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William Loren Katz "Black Indians" a hidden heritage.
Chief Black Thunder
Black Indians want a place in history
In April 2002, celebrations of the 500 years of black Indian culture are planned for sites of major historical and cultural significance - the pilgrimage of unification itself; an honoring of 'Mother Life'By Nomad Winterhawk It happened that life crossed Africans and Native Americans together into one circle.
This was in April, 1502, when the first Africans kidnapped were brought to Hispanola to serve as slaves. Some escaped and somewhere inland on Santo Dominico life birthed the first circle of Black Indians.
Some black Indians have a dual ancestry of African and Native Americanbloodlines. Others are black people who have lived with Native Americans and maintain their cultural-ceremonial traditions.
The seizure and mistreatment of Native Americans and their land, and the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans, were the two parallel institutions that resulted in the Black Indian culture.
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.
Scheduled to be published in 2002, the focus of the book is on the value of honoring life, and the issues that confront Black Indians in their daily, individual as well as collective lives. As interesting alternatives to the violence we have around us, it provides valuable images of life passages, in the context of community enhanced ritual mechanisms.
OKLAHOMA TERRITORY AND NATIVE AND AFRICAN AMERICAN SETTLERS
When more than 60,000 Native Americans were removed from their homes during the 1830s by U.S. Federal troops from the southeastern states of the United States - they were forced Westward to Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. This was called the "Trail of Tears." Many of these Native American tribes had previously embraced and either helped or kept numerous African Americans as slaves. African Americans and Native Americans created a mixed cultural blend depending upon the specific tribal group.
Diana Fletcher of the Kiowa
Kitty Cloud Taylor and her sister of the Ute
Many Native Americans welcomed African Americans into their villages. Even as slaves many African Americans became part of a family group, and many intermarried with Native Americans - thus many later became classified as Black Indians. Therefore Black Oklahomaevolved in many areas as biracial communities within Indian nations. This is a unique history, which developed in many of the western communities where the two
Additional Resources
Homa Lusa: Center for African and Native American Research - The Center for African and Native American Research were created to pursue theory, research, policy, and strategies related to issues of cultural retention and mental health among Native Americans and African Americans. Our research interests also include the arenas in which African and Native American interactions occurred historically and contemporarily.
http://www.homalusa.org/
African American Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes - The historical relationship between Native Americans and African-Americans has been called, "one of the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the United States." Unlike the commonly held perception that slavery in America consisted only of white people owning black people, the reality was much more complex. There were many whites who were enslaved or indentured, many blacks who were free, and many Indians who owned African Slaves.
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/blkind.htm
The African Native Genealogy Homepage - Celebrating the Estelusti ~ The Freedmen Oklahoma's Black Indians of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations.
http://hometown.aol.com/angelaw859/index.html
African-Native Americans - We are still here.
http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/native/
Black Indians - Although most of the two million claiming Native American ancestry in the United States are of racially mixed backgrounds, many are still amazed to find that many African Americans are of Indian heritage.
http://www.rosecity.net/cherokee/blackindians.html
Beneath the Underdog: Race, Religion and the Trail of Tears - In the fields and homes of the colonial plantations of the United States in the late eighteenth century, the first intimate relations between African American and Native American peoples were forged in their collective oppression at
the hands of the "peculiar institution."
http://www.users.interport.net/~wovoka/underdg7.html
Black-Indian History Resources - This bibliography is a representative--no means comprehensive--list of Black-Indian resources for the so-called Five Civilized Tribes.
http://www.anpa.ualr.edu/Black_Indian_Intro.html
Heart of Two Nations: African Native Americans
http://hometown.aol.com/homalosa/index.html
Lost Feather Black Indians - The Legacy of the American Black Indian. From the Moors to the Seminole.
http://www.theclique.webprovider.com/lostfeather/index.htm
Mawshakh Muurs - There are legends of the Nanticoke family of Lenni Lenabe; which tells of how during the Exodus of the Hebrews a portion of them left Egypt in ships and founded colonies in Spain, Ireland, Scotland, and Maryland. These people mixed in with the natives of the territory (the Lenni Lanabe) and became one family.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/5321/
Nzingha's Nation - A site that among other things records information about Black Indians - past and present.
http://www.thefuturesite.com/nzingha/
Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts - One of the toughest units in the United States Army was the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts. This elite group was recruited in 1870 from black people living in Mexico.
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/scouts.htm
The Seminole Negroes - Texas Historical Commission
http://www.thc.state.tx.us/Seminole.html
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