The classic Black Indians has been updated and reissued. This startling and readable work of people’s history chronicles both the attempts to keep black people and Indians divided in the Americas, and their efforts to unite.
Black Indians are people of African-American descent, usually with significant Native American ancestry, who also have strong ties to Native American culture, social, and historical traditions.[2]
Many Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands today have extensive African descent, such as the Narragansett, Pequot, Lumbee, and others.
Certain Native American tribes had close relations with African Americans, especially those where slavery was prevalent. Members of the Five Civilized Tribes held enslaved blacks, who migrated with them to the West in 1830 and later. In peace treaties with the US after the American Civil War, the tribes, which had sided with the Confederacy, were required to emancipate slaves and give them full citizenship rights in their nations. The Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole have created controversy in recent decades as they tightened rules for membership in their nations and excluded Freedmen who did not have at least one Native American ancestor on the early 20th-century Dawes Rolls. The Chickasaw Nation never extended citizenship to Chickasaw Freedmen. . . continue reading>>