions of Indian fell victim to overwork, disease and brutality, kidnapped Africans began to take their places.
There in the misty dawn of the Americas two peoples of color began to meet in slave huts, on tobacco and cotton plantations, and as workers in dank mines. For two centuries Indians and Africans remained enslaved together, and Native Americans were not exempted from the system until after the Revolution. Scholar C. Vann Woodward has concluded "If the black-red inter-breeding was anywhere as extensive as suggested by the testimony of ex-slaves, then the monoracial concept of slavery in America requires revision."
The African-Indian connection also adds a sharp new dimension to the issue of slave resistance. The first evidence of Native American and African unity appears in a l503 communication to Spain's King Ferdinand from Viceroy Nicolas de Ovando of Spain's headquarters on Hispaniola, now Haiti. Ovando complained that his enslaved Africans "fled among the Indians and taught them bad customs and never could be captured." In the last four words the governor is describing more than a problem with untrustworthy servants or the difficulties of retrieving runaways in a rainforest. From his thin line of white colonies, he sees Europeans confronting a new bi-racial enemy that has a base of support in the interior. The budding coalition has new recruits joining each week.
In Suriname, on the northern coast of South America U.S. anthropologist Richard Price lived among and recorded the origins of the Saramaka nation. Beginning in the 1680s Saramakas combined Indians and Africans enslaved by Europeans. Sacred Saramaka legends explained: "The Indians escaped first and then, since they knew the forest, they came back and liberated the Africans." This red hand of friendship extended to people of African descent is an American tradition as deep and meaningful as the first Thanksgiving. From Canada to Cape Horn, two peoples fled bondage, united as husband and wife, brother and sister, mother and child, and formed a military alliance.
Centuries before the Declaration of Independence talked of natural rights and sanctioned rebellion against tyranny, African-Indian alliances acted on these concepts as they pursued their American dream in the mountains beyond the white settlements dotting the coastline. In 1537 Viceroy Mendoza of Mexico, lamenting an insurrection by Africans, admitted "the Indians are with them." As slave revolts rocked the new European outposts in the Americas, they also enjoyed Native American support.
In hard-to-reach backwaters of the Americas, two people of color people began to build their own "maroon" colonies. Some were outlaw bands, raiders who preyed on whites, slaves and Indians alike, and lived a short, brutish life. But other maroons depended on family farming and herding and built peaceful relations and trade with Indian villages, slaves, and former masters.
European officials judged maroons, in the words of a French historian, "the gangrene of colonial society." Their success as independent economic societies refuted white claims of African inferiority. Each day Maroons proved once slaves wrenched free they could govern themselves and prosper. Further, maroon encampments served as beacons for discontented slaves in a radius of a hundred miles, and stood as a clear and present danger to the European conquest. Some whites saw maroons as a knife pressed against the thin line of their rule, and they had a point.
In a clockwork of military and legal reflexes, European authorities sought to eradicate Black Indian contacts and pit Red against Black. In l523 a Royal Order to Hernando Cortez banned Africans from Indian villages. "Division of the races is an indispensable [control] element" said a Spanish officer. "Between the races we cannot dig too deep a gulf," announced a French official.
Well-trained European armies ordered to crush maroon colonies met their match in distant mountains and jungles. "[Maroon] self-respect grows because of the fear whites have of them," a white Brazilian wrote to King Joao of Portugal in l719. Maroon songs resonated with victorious pride:
"Black man rejoice, White man won't come here.
And if he does, the Devil will take him off."
White commanders in resplendent uniforms met defeat and chose retirement in distant European capitals.
Foreign soldiers had little stomach for warfare in the wilderness against Black Indians, so Europeans hired or conscripted Indians. These were experts in frontier warfare, but their loyalty was questionable. In 1732 Spanish officials in Venezuela threw 150 conscripted Indians and Africans, and 100 white soldiers against Juan Andresote, a Black Indian, whom the Spanish Crown saw as a business rival. When Adresote's guerrilla fighters surrounded the invaders, their soldiers of color defected. Then, the musket fire of Andresote's men finished the work, killing or wounding more than half of the whites, as the rest scurried home.
Most maroon leaders were African-born, but after 1700 leadership increasingly fell to those born to Black Indian marriages, people familiar with European negotiations. Black women, in short supply, sometimes played crucial roles in village life. In Amazonia, Brazil, Filippa Maria Aranha, who ruled a thriving colony, so adroitly maneuvered her armed forces against the Portuguese, there was no defeating her and Portugal granted her people freedom, independence and sovereignty.
The largest American maroon settlement was the Republic of Palmares, a three-walled city of 11,000 in northeastern Brazil. For almost the entire l7th century Palmares' armies hurled back repeated Dutch and Portuguese military expeditions. Finally, in 1794 Palmares was overrun, and according to legend, its warriors, threw themselves over a cliff rather than surrender.
In 1920 Carter G. Woodson, the father of modern Black history, wrote that in North America entire libraries were devoted to studies of the relationship between Africans and Europeans and the relationship between Native Americans and Europeans. But, said Dr. Woodson, the third part of the American triangle remained unexplored. "One of the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the United States is that treating of the relations of the Negroes and the Indians." Woodson thought slaves "found among the Indians one of their means of escape."
The very notion of "Black Indians" still has most whites shaking their heads in disbelief or smiling at what appears to be a joke, an unlikely play on words. No one remembers any such person in a school text, western novel or Hollywood movie. None ever appeared. Even in African American families Indian connections were occasionally mentioned, but not as part of an historic process. Despite the vital role of remembrance for people of color, a gallant heritage remained hidden.
As researchers traced African roots Indian connections could no longer be ignored. In the 1920s Columbia University anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits, renowned for documentation of African survivals in American life, conducted interviews in New York, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. which determined that a fourth to a third of African Americans had Indian ancestors. Today in North American families the figure is closer to 95%.
Scholars have uncovered fascinating glimpses of the historic legacy. In 1622 the colony of Jamestown, Virginia was attacked by Native Americans but Africans were spared. In 1763 during Pontiac's Indian uprising a Detroit resident reported that Native Americans killed whites but were "saving and caressing all the Negroes they take." He worried lest this might "produce an insurrection." Chief Joseph Brant's Mohawks in New York welcomed runaway slaves and encouraged intermarriage. Native American adoption systems knew no color line and accepted the breathless fugitives as sisters and brothers. Woodson's notion of an escape hatch notion proved correct: Indian villages welcomed fugitives, and served as stations on the underground railroad.
Native Americans were proud people, but without prejudice, and lacked an investment in slavery. Enslaved Africans near New Orleans fled to nearby Natchez villages, and by 1723 a free Black man commanded Natchez expeditions against the French. One Black Indian village, Natanapalle, claimed 15 residents with 11 muskets and ammunition, and another band camped across Lake Pontchartrain.
British racial policy relied on divide and rule. In 1721 most English settlements denied entrance to Indians and ten years later whites in Carolina who brought Blacks to frontier lands faced fines of 100 pounds. Louisiana Governor Etienne de Perier, whose African slaves escaped and united with Natchez Indians and in one raid destroy a French colony and left 200 whites dead, warned this "union between the Indian nations and the black slaves" could lead to "total loss" for his colony.
In British North America each treaty with Native Americans provided for the return of runaways. In 1721 the Governor of Virginia made the Five Nations promise to return all fugitives; in l726 the Governor of New York had the Iroquois Confederacy promise; in l746 the Hurons promised and the next year the Delawares promised. Compliance was another matter. According to scholar Kenneth W. Porter none of these nations returned a slave. British officials also offered staggering rewards to Indians who would hunt fugitives. In Virginia price was 35 deerskins, and in the Carolinas it was three blankets and a musket.
To finally seal off Native American villages and make Indians partners, British merchants introduced Africans as slaves to the Five Nations - Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminoles.
Though less than 3% of Indian people owned slaves, bondage created destructive cleavages in their villages and promoted a class hierarchy based on "white blood." Indians of mixed white blood stood at the top, "pure" Indians next, and people mixed with of African descent were at the bottom. In 1860 Indian populations figures over a 30-year period showed a decline ranging from 20% to 40%, but the numbers of slaves had increased to 2,511 for the Cherokees, 2,344 for the Choctaws 1,532 for the Creeks and 975 for the Chickasaws. Slavery had become a major economic factor in each nation.
Indian masters, however, rejected the worst features of southern white bondage. Travelers reported enslaved Africans "in as good circumstances as their masters." A white Indian Agent, Douglas Cooper, upset by the Native American failure to practice a brutal form of bondage, insisted that Indians invite white men live in their villages and "control matters."
Force, division and law threatened but failed to end Black- Indian friendships. Thomas Jefferson discovered among the Mattaponies of Virginia "more negro than Indian blood." The city of Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by forty-four people of whom all but two were African, Indian or a mixture of the two peoples. In the 1830s frontier artist George Catlin described "Negro and North American Indian, mixed, of equal blood" as "the finest built and most powerful men I have ever yet seen."
Prominent whites, including Governor Perrier of Louisiana, claimed Indians had "a great aversion" to Africans. But this was wishful thinking. In 1730 his Choctaw allies, captured dozens of Black runaways who had served as military allies of the Natchez nation, but then refused to surrender them. When the Africans were finally returned after 18 months, they boasted of their freedom with the Natchez and the Choctaw. An angry Perrier reported the returnees had a new "spirit of laziness, independence and insolence."
The greatest flowering and most militant expression of the Black-Indian alliance took place in Florida. Enslaved Africans fled bondage in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolinas to make a new life on the penninsula claimed by Spain. Around the time of the American Revolution, Africans welcomed the Seminoles, a breakaway segment of the Creek nation, to the penninsula and taught them rice cultivation methods they had learned in Sierra Leone and Senegambia. On this basis the two peoples formed an agricultural and military alliance that defeated repeated invasions by U.S. slaveholding posses.
Finally, in 1819, to end a perceived threat by U.S. slaveholders, the United States purchased Florida. By this time African-run plantations stretched for fifty miles along Florida's fertile Appalachicola river valley, and included herds of cattle and horses. In Florida the Red and Black Seminoles fought the United States Army, Navy and Marines to a standstill for four decades, and some Seminoles never surrendered. In three Seminole Wars the United States armed forces lost more than 1500 U.S. soldiers, spent more than $40,000,000 and at times Seminole armed forces tied up half of the U.S. Army on the peninsula. "This, you may be assured," said U.S. General Thomas Jesup in l837, "is a Negro, not an Indian war." It was both.
Once away from European rule, African and Native American men and women found they had more in common than a foe wielding muskets and whips. Scholar Claude Levi-Strauss found both peoples had "precise knowledge" and "extreme familiarity with their biological environment," and gave it "passionate attention." Dr. Theda Perdue's study of the Cherokee nation found that red and black people saw the spiritual and environmental as one, and common activities such as rising in the morning, hunting and curing illness as imbued with religious significance. Mountains and hills represented divinities; people, animals and plants carried life's messages; religion was not reserved for Sundays, but a matter of daily reflection.
Indians and Africans both sought to live harmoniously with nature, cherished kinship, stressed cooperation and created economies based on subsistence agriculture. Both peoples rejected pursuit of worldly treasures, and allowed kinship rather than ownership to dictate economic, social and judicial decisions and marital customs. Individual roles were subservient to and flowed from transcendent community duties.
Analysis of faunal materials from a Black 18th century colony at Fort Mose, Florida, by Dr. Jane Landers reveals that in their eating habits "Indian and black villages resembled each other in many respects." Cherokee and other Native American rulers, noted Perdue, governed not by obtuse legal doctrines, but by an overarching, "friendly compact" members were born into and agreed to follow. These societies contrasted with European models that slashed the narrow ribbon of peace to pursue individual wealth and regretted nothing but defeat.
By l860 African Americans has so thoroughly mixed with Native Americans throughout the Atlantic seaboard, that white legislators wanted to revoke their tax exemptions. In the Oklahoma Indian Territory 18% of the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and Creeks were of African descent.
No less than in the North and South, the Civil War tore Indian nations apart. Surrounded by Confederate troops and influenced by Confederate Indian agents, most Native Americans in Oklahoma felt they had little choice but follow the Confederacy. However, in November 1861 hundreds of black and red Indians led by Creek Chief Opothle Yahola, fought three pitched battles against Confederate whites and Indians to reach Union lines in Kansas, and offer their services. With the defeat of the Confederacy and its Indian allies, northerners sought revenge and the U.S. scrapped existing treaties with Native American nations.
The Seminole nation made the most rapid adjustment to emancipation, electing six Black members to its first post-war governing Council. Black Seminoles began to build homes, churches, schools and businesses. Cherokees and Creeks moved toward equality somewhat slower and Choctaws and Chickasaws slower yet.
Whatever unfairness African Americans felt living among Indians, they knew did not compare with what they could expect from southern whites. "The opportunities for our people in that [Indian] country far surpassed any of the kind possessed by our people in the U.S.," wrote editor O.S. Fox of the Cherokee Afro-American Advocate. His people knew that they lived among Indian men and women who would never brutalize or lynch their sons and daughters.
At the famous Congress of Angostura in l8l9, liberator Simon Bolivar was elected President of Venezuela and planned a military course that would eventually free the Americas of foreign rule. But he also took time to talk of our racial history:
"It is impossible to say to which human family we belong. The larger part of the native population has disappeared, Europeans have mixed with Indians and the Negroes, and the Negroes have mixed with the Indians. We are all born of one mother America, though our fathers had different origins. This dissimilarity is of the greatest significance."
Many people of African descent found escape and some located their American dream among Native Americans. Together two peoples of color became the first freedom-fighters of the Americas. Their courageous contribution to our legacy of resistance to tyranny deserves greater recognition.
Copyright (c) 2001 William Loren Katz. All Rights Reserved.
William Loren Katz is a historian and author of almost 40 books on African American History. He can be reached at wlkatz@aol.com, You can view his website at http://www.williamlorenkatz.com/
"William Loren Katz said he refused to continue teaching American history story from textbooks he felt told a distorted story of white cowboys winning the West and an all-white Congress paying the way to democracy. "So for the past 40 year, Mr. Katz has directed his energy toward what he regards as correcting the pages of the nation's history - a history, he says that must include forgotten accomplishments of American blacks and Indians. . .. 'A half history is dangerous,'he said. 'The truth will set us all free.''
-The Washington Times
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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But I have learned that when Black history is given, even by an apparently sympathetic White person, credence must be given sparingly.
The problem with all of these White given histories, is that these people are NOT accounted for, and therefore they must not have existed.
In Panama, Black people are told that they are all there, because their ancestors came from the Caribbean Islands to help build the Panama Canal. There is a Lie there somewhere.
In other places, Black people are told that they are there, because their ancestors were runaway Slaves. Similar “Stories” are told throughout the Americas (by White People).
But yet, I have seen documents from the 1700s of British Governors negotiating with Sambo Chiefs, for the release of Sambos taken into Slavery along the Miskito Coast of Central America. Like I said, there is a Lie there somewhere.
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Clyde It breaks down many misconceptions and is dead on regarding the white revisionist presentation of the real facts. Mainly because today, the majority of Indians receiving reparations are white folk with the very least part of Indian blood.
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote:Originally posted by meninarmer: Clyde It breaks down many misconceptions and is dead on regarding the white revisionist presentation of the real facts. Mainly because today, the majority of Indians receiving reparations are white folk with the very least part of Indian blood.
This why they get reparations while AA Indians are ignored.
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meninarmer - Not only are these "Indians" for the most part White people. But they have also taken to EXCLUDING Blacks from tribal membership.
"In 2006, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal (JAT), now the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court, ruled that a Cherokee Nation law that limited citizenship in the nation to Cherokees, Shawnees and Delawares by blood was unconstitutional because it excluded freedmen and other non-Indians who were listed on separate Dawes Rolls.
Freedmen were former slaves of Cherokees and were emancipated and given Cherokee Nation citizenship by an 1866 amendment to our 1839 Constitution after the American Civil War. The evidence shows that people with Cherokee blood were placed on the by-blood rolls and non-Indians were listed on either the adopted white rolls or freedmen rolls by the Dawes Commission.
As seen below; even when the question "Who is an Indian" is "Seemly" legitimately asked. It is still a Lie, because it seeks to define an Indian through White eyes, and through the White timeframe.
Before Whites came, different races were already Co-mingling. What Whites found was the result of this Co-mingling. So is the child and only one of the parents the Indian?
Who Is An Indian by Barbara Warren
No single definition of "Indian" exists - socially, administratively, legislatively or judicially. Currently in the United States 10 to 20 million people may have Indian ancestry, but only a small percentage identify themselves as being primarily Indian.
The Bureau of the Census counts anyone an Indian who declares himself or herself to be an Indian. In 1990 the Census figures showed there were 1,959,234 American Indians and Alaska Natives living in the United States (1,878,285 American Indians, 57,152 Eskimos, and 23,797 Aleuts). This is a 37.9 percent increase over the 1980 recorded total of 1,420,000. The increase is attributed to improved census taking and more self-identification during the 1990 count. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, no single Federal or tribal criterion establishes a person's identity as an Indian. Government agencies use differing criteria to determine who is an Indian eligible to participate in their programs. Tribes also have varying eligibility criteria for membership. To determine what the criteria might be for agencies or Tribes, one must contact them directly.
To be eligible for Bureau of Indian Affairs services, an Indian must (1) be a member of a Tribe recognized by the Federal Government, (2) one-half or more Indian blood of tribes indigenous to the United States (25 USC 479) ; or (3) must, for some purposes, be of one-fourth or more Indian ancestry. By legislative and administrative decision, the Aleuts, Eskimos and Indians of Alaska are eligible for BIA services. Most of the BIA's services and programs, however, are limited to Indians living on or near Indian reservations.
"There is no universally accepted definition of the term 'Indian.'...Although there is one ethnological definition of Indian, there are many legal definitions...Many federal laws use the word "Indian' without defining it. This allows federal agencies to decide who is an Indian under those laws. Some agencies have been accused of defining Indian too narrowly, thereby depriving people of benefits that Congress intended them to receive. When Congress has not defined the term, courts have used a two-part test to determine who is an Indian. First, the person must have some Indian blood, that is, some identifiable Indian ancestry. Second, the Indian community must recognize this person as an Indian...The Census Bureau takes a simple approach to these problems. The bureau lists every person as an Indian who claims to be one."
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Identity: What Is An Indian by White Deer of Autumn (Gabriel Horn) Taken from Moccasin Trail, May, 1981
How much Indian are you? This question was asked of a group of American Indian Children at Andersen Elementary School in Minneapolis. Their answers were quite interesting and very disturbing.
In this circle of black, brown and blondish hair - of black, brown, green, blue and hazel eyes, of wiry, curly, kinky and straight hair, they were very percent-of-blood oriented. From 15/32 to 1/4 to 1/2 they called out their individual percents - that is until they began to laugh.
Yes, it is ridiculous, especially when one child was asked to point to half of him that was Indian and the half that wasn't...
TRIBAL MEMBERSHIP
Requirements as of April, 1998
The following information lists the blood requirements for eligibility for tribal membership. To be eligible for the Johnson-O'Malley program, a student must be eligible for tribal membership or be 1/4 blood degree descendant of a tribal member of a recognized tribe with written documentation. TRIBE BLOOD QUANTUM REQUIRED FOR MEMBERSHIP
Absentee Shawnee 1/4 degree Absentee Shawnee blood Apache 1/8 degree total Indian blood Caddo 1/8 degree Caddo blood Cherokee Any degree-Descendent of tribal member Cherokee-Shawnee Any degree-Descendent of tribal member Cheyenne-Arapaho 1/4 degree with at least 1 enrolled parent Chickasaw Any degree-Descendent of a tribal member Choctaw Any degree-Descendent of a tribal member Citizen Potawatomi Nation Any degree-Descendent of a tribal member Comanche 1/4 degree Comanche blood Creek Any degree-Descendent of tribal member Delaware Tribe of Eastern Oklahoma Any-degree-Descendent of tribal member Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma 1/8 degree Absentee Delaware blood Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Ft. Sill Apache 1/16 degree Ft. Sill Apache blood Iowa Tribe of Kansas & Nebraska Any degree-Descendent of tribal member Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma 1/4 degree Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma blood Kialegee Tribal Town 1/4 degree Kialegee Tribe of Oklahoma Kickapoo of Missouri 1/4 degree Kickapoo of Missouri blood Kickapoo of Oklahoma 1/4 degree Kickapoo of Oklahoma blood Kiowa 1/4 degree Kiowa blood Kaw Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Miami Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Modoc Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Osage Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Otoe-Missouria 1/4 degree Otoe-Missouria blood Ottawa Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Pawnee 1/4 degree Pawnee blood Peoria Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Ponca 1/4 degree Indian blood and a parent must be enrolled Prairie Band Potawtomi 1/4 degree Prairie Band Potawtomi blood Quapaw 1/4 degree Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma Sac & Fox Tribe of Missouri 1/8 degree Indian blood born to member of tribe Sac & Fox Tribe of Oklahoma 1/4 degree Sac & Fox of Oklahoma Seminole Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Seneca-Cayuga Any degree-Descendant of tribal member Tonkawa Tribe 1/4 degree Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma Wichita 1/8 degree Wichita or Affiliated Tribes Wyandotte Any degree-Descendant of tribal member United Keetowah Band of Cherokees 1/4 degree United Keetowah of Oklahoma
The above tribes are for Oklahoma tribes only. If you have a question on out-of-state tribal requirements for eligibility, you should contact the tribal office in question.
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Water color from 1735 showing black Indians, Native Americans and an African together
Though neither white, Christian, nor European, together they created communities of permanence, that included people from overseas. The early history of these communities provides examples of two diverse people living together in peace.
Exclusion from most written historical texts does not erase or deny the facts. Only the absence of true understanding of the relationships red and black peoples had, leaves unanswered questions for those groping to understand their family's past.
Great medicine
Africans arrived on 'New World' shores with valuable assets for both European and Native Americans. They were used to agricultural labor and working in field gangs, something unknown to most Indians.
As experts in tropical agriculture, Africans found much to share with Native Americans, and the two groups shared and combined knowledge about indigenous farming.
Native Americans found that Africans had 'Great Medicine' in their bodies. They were virtually immune to European diseases that decimated most native populations. This was also an encouragement for joining together, to create stronger, healthier children from the unions.
Their slave experience also qualified Africans as experts on whites - their motives, diplomacy, armaments, strengths, weaknesses, languages, defenses and plans.
Afro-Indian family ties
From a common foe, Africans and Native Americans found the first link of friendship and earliest motivation for an alliance. They discovered they shared some vital life views.
Family was of basic importance to both, with children and the elderly treasured. Religion, a love and respect for 'Mother Life', and the sacred mystery behind life, was a daily part of cultural life.
Both Africans and Native Americans found they shared a belief in cooperation, rather than competition and rivalry. Beyond individual human differences in personality, generally speaking, each race was proud, but neither was weighed down by prejudice. Skill, friendship and trust, not skin color or race was important.
That Native Americans and Africans merged by choice, invitation, and bonds of trust and friendship, cannot be understated. It explains why families who share this biracial inheritance have never forgotten these family ties.
Since 1502, Black Indians have been reported, documented, painted, and photographed coast to coast from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego. In the decades between the 1619 Jamestown settlement and the 'Great Treaty Signings' of the 1880's, Black Indian Societies were reported in more than 15 states from New York to South Carolina as well as the thirty Caribbean Islands 'blessed' by European colonization.
'You don't look Indian'
As early as 1640 in 'British America' there were policies to separate Africans and Native Americans. This beginning with Govenor John Winthrop's Narragansetts Policies.
Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of America, established the "you don't look Indian" precedence, when he found "more negro than Indian blood" among the Mattaponies of his home state Virginia.
Affected by this rule in their home regions over the next century, other Black Indians were legislated out of existence: The Montauk, Fall River and Dudley Nations, to name a few.
It was around the 1740's that British colonists in the southern colonies, introduced the practice of slavery among neighboring Native Americans. Later, as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, there were over ten thousand Black Indians to be counted among the 60.000 marched to Kansas and Oklahoma on the 'Trail of Tears'. Unfortunately, neither many black nor Indian children, nor many of their parents have an awareness of this legacy.
Black Indians for 500 years
Among those who know nothing about us or our culture, there are some who hold the mistaken belief that one must look, act and speak in particular ways, to be recognized as being part of a particular cultural heritage.
During the past 400 years, slavery, oppression and racism have served Black Indians: like wind upon the desert corn, they have caused the roots of our culture to grow deeper, in places where experts would say it is impossible for plants to grow.
April 2002 will mark the 500th year of Black Indians. For anyone who cares to look, we have been there all the time. Book about black Indians
Nomad Winterhawk - Ntsistsista (Butterfly Clan) - is a Black Indian of Cheyenne/Apache-Senegal African-Irish-Algonquin heritage. He has written a book honoring Black Indians and the 500 Year Heritage: 'The Black Indian Cultural Heritage' - designed to empower other Black Indians and inspire other individuals who have lost contact with their cultural roots.
As early as the 1700's, there were over 100,000 black Indians.The Black Seminole Indian Scouts proved to be some of the most skilled fighters and trackers of the post -- Civil War era.
No amount of gallantry, however, won them the land promised under the treaties signed by both General Zachary Taylor and President James Polk.In addition, an ungrateful army later cut their rations.Bitterly disillusioned, many of the scouts left for Mexico, never to return.Today the remaining members of the Black Seminole nation live primarily along the Rio Grande.
The history of the Southeast is where most inter-mixing of the blacks and natives took place, but it also took place in other places such as with the Wampoanog in the Northeast and the West.Here a Mountain Man named James Beckwourth, a mulatto who became know as "Bloody Arm", was a well respected warrior who, as legend has it, married into the Crow Nation.
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There is no tribe of Montauk Indians... By George DeWan
An eager crowd buzzed with anticipation in the Riverhead courtroom of State Supreme Court Justice Abel Blackmar on Nov. 17, 1910. A hush fell over the packed chamber as the black-robed judge entered and began to read his long-awaited decision in the case of "Wyandank Pharaoh, as Chief and head of the Montauk Tribe of Indians, against Jane Benson et al."
To the stunned amazement of about 75 Montauketts who were present in the courtroom, Blackmar said, in effect, that they did not exist.
"The Montauk tribe of Indians has disintegrated and been absorbed into the mass of citizens," Blackmar said, "and ...at the time of the commencement of this action there was no tribe of Montauk Indians."
That day in Riverhead more than 88 years ago was a watershed moment in the history of the Montauketts, Algonquin Indians whose ancestors lived on the Montauk peninsula. Although the lawsuit was primarily about whether earlier agreements had given the Montauketts perpetual grazing, planting and living rights on thousands of acres on the peninsula, a dominant feature of the trial was an argument over whether these remaining Montauketts had any right to be called Indians at all.
A 1703 lease agreement with East Hampton Town gave the Montauketts perpetual rights on the property. But in 1879, an investor named Arthur Benson bought most of that land from a private group of East End investors, planning to build an exclusive summer colony along the ocean. In the middle of the property, on a tract of land called Indian Fields, lived a small group of Montauketts. Rather than approach the Indians as a group, Benson's men got individual Montauketts to sign away their rights for as little as $10 each.
At a community meeting in the summer of 1895, the Montauketts decided to hire a lawyer to contest the Benson purchase of their land, which they said had been done without the tribe's approval. Although today the individual Indian groups who lived on Long Island are not considered to be separate tribes, the term was customary usage at the time.
The lawsuit, brought against Benson's executors as well as others involved in the development plans, went to trial Oct. 12-13, 1909, in Blackmar's courtroom. Wyandank Pharaoh asked the court to recognize his authority as chief, to recognize the Montauketts as "an existing Indian tribe" with the rights cited in the 1703 agreement, and to declare invalid the individual deeds that Benson had negotiated with him and six other Montauketts.
Defense attorneys immediately attacked the suit on the ground that the Montauketts had no legal standing. They were no longer a tribe, they argued, because they had intermarried with blacks and sometimes whites, and did not participate in regular ceremonies and meetings.
Race-related questions by the defense showed an attempt to portray the Montauketts not as Indians but as blacks. The first witness was Benjamin Barnes, a 70-year-old former town trustee, and here are some of the questions he was asked: "Would you say that William Fowler was an Indian?"
"Didn't he have kinky hair?"
"Wasn't he of mulatto color?"
"Wouldn't you say that he was of a mixture of Negro and white?"
Another Montaukett, Ephriam Pharaoh, was cross-examined by defense attorney Joseph Belford.
"Are there any Indian ceremonies connected with either birth, or marriage or burial?"
"I don't know, sir. I don't remember."
Wyandank Pharaoh testified that he was about 45 years old, and he was referred to as "chief" or "king" by other Montauketts.
"I claim that I inherited the kingship from my father, David Pharaoh, by virtue of the tradition of my tribe that the eldest son should inherit," he said. "There is not anything in the tradition of my tribe with relation to purity of blood. According to my theory it didn't make any difference so long as there was a trace of Indian blood anywhere that gave me the tribal kingship."
The defense moved to dismiss the complaint immediately on the grounds that Wyandank's lawyers had not proved "the existence of the Montauk tribe of Indians," that the deeds were valid, and that "the alleged Indians are of mixed blood, including 'Mustees' [mestizos], Negro and white..."
It didn't happen immediately, but 13 months later, Blackmar essentially agreed with the defense. He noted that after the 1703 agreement, Montauketts and their descendants did live at Indian Fields.
"During this long period," Blackmar said, "the number of Montauk Indians became greatly reduced and their blood became so mixed that in many of them all Indian traits were obliterated. They had no internal government and they lived a sort of shiftless life hunting, fishing and cultivating the ground and often leaving Montauk for long periods and working in some menial capacity."
Blackmar found the agreements made with Benson were legitimate, and in them, the Montauketts released to Benson "all their right, title, interest and claim to the rights and privileges in the land known as Montauk Point..." In addition, he concluded that the Montauketts no longer lived as a tribe, and no longer enjoyed any political or civil rights as a tribe.
"They have adopted the habits of civilization, are dwelling among whites as members of a civilized community ...they rarely meet together and ...there is complete absence of a distinct Indian community life, government and customs."
This is how the Montauketts lost their land. Today, they want to get it back.
South Fork Montauketts led by Robert Cooper and his cousin Robert Pharaoh have filed petitions with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs asking for recognition of their tribal rights. Last year, John A. Strong, professor of history at the Southampton Campus of Long Island University, published a book titled "We Are Still Here!: The Algonquian Peoples of Long Island" (Heart of the Lakes) supporting the claims of existence of the Island's Montauketts, Shinnecocks, Unkechaugs and Matinecocks.
"One of the most significant threats to both the land base and the assertion of Indian identity is the claim by outsiders that the Indian 'race' on Long Island has 'disappeared,"' Strong wrote. "As we have seen in Judge Abel Blackmar's decision, this widely held perception had tragic consequences for the Montauketts. This 'myth of extinction' is a recurring theme which has been retold many times by local historians."
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Montauk is also the place where the Amistad made land.
The Amistad (1841)
The Amistad, also known as United States v. The Amistad Africans 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of slaves on board the Spanish schooner Amistad in 1839.
Replica of 1847 "Baltimore Clipper" Type ship such as the Amistad
The rebellion broke out when the schooner, traveling along the coast of Cuba, was taken over by a group of captives who had earlier been kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery. The Africans were later apprehended on the vessel near Long Island, New York by the United States Navy and taken into custody. The ensuing widely publicized court cases in the United States helped the abolitionist movement. In 1840, a federal trial court found that the initial transport of the Africans across the Atlantic (which did not involve the Amistad) had been illegal and that they were not legally slaves but free. The Supreme Court affirmed this finding on March 9, 1841, and the Africans traveled home in 1842. Some of the laws that were written because of the Amistad and before the Amistad are: Slaves were legally recognized as property in Connecticut until 1848; It had been illegal to import slaves into United States since 1808; The United States had a treaty with Spain (Pinckney's Treaty of 1795) that stated if a vessel of either nation was forced to enter the other's ports, that ship would be released immediately; Spain outlawed slavery; Spanish law made it legal to keep slaves if they were born before 1820; Ships and property found helpless at sea were subject to claims (salvage rights) made by those who rescued them.
Rebellion at sea, and capture
On June 27, 1839, La Amistad ("Friendship"), a Spanish vessel, left from the port of Havana, Cuba destined for Puerto Principe, also in Cuba (which was then a Spanish colony). The masters of La Amistad were the captain Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, and Pedro Montez, all of Spanish origin. With Ferrer was his personal slave Antonio. Ruiz had with him 49 African slaves, entrusted to him by the Governor-General of Cuba. Montez had with him four additional African slaves, also entrusted to him by the Governor-General of Cuba.[1] On July 2, 1839, one of the Africans, Cinque, who had learned metalworking, managed to free himself and the other captives using an iron file that had been found by a woman on the Tecora (the ship which had taken them from Africa to Cuba). They killed the ship's cook, Celestino, and the captain in a struggle that also killed two of the rebelling slaves. Two sailors escaped in a lifeboat. The slaves spared the lives of the two crew members who could steer the ship, José Ruiz and Pedro Montez, upon the understanding that they would return the ship to Africa. They also spared the captain's personal slave, Antonio.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Sengbe Pieh (1813 – ca. 1879), later known as Joseph Cinqué, was a West African man of the Mende ethnic group and was the most prominent defendant in the Amistad case. Portrait by Nathaniel Jocelyn, 1840.
However, the navigator deceived the Africans and steered the Amistad north along the coast of the United States where the ship was sighted repeatedly. They dropped anchor half a mile off Long Island, New York, on August 26, 1839, at Culloden Point. Some of the Africans went on shore to procure water and provisions from the hamlet of Montauk, New York, and the vessel was subsequently discovered by the United States naval brig USS Washington. Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, [2] commanding the Washington, observed some of the slaves on shore and, assisted by his officers and crew, took custody of the Amistad and the rebel slaves. He subsequently took them to the state of Connecticut and presented a written claim under admiralty law for salvage of the vessel, the cargo, and the Africans. Gedney allegedly chose to land in Connecticut because, unlike in New York, slavery was still technically legal there, and he hoped to profit from the slaves.
Gedney then relinquished all captured slaves into the custody of the U.S. District Court for the Connecticut District, at which time proceedings began.
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Good post Mike. Typical methods whites used and are still using to deny blacks there property and places in America.
There is a Virginia Tribe whose claims are being denied because the state government intentionally burned down the state records office destroying all of the tribe's historic documentation. The courts are ruling against the Tribe's claims because they cannot produce the requested information that the court acknowledges the state intentionally destroyed. Lesson learned: Don't even try to play fair against white America, because they won't.
I'll try to find and post the article later.
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Mike111: New York City is the White area at the bottom left. Montauk is the right fork on the right end.
That's PRIME property thar! I imagine Jews are very actively financing and fighting on the opposition side of this since Jews today own most of this property.
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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^^^What was it Jesse Jackson called it - oh ya - Hymie Town. Ever hear of the Hamptons?
The Village of Southampton, settled in 1640 and incorporated in 1894, historically began with a small group of English Puritans who set sail from Lynn, Massachusetts and landed on June 12, 1640 at what is now known as Conscience Point. It is the oldest English settlement in the state of New York and is named after the British Earl of Southampton.
The early colonists, with the help of a resident Shinnecock Indian guide, were led over an old woodland trail that is now North Sea Road to an ideal spot for their first settlement. There, at the head of what today is Old Town Pond, they constructed their first homes. The Shinnecock Indian Reservation, established in 1701, is the oldest Native American reservation in the United States.
The Shinnecock tribe welcomed the arrival of the white settlers in 1640 and not only gave them land to live on, "Olde Towne", but also shared with the settlers their knowledge of planting corn and fertilizing it with fish, growing crops, digging clams and scallops from nearby bays and trapping game. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fishing, farming (especially Long Island Potatoes and our local sweet corn) and duck raising were the predominant industries.
With the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 and the extension of the railroad to Sag Harbor in 1872, wealthy New Yorkers seeking escape from the ever growing city sought the serenity of our countryside and the beauty of our pristine beaches. This new emergence of substance and wealth caused a building boom during the early part of the twentieth century. Large estates were designed and built and the Village of Southampton grew and prospered.
Lying White People or Dumb Injuns?Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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While Whites are definitely Liars as proven by history and multiple examples on this site, Natives (American, Mexican & African, etc..) are not so much dumb as trusting & naive.
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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But seriously though; in my readings of history, I have the reoccurring sense that dark skinned people just didn’t take White people as a serious threat. I have always wondered what instincts or primal experiences lead them to erroneously feel that way.
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^ YES. I believe people of Colors and Whites merely experience different world views. Also, when Whites first arrive in a new environment, they do not present themselves as they truly are which misleads Natives into a false sense of security. For example, had Africans had some intimate knowledge of what Whites did to Native Americans, I believe the way Africans received Whites when they came to the continent might have been quite different and cautiously in line with the Chinese response.
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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You're even dumber than what I originally thought. Roots was a fabrication. He did not successfully track down anyone. Roots was fiction made up to make a tv movie for a white audience.
The most simple minded person could have found the above out with a simple web search. You didn't even have the intelligence to do that.
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