slaves owned by ndns?

[Mo]

I hope you do not mind my once more asking the validity of a group. I trust this group as what i have seen so far shows objectivity and sound research.
ok now...

i was given this site with the claim that "you people are no better than whites" . ahem. since i have never heard any thing like this site claims...i throw it out to you. Is it real?

http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/

[educatedindian]

It's half true, or parts of it are true but are being used in a selective way to support some pretty racist ideas.

Even the site itself is contradictory. They claim Indians are racists, but put up one link after another showing intermarriage and acceptance? And put up a link showing the dialog between Black and tribal leaders.

And this?
"Having ignored the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution,"

Ignored? Indian nations were legally separate nations at the time, though "domestic dependent nations" according to the Supreme Court. The 13th Amendment could no more legally free slaves among the Five Tribes than it could in, say, Brazil. That's why treaties had to be enacted.

"the tribes, chose to embrace sovereignty to keep the slaves in bondage."

Nonsense, they believed in sovereignty long before Europeans ever got here. A great many Indians sympathized with abolitionism and recognized that Southern white racists were responsible for the Trail of Tears. Also:

"The Seminoles provide an exception to the pattern of race relations that developed among southern Indians in the early nineteenth century. When the Red Stick Creeks joined the Seminoles in Florida following the Creek War (1813-14), they took many slaves with them. Together with runaway slaves from white plantations, these African Americans maintained a semiautonomous existence, with their own towns and leaders, and merely offered tribute to the Seminoles...By separating themselves from the "civilization" program and American thought in the early nineteenth century, the Seminoles apparently did not imbibe the racism that increasingly influenced the actions of other southern Indians."
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_036400_slavery.htm

Back to the passage they showed to you.

"The treaty, signed in 1866 by the same tribes that had formed an alliance with the Southern Confederacy"
Take a look at a map. OK was surrounded on 3 sides by the Confederacy. There were few federal troops in the area, and many well armed Confederate ones. Most felt they should make alliances with the Confederacy largely out of fear.  At the first chance, all Five Tribes switched sides.

A few, mostly Indian plantation owning elites, did identify with white racists and also rejected their tribal heritage.

Even the way they phrased the question to you, "you people", well, they sound like Indian haters. And they sell and promote Kevin Mulroy's book and Mulroy is himself a (white) Indian hater.

There's been a push by some in the Black community, with some who are themselves racists and some others who are not, to try to get reparations from Indian tribes, try to force themselves onto tribal rolls, etc. There are also two main Freedmen descendants activist groups out there, one which is legit and another which is very unethical and has ties to Black Supremacist groups like the Nation of Islam and Nuage frauds like the Nuwaubians and Wash itaws. I don't know which of the two this site is associated with.

[Mo]

Nie:wen for the information. I knew someone here would know the truth. I hope you do not mind if I distribute your reply to others who were present when this person was talking about that site. We will have the right words next time the topic arises.

[educatedindian]

I don't mind if anything I say on this forum is posted elsewhere. Feel free to post it anywhere you think it will do some good. But for anyone else's words in here, please ask them individually first.

One more thing, probably the most important point I could've made: While some in the Five Tribes had slaves, there were almost 500 *other* Indian tribes that did *not*.

In fact many of them were enslaved in conditions as horrible or worse than Africans. Sometimes whole tribes were wiped out all over the southeast. In the southwest the Navajo were still being enslaved more than forty years after Black slavery had been outlawed.

And in California during the Gold Rush, the average tribe dropped from as many as 30,000 people to less than 200, most of them dying from forced labor, mining or panning for gold for Anglo "settlers." Johan Sutter, famous for setting off the Gold Rush, had as many as 800 Indian slaves. This was all perfectly legal under the California Slave Act.

[kosowith]

This is a comment that came up occasionally in the classes I’ve taught – It usually followed a reading assignment or commentary on documented abuses and racial cleansing like Amherst’s distributing small pox blankets to the Indian Nations, or the mass murders perpetrated by Chivington and Custer…and it usually ran something like – “Well yah – but there were Indians that owned slaves!!…? My response was usually to attempt to inform them as to the fallacy of ad hominen arguments.  That is like saying that some Africans sold other Africans into slavery which somehow reduces the evilness of the middle passage – It does not follow that this can be used to justify the institution of slavery in any way.  What I find disturbing in these types of statements is the rational behind them which is generally a way to negate their feelings of guilt.  Also – in the research I’ve seen there is a general agreement that while there were isolated instances of European style slave ownership, tribes that did allow it (and they were never the norm) did not practice it in the same manner as the Europeans – it was much closer to the English system of indentured service – In the Northwest tribes - a person became a slave to compensate for a debt, obligation or loss in a contest and could never be sold to another person, the slave’s children were fully statused members of the community and never slaves, the slave could marry “out??? and eventual acceptance into the tribe was possible with sponsorship.  The biggest and key difference was in the philosophical determination of said slave’s humanity.  In the tribes this was never questioned – the person might be lower status – but was always a human – with the whites the slave was no more human than any draft animal.

[Richard L. Allen]

Cherokee abolition of slavery enacted February 1863.

John Ross was now described by the Confederate Cherokees as “the former chief??? and by Union forces as “the chief in exile.  In order to command any influence in Washington he had to demonstrate that he still spoke for a significant body of his people.  For this purpose the Home Guard regiments decided to sustain the continuity of the Ross government by holding their own Council meetings in their corner of the Nation.  This took place in February 1863, at Cowskin Prairie in the northeastern part of the Nation.  The records of this Council indicate that its first acts were to abrogate the treaty with the Confederacy, to depose all Confederate Cherokees from office, to confirm John Ross as chief, and to elect Thomas Peggs as “acting chief.  Other laws declared abolition of slavery and the confiscation of all property belonging to those who adhered to the Confederacy.  The former affected slaves in the Nation, for few were owned by the fullbloods who held this Council;l  the latter allowed the Home Guards to loot the homes of “rebels??? as Watie’s men robbed and looted “the Feds.  The Cherokees now had two Governments at war with each other, and until 1865 a ruthless guerilla warfare between them devastated the homes, fields, and livestock of both sides.  Between them the Loyal and the Confederate Cherokees destroyed every vestige of material progress they had achieved in the West since 1839.  No state in the Union or the Confederacy suffered such losses in men and property in proportion to their population and wealth (W.G. McLoughlin, Champions of the Cherokees:  Evan and John B. Jones, 1990, pps. 408-09).


And in the following letter:  To William P. Dole dated April 2nd 1863 from Principal Chief John Ross (G. E. Moulton, The Papers of Chief John Ross, 1985, pps. 534-35 ).

Sir
“In addressing you on the present occasion, I have the honor to state, I have been advised that a special Session of the National Council of the Cherokee Nation was convened at Cowskin Prairie in Febry, last, and the following bills were passed.
     1st Abrogating the “Treaty??? with “the Confederate States??? and calling a General Convention of the people to approve the act…
     6th An act providing for the abolition of slavery in the Cherokee Nation."

---------
And I suppose one could begin a discussion of the Buffalo Soldiers role against Indian people to provide a different view.

[educatedindian]

I'm glad you brought that up. It puts the emancipation of slaves in the Cherokee Nation barely a month after Lincoln's Proclamation. And unlike Lincoln, it initially does actually free slaves.

I could also point out, as far as I know, no Indian nations have ever demanded any kind of compensation from the Black community for deaths caused by the Buffalo Soldiers.