American
Religious Experience
all
my Slaves, whether Negroes, Indians, Mustees, Or Molattoes.'1
Towards
a Thick Description of `Slave Religion'
by
Patrick Neal Minges © 1999
The
time was in the late 1760's and the place was Charleston, S.C. A young musician
was on his way to a performance with his french horn tucked under his arm. As
he passed by a large meetinghouse, he heard much commotion on account of a
"crazy man was halloing there." He might have ignored the event but
his companion dared him to "blow the french horn among them" and
disrupt the meeting. Thinking they might have some fun, John Marrant and his
companion entered the meeting hall with the intent of mischief. As he lifted
his horn to his lips, the crazy man -- evangelist George Whitefield -- cast an
eye upon him, pointed his finger at John Marrant and uttered these words:
"Prepare to Meet Thy God, O Israel!" Marrant was struck dead for some
thirty minutes and when he was awakened, Reverend Whitefield declared
"Jesus Christ has got thee at last." After several days of
ministrations by Reverend Whitefield, the Lord set John Marrant's soul at
liberty and he dedicated his life to the propagation of the gospel.
Marrant
first witnessed to members of his family and when they rejected his newfound
evangelical spirit, he fled to the wilderness where he sought solace among the
beasts of the woods. Marrant was not afraid for God hade made the beasts
"friendly to me." When Marrant happened upon a Cherokee deer hunter,
they spent ten weeks together killing deer by day and preparing brush arbors by
night to provide sanctuary for themselves in the wilderness. Becoming fast
friends by the end of the hunting season, the Cherokee deer hunter and the
African American missionary returned to the hunter's village where they would
continue their cultural exchange. However, when he attempted to pass the outer
guard at the Cherokee village, the Cherokees were less than excited with
Marrant and he was detained and placed in prison. It was not that Marrant was
a black man that troubled the Cherokee, the peoples of the Southeastern United
States had relations with Africans that stretched back perhaps as far as a
thousand years. It was just that ever since black people had started showing
up with their friends, the white people, that things had started going
particularly bad for the Indians of the Southeastern United States.

It
seems that as soon as Europeans showed up on the coasts of the United States,
they started reading from a formal document called the Requierimento that
declared themselves to be Christians and by nature superior to the uncivilized
heathens that they encountered.6 The indigenous people were then informed by
the Requierimento that if they accepted Christianity they would become the
Christian's slaves in exchange for the gift of salvation; if they did not
accept the gospel of Christianity, they would still become slaves but that
their plight would be much worse.7 Everywhere that explorers such as Ponce De
Leon, Vazquez De Ayllon, and Hernando De Soto went on their
"explorations" throughout the American Southeast, they carried with
them bloodhounds, chains, and iron collars for the acquisition and exportation
of Indian slaves. A Cherokee from Oklahoma remembered his father's tale of the
Spanish slave trade, "At an early state the Spanish engaged in the slave
trade on this continent and in so doing kidnapped hundreds of thousands of the
Indians from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to work their mines in the West
Indies.
No
sooner had they set foot on shore near Charleston S.C. than the English set
about upon establishing the "peculiar institution" of Native American
slavery. Seeking the gold that had changed the face of the Spanish Empire but
finding none, the English settlers of the Carolinas quickly seized upon the
most abundant and available resource they could attain The indigenous peoples
of the Southeastern United States became, themselves, a commodity on the open
market.10 Applying the same rhetoric that they had used in their genocidal
campaign against the "heathens" and "barbarians" of
Scotland and Ireland,11 the Carolinians cited Indian "savagery" and
"depredations" as justification for "Indian wars" to
dispossess and enslave the Yamasee, the Tuscarora, the Westo and eventually the
Cherokee and the Creek.
"The
Indian slave trade in the Carolinas, with these southern ports as their
centers, rapidly took on all of the characteristics of the African slave trade.
"
Charleston
and Savannah quickly became the centers of this North American commercial
slavery enterprise. In the latter half of seventeenth century, Native American
nations throughout the South were played against each other in an orgy of slave
dealing that decimated entire peoples.13 The Indian slave trade in the
Carolinas, with these southern ports as their centers, rapidly took on all of
the characteristics of the African slave trade. The Carolinians formed
alliances with coastal native groups, armed them, and encouraged them to make
war on weaker tribes deeper in the Carolina interior.14 By the late years of
the seventeenth century, caravans of Indian slaves were making their way from
the Carolina back country to forts on the coast just as caravans of African
slaves were doing on the African continent. Once in Charleston, the captives
were loaded on ships for the "middle passage" to the West Indies or
other colonies such as New Amsterdam or New England.15 Many of the Indian
slaves were kept at home and worked on the plantations of South Carolina; by
1708, the number of Indian slaves in the Carolinas was nearly half that of
African slaves. 16
Soon
the Cherokee would become a major victim in the slave trade; as early as 1681,
a permit was issued for the export of two "Seraquii slaves" from
Charleston.17 By 1693, the Cherokee had become objects of the slave trade to
the extent that a tribal delegation was sent to the Royal Governor of South
Carolina to protect the Cherokee from Congaree, Catawba, and Savannah
slave-catchers.18 In 1705, the Cherokee accused the colonial governor of
granting "commissions" to slave-catchers to "set upon, assault,
kill, destroy, and take captive" Cherokee citizens to be "sold into
slavery for his and their profit." 19 The Cherokee slave trade was so
serious that it had, by the early half of the eighteenth century, eclipsed the
trade for furs and skins, and had become the primary source of commerce between
the English and the people of South Carolina.20

In
1619, a Dutch man-of-war arrived on the Virginia coast carrying African slaves
for the American market; over a period of some one hundred years between 1650
and 1750, the face American slavery began to change from the "tawny"
Indian to the "blackamoor" African.21 The unsuitability of the Native
American for the labor-intensive agricultural practices, their susceptibility
to European diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape for Native Americans,
and the lucrative nature of the African slave trade led to a transition to an
African-based institution of slavery.22 In spite of a later tendency in the
Southern United States to differentiate the African slave from the Indian,
African slavery was in actuality imposed on top of a pre-existing system of
Indian slavery.23 In North America, the two never diverged as distinctive
institutions.
During
this period of transition, Africans and Native Americans shared the common
experience of enslavement.25 In addition to working together in the fields,
they lived together in communal living quarters, began to produce collective
recipes for food and herbal remedies, shared myths and legends, and ultimately
intermarried. Apart from their collective exploitation at the hands of colonial
slavery, Africans and Native Americans possessed similar worldviews rooted in
their historic relationship to the subtropical coastlands of the middle
Atlantic. Considering historic circumstances, environmental associations, and
sociocultural affiliations, the relationships among African Americans and
Native Americans was much more extensive and enduring than most observers
acknowledge. The intermarriage of Africans and Native Americans was facilitated
by the disproportionate numbers of African male slaves to females (3 to 1) and
the decimation of Native American males by disease, enslavement, and prolonged
war against the colonists.27
During
the intertribal wars encouraged by the English in order to produce slaves, the
largest majority of those enslaved were women and children, in accordance with
historic patterns of warfare among Native Americans. Therefore, the largest
numbers of Native American slaves in the early Southeast were women; there were
as much as three to five times more Native women than men enslaved.29 Slave
owners often desired African men to work the fields paired with Native American
women to also work the fields as well as help around the house. John Norris, a
South Carolina planter estimated the costs of setting up a plantation:
Imprimis;
Fifteen good Negro Men at 45 lb each 675 lb.
Item:
Fifteen Indian Women to work in the Field
at
18 lb each, comes to 270 lb.
Item,
Three Indian Women as cooks for the Slaves
and
other Household Business 55 lb.30
Historian
J. Leitch Wright suggests that the presence of so many women slaves from the
Southeastern Indian nations where matrilineal kinship was the norm helps to
explain the prominent role of women in slave culture.
As
Native American societies in the Southeast were primarily matrilineal, African
males who married Native American women often became members of the wife's clan
and citizens of the respective nation. As relationships grew, the lines of
racial distinction began to blur, and the evolution of red-black people began
to pursue its own course. Many of the people known as slaves, free people of
color, Africans, or Indians were most often the products of an integrating
culture. Some aspects of African American culture, including handicrafts,
music, and folklore, may be Native American rather than African in origin. The
cultures of Africans and Natives intertwined in complex ways in the early
Southeast, and material culture, like social organization, often reflected the
blending of these two cultures.
In
areas such as Southeastern Virginia, the "Low Country" of the
Carolinas, and around Galphintown34 near Savannah, Georgia, communities of
Afro-Indians began to arise. The term "mustee" came to distinguish
between those who shared African and Native American ancestry from those who were
a mixture of European and African. Even after 1720, black and red Carolinians
continued to share slave quarters and intimate lives; many wills continued to
refer to "all my Slaves, whether Negroes, Indians, Mustees, Or
Molattoes. The depth and complexity of this intermixture are revealed
in a 1740 slave code in South Carolina that ruled:
...all
negroes and Indians, (free Indians in amity with this government, and negroes,
mulattoes, and mustezoes, who are now free, excepted) mulattoes or mustezoes who
are now, or shall hereafter be in this province, and all their issue and
offspring...shall be and they are hereby declared to be, and remain hereafter
absolute slaves.36
As
early as the latter years of the nineteenth century, ethnologists cited the
deep relationship between African Americans and Native Americans. James Mooney
in 1897 noted: "It is not commonly known that in all southern colonies
Indian slaves were bought and sold and kept in servitude and worked in the
fields side by side with negroes up to the time of the revolution...
Furthermore, as the coast tribes dwindled they were compelled to associate and
intermarry with the negroes until they finally lost their identity and were
classified with that race, so that a considerable proportion of the blood of
the southern negroes is unquestionably Indian."37 In his 1937 doctoral
dissertation, James Hugo Johnston asserted, "The end of Indian slavery
came with the final absorption of the blood of the Indian by the more numerous
Negro slave. But the blood of the Indian did not become extinct in the slave
states, for it continued to flow in the veins of the Negro."
Increasingly
toward the end of the century, Africans began to flee slavery in larger numbers
to settle among the Indians in their immediate vicinity and in so doing became
mediums of exchange for non-indigenous culture.39 Therefore, by the time that
John Marrant arrived among the Cherokee in the middle of the eighteenth
century, there is little doubt that the Cherokee had some prior exposure to both
Africans and Christianity. When Marrant was brought before the "King of
the Cherokee" that his fate might be determined, he witnessed to the
Cherokee in their native tongue:
I
cried again, and He was entreated. He said, "Be it as thou wilt;" the
Lord appeared most lovely and glorious; the king himself was awakened, and the
others set at liberty. A great change took place among the people; the King's
house became God's house; the soldiers were ordered away; and the poor
condemned prisoner had perfect liberty and was treated like a prince. Now the
Lord made all my enemies become my great friends.
What
Marrant saw as God's saving grace could have just as easily been a trial by fire
or even an elaborate joke upon the naive young missionary. As Michael Roethler
puts it in his 1964 dissertation "Negro Slavery among the Cherokee
Indians, 1540-1866," "It is only natural that the Cherokees should
judge the value of Christianity by the character of the people who professed
it. To them, Christianity was something they might do well to avoid. 41
Therefore, the Cherokees had no reason to suspect the religion of this Negro
preacher."
Being
thus freed and granted permission to evangelize among the Cherokee, John
Marrant did so at great liberty for some nine weeks "dressed much like the
king" and becoming fluent in the Cherokee tongue. At the king's bidding
and with fifty Cherokee accompanying him, Marrant thus went forth among a less
"savingly wrought upon" people of the Creek Nation where he spent
some five weeks. He then traveled for nine weeks among the indigenous peoples
of Louisiana so that "the multitudes of hard tongues and of strange speech
may learn the language of Canaan, and sing the song of Moses and of the
Lamb."Marrant was, as Arthur Schomburg correctly notes, "A Negro
in America [like] the Jesuits of old, who spread the seed of Christianity among
the American Indians before the birth of the American Republic."
.
As Marrant was traveling among the Creek Confederation, he may have happened
upon another black missionary whose story resembled his own. David George was
born of African parents on the plantation in Essex County, Virginia around the
year 1742 and attended the "English Church" in Nottoway, Virginia.45
When his owner became too cruel, David George ran away from his plantation and
lived among the Creek and Natchez Indians where he became, according to Michel
Sobel, a "well-treated chattel servant." David George eventually left
the Creek Nation and settled on the plantation of George Galphin, an Indian
Agent for South Carolina (and eventually the Continental Congress), near Silver
Bluff, South Carolina. "Galphintown," as it was called, was
throughout the eighteenth century a center for trade between the colonists and
the Five Nations of the Southeastern United States; the traffic in both slaves
and deer brought large numbers of Africans and Indians to his plantation.46
Galphin,
the owner of the settlement, was an gregarious Irishman who had at least four
wives including Metawney, the daughter of a Creek headman and at least two
Africans, the "Negro Sappho" and the "Negro Mina."47 The
area around the Silver Bluff was a region in the eighteenth century where the
three races of colonial America converged. Galphin's family, itself, revealed
the cultural diversity of the area. Members of Galphin's family were patrons of
the Negro Baptist Church at Silver Bluff.48 Jesse (Peters) Galphin was one of
the founders of the Silver Bluff Baptist Church and one of the members who
helped revive the church following the disastrous effects of the Revolutionary
War.49
An
interesting associate of George Galphin was the mustee Alexander McGillivray,
whose father was Scotch and his mother was Muskogee. Educated in Charleston, he
went on to be recognized by George Washington as the head chief of the entire
Creek Nation. George Washington would negotiate a treaty with McGillivray in
1790.50 Another prominent traveler in these circles was the enigmatic Tory
William Augustus Bowles. Born in Maryland and fleeing British military service
to live among the Creek and Seminole, he too was recognized as a leader of the
Creek Nation.51 In an interesting note on history, he was also recognized as
"duly accredited provincial Grandmaster of the Five Nations" -- a
title bestowed upon him the Grand Lodge of England.52 In 1790, Bowles and
several "Beloved Men" (including the Cherokee GoingSnake and the
Creek Tuskeniah, an associate of Tecumseh) traveled to England where they were
accepted into the Prince of Wales Lodge #259. Bowles being made a Mason in the
Bahamas, he was duly interested in the political affairs of the Caribbean.
While he and his native companions were in England, they tried to obtain
English assistance for a struggle being led in Santo Domingo by their fellow
Freemasons, Jean Jacques Dessalines and Toussaint L'Ouverture.
"Though
a slave and often described as a 'black pastor' of the Third African Baptist
Church, Henry Francis had no known African ancestry."
When
the Revolutionary War threatened the congregation of the isolated Negro Baptist
Church in Silver Bluff, Pastor David George and fifty members of the
congregation fled to Savannah where the congregation grew and other branches of
the church formed. Among the first ministers of the African Baptist Church of
Savannah was a former slave by the name of Henry Francis, a minister ordained
by Andrew Bryan of the Silver Bluff Baptist Church. Though a slave and often
described as a "black pastor" of the Third African Baptist Church,
Henry Francis had no known African ancestry.53 Andrew Bryan, pioneer black
Baptist, spoke of Henry Francis in a letter to authorities in 1800:
Another
dispensation of Providence has much strengthened our hands, and increased our
means of information; Henry Francis, lately a slave to the widow of the late
Colonel Leroy Hammond, of Augusta, has been purchased by a few humane gentlemen
of this place, and liberated to exercise the handsome ministerial gifts he
possesses amongst us, and teach our youth to read and write. He is a strong man
about forty-nine years of age, whose mother was white and whose father was an
Indian. His wife and only son are slaves. Brother Francis has been in the
ministry fifteen years, and will soon receive ordination, and will probably
become the pastor of a branch of my large church...it will take the rank and
title of the 3rd Baptist Church of Savannah.54
In
1782 when the British abandoned Savannah, David George fled to Nova Scotia,
Canada and lived there until he moved to Sierra Leone in West Africa as part of
Granville Sharp's recolonization movement.55
Most
of the early records of the missionaries note that among these mixed peoples of
the low country areas, their earliest converts were the enslaved African
Americans that lived in Native American communities.56 Among the most
successful of the early missions to the South was that of Reverend Samuel
Thomas of Goose Creek Parish in South Carolina. Thomas's twenty black
interpreters helped him with his church of nearly one thousand communicants of
African and Native American ancestry.57 Records from the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in South Carolina repeatedly mention the membership
of their early missions and churches as being equally mixed with "negro
and indian slaves." The records also state that the S.P.G. had no qualms
about baptizing "the heathen slaves also (Indians and negroes)."58
However, in spite of the S.P.G.'s efforts, many of their owners were resistant
to baptizing slaves for fear of their seeing themselves as social equals:
If
the masters were but good Christians themselves and would concure with the
Ministers, we should have good hopes of the conversion and salvation at least
of some of their Negro and Indian slaves. But too many of them rather oppose
than concurr with us and are angry with us.59
Thus,
the earliest churches in the colonial South were mixed congregations of both
African American and Native American congregants. As the missionaries made
little distinction among "the heathen slave," those most conversant
in the triracial culture became the ministers of the gospel. As African
Americans were often "linksters"60 in the Southern frontier, they
came to fulfill the role as religious leader of their mixed congregations.
As
few missionaries spoke the native languages, the Africans played an
intermediary role as teacher, and as of necessity, preacher.61 In addition,
many of the earliest black ministers in the missions of the Baptist Churches
were former river-cult priests from traditional religions of Africa.62 It is
important to note that the river-cult and ritual bathing were important
components in traditional Southeastern religion.63 In Southeastern Indian
culture, nearly every ritual act, from the celebration of pregnancy to the
selection of war leader -- from the stomp dance to ball-play, is preceded by
"going to water" as a critical part of the religious practice.64
Thus, the previous religious experience of these new Baptist ministers
facilitated the acceptance of the Baptist gospel message and ritual practices
among Native Americans.
Within
the cultural nexus of the integrated community of the early American frontier,
a unique synthesis grew in which African and Native American people shared a
common religious experience.65 Not only did Africans share with Native
Americans, the process of sharing cultural traditions went both ways. From the
slave narratives,66 we learn of the role that Native American religious
traditions played in African American society:
Dat
busk was justa little busk. Dey wasn't enough men around to have a good one.
But I seen lots of big ones. Ones where dey all had de different kinds of
"banga." Dey call all de dances some kind of banga. De chicken dance
is de "Tolosabanga", and de Istifanibanga is de one whar dey make lak
dey is skeletons and raw heads coming to git you. De "Hadjobanga" is
de crazy dance, and dat is a funny one. Dey all dance crazy and make up funny
songs to go wid de dance. Everybody think up funny songs to sing and everybody
whoop and laugh all de time.67
When
I wuz a boy, dere wuz lotsa Indians livin' about six miles frum the plantation
on which I wuz a slave. De Indians allus held a big dance ever' few months, an'
all de niggers would try to attend. On one ob dese ostent'tious occasions about
50 of us niggers conceived de idea of goin', without gettin permits frum de
master. As soon as it gets dark, we quietly slips outen de quarters, one by
one, so as not to disturb de guards. Arrivin at de dance, we jined in the
festivities wid a will. Late dat nite one ob de boys wuz goin down to de spring
fo de get a drink ob water when he notice somethin' movin in de bushes. Gettin
up closah, he look' agin when-lawd hab mersy! Patty rollers!68
Slaves
"mixed and mingled and danced together with the Indians" and the
indigenous people of the Southeastern United States welcomed new dances
including those from their African counterparts.69 Sacred bonds of blood and
metaphysical kinship came to exist between the two peoples and their collective
history became an enduring element in American culture.70
Native
Americans may have also played a role in the development of African American
religion through supporting the "invisible institution" of African
American Christianity. The "hush harbors" or brush arbors -- hastily
constructed "churches" made of a lean-to of tree limbs and branches
-- that were a significant part of "slave religion" had long been a
prominent part of the Southeastern traditional religion. The brush arbor
architecture that soon became a critical part of the "camp-meetings"
of the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening were directly borrowed
from the architecture of the "stomp ground" of Southeastern
traditional religious practices. Native Americans often supported the
"invisible institution" by offering elements of their own religious
practices to the developing "slave religion" as is evidenced by this
story of a Cherokee slaveowner, "Master Frank wasn't no Christian but he
would help build brush arbors fer us to have church under and we sho would have
big meetings I'll tell you."71
Thus,
there exists the probability, and if not at least the possibility, that many of
those churches historically cited as the earliest "historical Black
Baptist churches" were in actuality Aframerindian72 churches. Throughout
the Old South, mixed congregations of black and red people worshipped together
in ways that were at once both African and Indian. Whether in the "brush
arbors" or nascent churches or in the stomp grounds, people recognized the
solidarity that only comes in response to an overarching culture of oppression
that attempted to define and divide
black and red people. By learning to overcome that which separated them as a
people, they learned to conquer that "double consciousness" which
creates estrangement within themselves. In so doing, they laid the foundation
for a common history, one "written in the hearts of our people:"
In
truth, sacred bonds between blacks and Native Americans, bonds of blood and
metaphysical kinship, cannot be documented solely by factual evidence
confirming extensive interaction and intermingling -- they are also matters of
the heart. These ties are best addressed by those who are not simply concerned
with the cold data of history, but who have "history written in the hearts
of our people" who then feel for history, not just because it offers facts
but because it awakens and sustains connections, renews and nourishes current
relations. Before the that is in our hearts can be spoken, remembered with
passion and love, we must discuss the myriad ways white supremacy works to
impose forgetfulness, creating estrangement between red and black peoples, who
though different lived as One.73
In
conclusion, Carter G. Woodson observed in 1920 that "one of the longest
unwritten chapters of the history of the United States is that treating of the
relations of the negroes and the Indians." 74 In his 1931 work The Story
of the Negro, Booker T. Washington observed that, "the association of the
negro with the Indian has been so intimate and varied on this continent, and
the similarities as well as the differences of their fortunes and characters
are so striking that I am tempted to enter at some length into a discussion of
their relations of each to the other."75 In the time since these gifted
scholars have written, little has been done by scholars, of all colors and
persuasions, to address this important aspect of American history. Our
understanding of "slave religion" needs to be framed within the
context of the multicultural origins of what we have come to know as the black
church; to the extent that we write this story in black and white, we do a
disservice to those very peoples whose story we seek to lift up.
It
is not the purpose of this paper to detail the specific influences of Native
American religious traditions upon the developing black church; to do so is
further separate those whom God brought together. What I am proposing is that
we take a fresh approach to the early church in the deep South, one that
focuses on a more complex understand of the "beloved community." In
taking a serious look at the depth of the interactions, especially the
religious interactions, among African American and Native Americans in the
Southeastern United States, we may come to reframe our understandings of each,
and, ultimately, of ourselves. We come
to understand that though this history is seldom told, it is as vibrant, as
important, and as "American" as any of our stories.
In
case you were wondering what happened to John Marrant, he eventually left the
Cherokee and returned to his family but as he was dressed "in the Indian
style," even his family members saw him as "a wild man come out of
the woods." 76 He was later ordained by the Reverend Lemuel Haynes into
the Methodist church and eventually moved to Boston where he resettled. There
he became friends with another free person of color, Methodist minister, and
abolitionist originally from the West Indies by the name of Prince Hall. Prince
Hall, and a few of his fellows initiated by an Irish lodge of Freemasons associated with the
British Army, founded African Lodge #1 that was eventually recognized by the
Grand Lodge of England as African Lodge #459. On June 4, 1789 a report of the
Grand Lodge shows that Rev. John Marrant, "the same Rev. Mr. Marrant who
achieved fame as a missionary to the Indians," was admitted and appointed
Chaplain of the African Lodge #459.77 On St. John's Day in 1789, Marrant
delivered a speech vilifying the institution of slavery, outlining the African
heritage of the Christian religion, and decrying the cynicism of white Freemasons
who refuse to recognize the "stile and tile" of black Freemasonry.
John Marrant eventually joined his friend David George in Nova Scotia where
they struggled for the dignity of their people. Facing great difficulties,
eventually Marrant and George set out for Africa and founded the colony of
Sierra Leone.
On
September 22,1797, a new lodge of Prince Hall Freemasonry was organized in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and received a charter from the Grand Lodge of
Prince Hall Freemasonry. The Grand Lodge was now led by now Grandmaster Prince
Hall. The Worshipful Master of the Philadelphia Lodge was an Episcopal priest
by the name of Absolom Jones and the Treasurer was a friend of his by the name
of Richard Allen. Richard Allen and Absolom Jones also went on to attain some
status in the African American community, but that is another story.
1
"Wills and Miscellaneous Records," South Carolina Department of
Archives and History, quoted in Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in
Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W.W.
Norton,1974), 99.
2
John Marrant, A Narrative of the Life of John Marrant, of New York, in North
America With [an] account of the conversion of the king of the Cherokees and
his daughter (London: C.J. Farncombe, n.d), 5-7.
3
ibid.
4
Carl Waldman, Atlas of the North American Indian (New York: Facts on File
Publications, 1985), 72. See also Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of
America (Philadelphia, 1920); Jack Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The
Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1993); Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York:
Random House, 1976); Michael Bradley, Dawn Voyage (Toronto: Summerhill Press,
1987). Jack Forbes, in his work, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of
Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples, cites myths from South America
detailing a close cooperative relationship between the spirit-powers of Africa
and of the Americas. He concludes his discussion of this relationship by
stating, `Thus in spiritual as well as secular sense, the American and African
peoples have interacted with each other in a variety of settings and
situations. These interactions may well have begun in very early times.'
5
It is important to note that there was not an understanding of difference based
upon the concept of "race" within Native American cultures as it
existed within the European mind. "Race" as an identifying component
in interaction did not exist within the traditional nations of the early
Americas; even into the nineteenth century the Cherokee were noted for their
cultural accommodation. [Tom Hatley, The Dividing Path: Cherokees and South
Carolinians through the Revolutionary Era ( New York; Oxford University Press,
1995), 233.] William McLoughlin stressed the importance of clan relationships
or larger collective identities (e.g., Ani-Yunwiya, Ani-Tsalagi, Ani-Kituhwagi)
within indigenous people as the critical components in their interactions with
outsiders; race was not considered a critical element in perception or
hostility. [William G. McLoughlin, The Cherokee Ghost Dance: Essays on the
Southeastern Indians (Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 1984), 260-265] In her
pivotal work, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society 1540-1866, Theda
Perdue states that the Cherokee regarded Africans they encountered "simply
as other human beings," and, "since the concept of race did not exist
among Indians and since the Cherokees nearly always encountered Africans in the
company of Europeans, one supposes that the Cherokee equated the two and failed
to distinguish sharply between the races." [Theda Perdue, Slavery and the
Evolution of Cherokee Society 1540-1866 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1979), 36.] Kenneth Wiggins Porter, an historian of African
American/Native American relations, concurs with this conclusion: "[we
have] no evidence that the northern Indian made any distinction between Negro
and white on the basis of skin color, at least, not in the early period and
when uninfluenced by white settlers." [Kenneth W. Porter, Relations
Between Negroes and Indians Within the Present United States (Washington, D.C.:
The Association for Negro Life and History, 1931), 16.]
6
From the very beginning. the Spaniards were driven by mixed motives,
"Civil and sacred interests were intertwined in a system so thorough and
so complex as scarcely to be separated, so permanent and pervasive that organic
union escapes any but a careful observer." [W. Eugene Shiels. King and Church:The
Rise and Fall of the Patronato Real(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1961), 9]
Central to the Spanish vision of an "increase of temporal prosperity"
was a certain human commodity:
Finally,
to sum up in a few words the chief results and advantages of our departure and
speedy return, I make this promise to our most invincible sovereigns, that, if
I am supported by some little assistance from them, I will give them as much
gold as they have need of, and, in addition spices, cotton, and mastic, which is
found only in chios, and as much aloes-wood, and as many heathen slaves as
their majesty may choose to demand... (italics mine)
[Christopher
Columbus, "Letter to Gabriel Sanchez" in Old South Leaflets, Volume
II, Number 34 (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, n.d.), 6.]
7
The Requierimento read:
If
you do so you will do well, and that which you are obliged to do to their
highnesses, and we in their name shall receive you in all love and charity, and
shall leave you your wives, and your children, and your lands free without
servitude, that you may do with them and with yourselves freely that which you
like and think best, and they shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless
you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our
holy Catholic faith, as almost all the inhabitants of the rest of the islands
have done; and, besides this, their highnesses award you many privileges and
exemptions and will grant you many benefits.
But
if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that,
with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall
make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you
to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses; we shall take
you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as
such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command; and we
shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that
we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and
resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which
shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses, or
ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us. And that we have said this to
you, and made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us
this testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should
be witnesses of this Requisition
[
"El Requerimiento" in Wilcomb Washburn, ed. The Indian and the White
Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books,1964) pp. 307-308]
8
Edward Gaylord Bourne, Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, 2 Vols.
(New York, 1922), 60, 94-9, 103-105. Ponce de Leon's 1512 patent from the
Spanish authorities provided that any Indians that he might discover in the
Americas should be divided among the members of his expedition that they should
"derive whatever advantage might be secured thereby." LucasVasquez de
Ayllon's 1523 cedula authorized him to "purchase prisoners of war held as
slaves held by the natives, to employ them on his farms and export them as he
saw fit, without the payment of any duty whatsoever upon them." [Woodbury
Lowery, The Spanish Settlements within the Present Limits of the United States:
1513-1561, (New York: Bolton and Ross, 1905), 162-169].
9
J.B. Davis, "Indian Territory in 1878," Chronicles of Oklahoma IV
(1926): 264.
10
See Almon Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of
the United States (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1933); Barbara Olexer, The
Enslavement of the American Indian (Monroe, N.Y.: Library Research Associates,
1982); J. Leitch Wright, The Only Land They Knew:The Tragic Story of the
American Indian in the Old South (New York: Free Press, 1981); Jack
Weatherford, Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America (New York: Crown
Publishers, 1991); Patrick Minges, Evangelism and Enslavement: Catholic and
Protestant Missions to the Native Americans (Unpublished Manuscript, 1992).
11
James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America (New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998), 63-64; Audrey Smedley, Race in North America:
Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 56-61);
Edmund S. Morgan. American Slavery-American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial
Virginia.(New York: Norton and Co., 1975), 20; Francis Jennings, The Invasion
of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press,1975), 46; Ronald Sanders. Lost Tribes and
Promised Lands: The Origins of American Racism. (Boston: Little, Brown, and
Co., 1978), 228.
12
Booker T. Washington, The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery
Vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1909), 128-130. See also Almon Lauber,
Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States
(Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1933); Barbara Olexer, The Enslavement of
the American Indian (Monroe, N.Y.: Library Research Associates, 1982); J.
Leitch Wright, The Only Land They Knew:The Tragic Story of the American Indian
in the Old South (New York: Free Press, 1981); Jack Weatherford, Native Roots:
How the Indians Enriched America (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991); Patrick
Minges, Evangelism and Enslavement: Catholic and Protestant Missions to the
Native Americans (Unpublished Manuscript, 1992).
13
Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670
through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1974), 39.
14
Lauber, 39.
15
Washington, 129.
16
Gary Nash, Red,White and Black: The Peoples of Early America (Englewood Cliffs,
N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1974), 130.
17
Tom Hatley, The Dividing Path: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the
Revolutionary Era ( New York; Oxford University Press, 1995), 33.
18
H.T. Malone, Cherokees of the Old South: A People in Transition (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1956), 20.
19
James Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokees" (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau
of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), 32.
20
Ibid.
21
Interestingly enough, these twenty Africans brought into the United States were
part of a plan by Virginian, Sir Edwin Sandys to finance a fledgling school for
Indians named William and Mary. Whenever Native American children in the
Carolinas and Virginia were seized as captives of war, they were sent to
William and Mary. The irony that African slaves were first brought to the
United States by the English to finance a school for Indian slaves is quite
striking indeed. [Barbara Olexer, The Enslavement of the American Indian
(Monroe, N.Y.: Library Research Associates, 1982), 89.]
22
Indian slaves were considered to be "sullen, insubordinate, and short
lived," A.B. Hart quoted in Sanford Wilson, "Indian Slavery in the
South Carolina Region," Journal of Negro History 22 (1935), 440. The
article further describes Native American slaves as "not of such robust
and strong bodies, as to lift great burdens, and endure labor and slavish
work." Native Americans were not without some commercial value. They were
often seized throughout the South and taken to the slave markets and traded at
an exchange rate of two for one for African Americans. An interesting spin on
the story comes from Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois who, even in
agreement with the positions stated above, stated that "The Indian refused
to submit to bondage and to learn the white man's ways. The result is that the
greater portion of the American Indians have disappeared, the greater portion
of those who remain are not civilized. The Negro, wiser and more enduring than
the Indian, patiently endured slavery; and contact with the white man has given
him a civilization vastly superior to that of the Indian." (Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, The Negro in the South: His Economic Progress in
Relation to His Moral and Religious Development (Philadelphia, George W. Jacobs
and Company, 1907) 14.) Washington
reiterates this point by quoting Dr. John Spencer, who in discussing the
collapse of indentured servitude and Indian slavery, stated "In each case
it was survival of the fittest. Both Indian slavery and white servitude were to
go down before the black man's superior endurance, docility, and labour
capacity." (Dr. John Spencer quoted in Booker T. Washington, The Story of
the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery Vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday and
Co., 1909) 113).
23
George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to
1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens (New York: The
Knickerbocker Press, 1882), 123-180.
24
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1966), 176.
25
Booker T. Washington in The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from
Slavery describes it thus: "During all this time, for a hundred years or
maybe more, the Indian and the Negro worked side by side as slaves. In all the
laws and regulations of the Colonial days, the same rule which applied to the
Indian was also applied to the Negro slaves...In all other regulations that
were made in the earlier days for the control of the slaves, mention is
invariably made of the Indian as well as the Negro." (130).
26
William Willis, "Anthropology and Negroes on the Southern Colonial
Frontier," in James Curtis and Lewis Gould, eds., The Black Experience in
America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 47-48.
27
J. Leitch Wright, The Only Land They Knew: The Tragic Story of the American
Indian in the Old South (New York: Free Press, 1981), 258.
28
Wood, 39; Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 68.
29
Perdue, Cherokee Women, 68.
30
John Norris, quoted in Verner Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732 (Durham,
N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1928), 113.
31
Wright, The Only Land They Knew, 148-150, 248-278.
32
Melville Herskovits, The American Negro: A Study in Crossing (New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1928), 3-15; For excellent surveys and discussions of this
phenomenon, see: Kenneth W. Porter, Relations Between Negroes and Indians Within
the Present United State (Washington, D.C.: The Association for Negro Life and
History, 1931); J.Leitch Wright, The Only Land They Knew:The Tragic Story of
the American Indian in the Old South (New York: Free Press, 1981); Jack Forbes,
Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of
Red-Black Peoples (Urbana:University of Illinois Press,1993); Laurence Foster,
Negro-Indian Relations in the Southeast (Philadelphia, n.p. 1935); Booker T.
Washington, The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery Vol 1.
(New York: Doubleday and Company, 1909), 125-143. Washington notes as prominent
African American/ native American mixed-blood Frederick Douglas, Paul Cuffee,
and Crispus Attucks (132).
33
Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground: Archeology and Early African America,
1650-1800 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Instituion Press, 1992)
34
Galphintown was named for George Galphin, a n Irishman who was a prominent
Indian trader in the Creek Nation and Indian Agent for the First Continental
Congress.Galphin extensively utilized African Americans as scouts, translators
and laborers in his trade with the Five Nations of the Southeastern United
States. Galphin at one point or another in his life had a number of African
American and Native American wives and a number of his children were of mixed
blood. For further information, see J. Leitch Wright, Creeks and Seminoles
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); James Melvin Washington,
Frustrated Fellowship, the Black Baptist Quest for Social Power (Macon,
Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1986); Joel W. Martin, Sacred Revolt : the
Muskogees' Struggle for a New World (Boston : Beacon Press, 1991); Angie Debo,
The Road to Disapearance (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941);William R.
Denslow, Freemasonry and the American Indian (St Louis: Missouri Lodge of
Research, 1956).
35
"Wills and Miscellaneous Records," South Carolina Department of
Archives and History, quoted in Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in
Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W.W.
Norton,1974), 99.
36
John Curdman Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States (Boston,
1858-1862, Vol. 1), 303.
37
James Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokees" (Smithsonian Institution,
Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1900), 233.
38
James Hugo Johnston, Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South
1776-1860 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970), 171-2.
39
From the earliest periods of the institution of slavery and well into the
nineteenth century, African slaves had been fleeing slavery and repression
along the same routes that their native forebears had used in earlier
times.[Wood, 260-261] As historian and Member of Congress Joshua Giddings
described it a hundred years later, it was rite of passage:
The
efforts of the Carolinians to enslave the Indians, brought with them the
natural and appropriate penalties. The Indians began to make their escape from
slavery to the Indian Country. Their example was soon followed by the African
Slaves, who also fled to the Indian Country, and, in order to secure themselves
from pursuit continued their journey. [Joshua Giddings, The exiles of Florida:
or, The crimes committed by our government against the Maroons, who fled from
South Carolina and other slave states, seeking protection under Spanish laws
(Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster and Company, 1858)]
As
a result of intermarriage between Africans and Indians during their collective
enslavement, many Native American escapees would return to their former
plantations to free their spouses and children still held in captivity. As
Michael Roethler puts it in his essay Negro Slavery Among the Cherokee Indians
1540-1866, the Cherokee considered it "just retribution" that they
who had been enslaved helped those enslaved to flee their persecutors in the
Carolinas.[ Michael Roethler, "Negro Slavery among the Cherokee Indians, 1540-1866"
(Ph.D. Dissertation.,Fordham Univ.,1964), 36-40]
40
Marrant, 18.
41
Chief Yonaguska, after listening to a portion of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, replied sharply, "Well, it seems to be a good book, but it is
strange that the white people are not better after having it so long."
(Robert Walker, Torchlights to the Cherokees, (New York: MacMillan Company,
1931), 15-16.
42
Michael Roethler, "Negro Slavery among the Cherokee Indians,
1540-1866" (Ph.D. Dissertation.,Fordham Univ.,1964), 126.
43
Marrant, 24.
44
Arthur Schomburg, "Two Negro Missionaries to the American Indians, John
Marrant and John Stewart" The Journal of Negro History 21 (No. 1, January,
1936): 400.
45
Among the Native Americans of Southeastern Virginia from whence David George
fled, there was a very strong Aframerindian community. Thomas Jefferson noted
that among the Mattaponies, there was "more negro than Indian blood in
them." The Gingaskin, Nottoway, and Pamunkeys were often asserted to be
more Black than Indian. [Porter, Relations, 314]. In a later period, many of
the Powhatans were suspected of being in league with Nat Turner and supporting
his runaways following the insurrection of 1831. Many of the Powhatan Indians
served the Union forces of the Civil War during guerilla activities in
Southeastern Virginia. [Lawrence Hauptmann, Between Two Fires: American Indians
in the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1995), 66-73].
46
Edward Freeman, The Epoch of Negro Baptists and The Foreign Missions Boards [
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc] (Kansas City: The National Seminary
Press, 1953), 29.
47
J. Leitch Wright, Creeks and Seminoles (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1986), 81; Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Deerskins and Duffels: Creek-Indian Trade
with Anglo-America, 1685-1815 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993),
46.
48
Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 81.
49
Freeman, 30-33.
50
Alender McGillivray was also a Freemason as was George Washington. Many of the
traditional leaders of the Native Americans were Freemasons. Tecumseh, a
Shawnee prophet who reportedly "was made a Mason while on a visit to
Philadelphia," was the leader of a Pan-Indian movement to resist white
encroachment in the late eighteenth century. Alexander McGillivray, a mixed
blood leader of the Muskogee, and Joseph Brant, a mixed blood leader of the
Mohawk, were skilled political leaders who set European colonists against one
another in order to protect and preserve traditional interests in early
America. Brant was reportedly America's first Native American Freemason when he
was raised by an English Grand Lodge (much the same as Prince Hall);
McGillivray's lodge membership was not know but he was buried with a Masonic
funeral. Red Jacket, famous orator of the Seneca and leader of the
traditionalist resistance among the Iroquois, was a Freemason who reportedly
encouraged the Seneca to reject William Morgan when he sought refuge among
them. Red Jacket's grandnephew, General Ely S. Parker, was General U.S. Grant's
Adjutant and drew up the conditions of surrender at Appomatox. Robert E. Lee,
thinking Parker was an African-American , refused to meet with Grant until the
matter was cleared up. William Augustus Bowles, leader of a
Creek/Seminole/African-American resistance movement in Florida, was also a
Freemason having been raised in the Bahamas. Pushmataha, a Choctaw leader who
encouraged friendship with the whites and resisted Tecumseh, was also a
Freemason. (William R Denslow, Freemasonry and the American Indian (St Louis:
Missouri Lodge of Research, 1956).
51
William Augustus Bowles is one of the most interesting characters in American
history. He was born in Maryland in 1763 and joined the British forces at the
age of thirteen. When he was fifteen, he fled the British Army and went to live
among the African/Creek/Seminole people of Southern Florida. He became the war
leader of a five nation confederacy entitled "the nation of Muscogee"
and engaged in military struggles against the Floridians. Fleeing pursuit once
again, he fled to the Bahamas in 1786 where he sought initiation into the
Freemasonic order for a second time (the first time was in Philadelphia in 1783);
this time he was admitted. When he and his friends from the Creek and Cherokee
Nation entered Prince of Wales Lodge #259, he was introduced as "a Chief
of the Creek Nation, whose love of Masonry has induced him to wish it may be
introduced into the interior part of America, whereby the cause of humanity and
brotherly love will go hand in hand with the native courage of the Indians, and
by the union lead them on to the highest title that can be conferred on
man." In 1795, the records of the Grand Lodge of England showed Bowles as
the duly accredited provincial Grandmaster of the Five Nations. In 1799, Bowles
returned to the United States and tried to finance a revolution in order to set
up a free and independent Muscogee State along the frontier of the colonial United
States; in so doing Bowles freely associated with Indians and their African
cohorts of the Seminole Nation. (Cotterill, 127-130) J. Leitch Wright credits
Bowles with having spread the abolitionist message among the Upper Creek and
Chickamaguan Cherokee in the eighteenth century through the use of black
interpreters. Both Chief Bowlegs of the Seminole Nation and Chief Bowl of the
Cherokee Nation are supposed descendants of William Augustus Bowles. (Wright,
Creeks and Seminoles, 58 ff).
52
Denslow, 127-129.
53
Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 81.
54
Letter of Andrew Bryan to Reverend Doctor Rippon in Milton Sernett, ed.,
Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1985), 49.
55
Edward Freeman, The Epoch of Negro Baptists and The Foreign Missions Boards [
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc] (Kansas City: The National Seminary
Press, 1953), 27.
56
Willam G. McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789-1839 (Norman and London:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 48; Perdue, 89; William Gerald McLoughlin,
Champions of the Cherokees: Evan and John B. Jones (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 21; Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 223; Eighth Annual
Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
(Boston,1818), 16; Ninth Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions (Boston,1819), 19. Among the first missionaries to the
Cherokee were the Moravians Abraham Steiner and Frederick C. De Schweinitz. The
mission to the Cherokee was not successful because the Moravians could not
speak Cherokee and attracted largely the black members of the Cherokee Nation
who were bilingual. However, because the Moravians did not consider the
Africans to be worthy of church admission; they offered them "special
seats" at communion and gave them the cup "last of all." In
ignoring the historic cultural relationship between the Africans and the
Cherokees, the missionaries tossed away their greatest opportunity for
transmitting their message to a larger Cherokee audience and doomed their
missions to failure.
57
Edward Freeman, The Epoch of Negro Baptists and The Foreign Missions Boards [
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc] (Kansas City: The National Seminary
Press, 1953), 10.
58
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Classified Digest of the Records of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701-1892
(London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1893), 12.
59
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 16-17.
60
"linkster" is a term from Southern culture which denotes a person who
serves to facilitate relationships among peoples of different cultures. Quite
often, these linksters were scouts, surveyors, and tradesmen who interacted on
the colonial frontier.
61
The positive attitude of the Cherokees toward African-American missionaries
could be related to the fact that the first missionary among the Cherokee was
the black Methodist, John Marrant.
62
Melville Herskovitz, "Social History of the Negro," A Handbook of
Social Psychology (Worcester, J. Clark Press, 1935), 256.
63
James Mooney, "The Cherokee River Cult" in The Journal of American
Folklore 13: 48 (January-March 1900)
64
Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1976), 321 ff.
65
J.Leitch Wright. The Only Land They Knew:The Tragic Story of the American
Indian in the Old South (New York:Free Press, 1981), 248-290.
66
A recently-released work The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman: University
of Oklahoma, 1996) edited by Lindsey Baker and Julie Baker provides us with an
excellent access to these materials with respect to Oklahoma. The same can be
said about George Rawick's The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography
(Westport CT.: 1972); it provides us with an easily accessible resource.
However, the best source is still the microform edition of the Federal Writers'
Project's Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States,
from Interviews with Former Slaves (Washington : Library of Congress Project,
1941). With respect to the a collection of narratives from the Indian
Territory, the Indian-Pioneer History Project, edited by Grant Foreman, we can
look forward to the day when someone provides a more accessible version of this
quite unwieldy project. The wealth of information here is invaluable; the work
itself is quite difficult. For essays on the problems and pleasures of using
the slave narratives, see John Blassingame, "Using the testimony of
Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems" in Journal of Southern History 41:
(November, 1975): 473-92; C. Vann Woodward, "History from Slave
Sources" in American Historical Review 79 (April 1974): 470-81; B.A.
Botkin, "The Slave as His Own Interpreter" in Library of Congress
Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 2 (July/September 1944): 37-63.
67
Lucinda Davis in Works Progress Administration: Oklahoma Writers Project, Slave
Narratives (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932) 58
68
Preston Kyles in Works Progress Administration: Arkansas Writers Project, Slave
Narratives (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932) 220.
69
J. Leitch Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 95
70
bell hooks, "Revolutionary Renegades: Native Americans, African Americans,
and Black Indians" Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End
Press, 1992), 183.
71
Kiziah Love in Works Progress Administration: Oklahoma Writers Project, Slave
Narratives (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), 196.
72
"Thus we observe that relations between Negroes and Indians have been of
significance historically, through influencing on occasion the Indian relations
of the United States government, and to a much larger extent biologically,
through modifying the racial make-up of both the races and even, as some
believe, creating a new race which might, perhaps, for want of better term, be
called "Aframerindian." Kenneth Wiggins Porter, "Notes
Supplementary to `Relations between Negroes and Indians' " in The Journal
of Negro History XVIII (January, 1933, Number 1): 321.
73
bell hooks, "Revolutionary Renegades: Native Americans, African Americans,
and Black Indians" in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South
End Press, 1992), 183.
74
Carter G. Woodson, "The Relations of Negroes and Indians in
Massachusetts," Journal of Negro History 5 (1920): 45.
75
Booker T. Washington, The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery
Vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1909), 126.
76
Marrant, 21.
77
Harry E. Davis, "Doucuments relating to Negro Masonry" in The Journal
of Negro History 21: (No. 1, Jamuary 1936), 422-423.
No comments:
Post a Comment