African American-American Indian relations
African American-American Indian relations encompass a complex history of interaction, cooperation, and conflict between two distinct racial and cultural groups in the United States. Since the 1960s, historians have increasingly focused on these interactions, revealing that contact dates back to early European exploration and colonization. In the 16th century, for instance, African slaves were integrated into the labor system alongside American Indians, often leading to alliances in revolts against colonial oppression.
The dynamics between the groups varied significantly depending on geographical and historical contexts. In Spanish America, there was notable intermingling and cooperation, whereas in English North America, interactions were often strained, particularly as the populations and power dynamics shifted over time. Additionally, the institution of slavery in the Southeastern United States created a unique context where African Americans and certain Native American tribes, notably the Five Civilized Tribes, interacted within a shared system of servitude.
Throughout various wars, such as the Creek War and the First Seminole War, African Americans and Native Americans fought side by side against common oppressors. In the contemporary era, there has been a resurgence of coalition-building, particularly influenced by civil rights movements that fostered a renewed political alliance between African Americans and Native Americans, advocating for their rights and representation. This intricate historical narrative highlights the evolving relationships and shared struggles faced by these communities in their fight for justice and recognition.
African American-American Indian relations
Significance: Traditional American racial history, by focusing on American Indian-white or black-white relations, has ignored the important cultural contributions of American Indian-black interactions.
Since the 1960s, revisionist historians have shown great interest in the histories of American Indians and African Americans. The study of the history of the contact between these two groups has been a logical development, and much new evidence has emerged. For example, significant contact between American Indians and Africans occurred in Europe at the time of Portuguese encounters with Africans. In the sixteenth century, American Indians were traded for West African slaves, who were needed to work on Brazilian plantations.
The Spanish were the first major users of African slaves in the New World. An initial function of Africans, because of their knowledge of Indian culture, was to aid in exploration as guides and interpreters. The first African in the New World known by name was Estevanico, a Muslim native of Acamor. He accompanied the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, which was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida in 1529. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was also accompanied by Africans as he explored central Kansas in 1541.
Indigenous forms of servitude were modified by the Spanish to serve the labor needs of their mines and plantations. Beginning with Hernando de Soto in 1538, the Spanish transported thousands of Indians from the Southeast to the West Indies. By 1540, however, Indian slavery was deemed unsuitable because of the Indians’ susceptibility to disease; thereafter African labor began to be used. The mixing of Native American and African slave populations in sixteenth-century Spanish America created a solidarity between the two groups, as seen in numerous revolts and insurrections.
American Colonization
Contacts among the races in the age of exploration were minor compared with those that occurred in the period of colonization. The main areas of interaction can be divided geographically into, first, New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Chesapeake, and second, the Southeast and Indian Territory. Except for the case of the Seminole Wars in Spanish Florida, the relations between blacks and Indians were not as amicable in English North America as they were in Spanish America. This was attributable in large part to demographics. The numbers of Indian and African slaves from New England to the Chesapeake were small in the early seventeenth century. Over time the Indian population diminished, and the black population increased. Although the two groups were initially few in number and spread over a large geographical area, there was extensive intermingling, which served to modify the physical appearance of both in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The main form of relationship during this time was intermarriage between free blacks and reservation Indians. Reservations, in fact, were centers of racial fusion all the way from Cape Cod to the Chesapeake. Crispus Attucks, Paul Cuffe, and Frederick Douglass were famous men of mixed blood.
A mulatto named York, the first black to cross the continent, was critical to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–6. The explorers would have turned back at the Rocky Mountains had not York befriended the Shoshone, who provided needed supplies and horses. York, the son of two slaves, was known as Big Medicine by the Indians. He spoke several Indian languages as well as French. The Indian woman Sacagawea was his constant companion during the expedition.
Indian Slavery
The most massive contact between Indians and African Americans arose within the system of slavery developed by the so-called Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Predominant among the Five Tribes were the Cherokee, whose 12,395-member nation held 583 slaves in 1809. By 1824, the numbers had grown to 15,560 and 1,277 respectively. Although it seems that the Cherokee were not unduly harsh masters, they refused to allow intermixture with blacks. The Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes together counted 25,000 members, with 5,000 slaves. Believing, like the Cherokee, in racial separation, these two tribes were crueler masters. The Chickasaw, who on occasion murdered the slaves of other owners, were especially cruel.
The Creek and Seminole were considered the least civilized of the Five Tribes, partly because they had the least prejudice toward blacks. This was especially true of the Seminole, who allowed their “slaves” to live in separate farming communities while paying a small annual tribute. The Creek, a patriarchal society, had children by slave women. The Creek reared these children as equals to their full-blooded progeny. A famous Creek chief, Tustennuggee Emartha, or Jim Boy, was of such mixed breed. The Seminole, who numbered about 3,900 in 1822, owned 800 slaves. These slaves were “maroons”— they had escaped the plantations of Georgia and the Carolinas. It was the presence of the maroons that initiated the Florida Wars.
War and Politics
Native American and African American military cooperation occurred in two campaigns closely related in time, geography, and cause. The second decade of the nineteenth century saw, in the Southeast, the outbreak of the Creek War and the First Seminole War. Both were precipitated by the anger of white slave owners who sought the return of their runaways from neighboring reservations. Andrew Jackson led the assault that crushed the Creek Red Stick Revolt in 1814, and he ended the First Seminole War in 1818 by capturing a Seminole stronghold in Florida.
African Americans figured prominently in both of these wars, since they had the most to lose in the event of a defeat. In numerous battles, Indians and blacks fought and died together. Jim Bowlegs, who was a slave of Chief Billy Bowlegs and served as his interpreter and adviser, later became a Seminole maroon leader, organizing a resettlement for his group in Mexico in 1850. The Indians and blacks continued to fight for their independence in two successive wars until the Civil War broke out.
The participation of slave-holding Indians in the Civil War (1861–65) was determined by their respective views on slavery. The Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes, who were the most prejudiced against blacks, supported the Confederacy; the Creek and Seminole opposed it. The Cherokee held a divided position; mixed-bloods (part Indian, part white) generally supported the South, while full-bloods tended to sympathize with the North. In the confusion of war, the slaves were left largely on their own, attacking both Unionists and Confederates. After the war some blacks sought incorporation into the various tribes. This action was resisted by the Choctaw and Chickasaw. After the tribes’ removal to Indian Territory, the legacy of Indian slave-holding was clearly evident. By 1907, no Seminole family was free of black intermixing, and almost no Creek families were pure-blooded. The other three tribes, however, had practically no mixture.
Since the 1960s a new alliance has occurred between Native Americans and African Americans in the arena of political activity. The Black Power and civil rights movements inspired Red Power organizations such as the American Indian Movement (AIM). Black theology has been the model for the development of what has been called “red theology.” Such political actions have spread to international bodies such as the United Nations and the Organization of Indigenous Peoples, in which African and indigenous New World peoples sustain positive contact.
Bibliography
Forbes, Jack D. Black Africans and Native Americans: Color, Race, and Caste in the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Print.
Halliburton, R. Jr. Red over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians. Westport: Greenwood, 1977. Print.
Hoover, Dwight W. The Red and the Black. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1976. Print.
Katz, William Loren Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. New York: Atheneum, 1986. Print.
Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. Africans and Creeks: From the Colonial Period to the Civil War. Westport: Greenwood, 1979. Print.
Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. Africans and Seminoles: From Removal to Emancipation. Westport: Greenwood, 1978. Print.
Mulroy, Kevin Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 1993. Print.
Nash, Gary B. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1974. Print.
Perdue, Theda. Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1886. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1979. Print.