Native Americans Owned Slaves

I couldn't believe my ears. So I'm watching this show on PBS called African American Lives 2. They research the family history of people back to slavery. So they get to Don Cheadle and they discover his fore fathers were owned by the Chickasaw. Not only that, they remained slaves for a few years after America abolished slavery because the Chicasaw nation was Sovereign. Apparently 5 nations owned slaves. Here's another kicker, after the Chicasaw nation abolished slavery, the slaves had no nationalty. They weren't American or Chickasaw. They weren't granted Chichasaw citizenship for like 20 years. It's not all bad though, unlike the crooked American States, the Chickasaw actually gave their slaves land afterward. Don Cheadle's people got 40 Acres. 40 acres, how ironic.

Did anyone else know of this? How come this isn't taught to us when we learn about slavery in middle school and high school? I mean I never even heard this mentioned...not once.

Sympahty? What?

Indians captured other Indians from other tribes and made them slaves. They captured white people and made them slaves. White people tried to enslave the Indian but the Indian would rather fight and die for its freedom. Blacks were sold by there own as well as captured for slavery. Every nationality ever in existence captured another human being for slavery.

That little bit of history is hidden from school children to show white dominance over the new world as it was shaped by the winners.

We are captured to this day as slaves by our government, big banking and people in power over those who have none.

This makes sense. Some kind of subconscious imprinting going on in the way we consider 'slave-owners' to be pre-civil war and white only. Definitely a cross-culture thing.

Indians making slaves of one another was practiced only among some tribes, other peaceful tribes found it despicable. I'm a white-descendant of such a tribe, we were constantly fighting and fleeing from the Blackfeet (who were out of control and making life hell for everyone, no offense Blackfeet.)

However I have NEVER heard accounts of Natives owning black slaves... that seems incredible. There were however plenty of 'white' indians around after certain tribes had been assimilated. These were the same indians who willingly signed away the land of other tribes etc.

Only Western Culture can be truly evil – haven’t you heard? No? Weren’t you taught that in your recent history classes? I was. You’re not supposed to bring up “issues” that various non-Western European cultures may or may not have dealt with. This post should be banned because only Western free-market societies could ever benefit from slavery. That’s a fact – I know because that’s what I was taught. Everything you posted should be “disproved” or suppressed. The real truth is that Native-Americans lived in an idyllic, want and stress free society before Europeans showed up and introduced bad things like slavery. Go back to the university and get some real learning you fascist.

'Course they did. Free Blacks owned slaves, too. Pretty much everyone who could afford slaves had one or two.

passenger, sorry for the misunderstanding

[edit on 25-2-2008 by Roland Deschain]

reply to post by Roland Deschain

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He was attempting to be sardonic, I think. It's my experience that such attempts fail horribly in text.

reply to post by Roland Deschain

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I saw the show you're talking about, African-American Lives 2. They did one last year too. I find the series very interesting... in fact, I've been inspired to spend some time at ancestry.com as a result of it, so thanks PBS.

On the subject of Native Americans who owned slaves, the Chickasaw were one of the "Five Civilized Nations", so called because they adopted "white"/Western practices, like dress, style of house, etc. During the Civil War, the Chickasaw sided with the Confederacy and, according to wiki, was the last Confederate community to surrender to the Union. That may explain what happened to Don Cheadle's ancestors.

reply to post by HarlemHottie

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HarlemHottie, I liked the show as well, or what I saw of it... Didn't get a chance to see the whole thing.

Thanks for the information about the "Five Civilized Nations", I never really knew anything about that and the Chickasaw siding with the Confederacy.

Well, I just proved your theory Walking Fox. I thought it was so blatant, but... Mea Culpa. I won't try this again.

reply to post by Roland Deschain

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Honestly, I didn't know too much about it myself until I saw that show. Here's another link if you're interested, Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association.

As someone mentioned earlier, the Native Americans were already using the captured members of other tribes as slaves......

Here's a bit about Major Ridge, a rather wealthy local Cherokee figure in the history of my area.....This a partial list from an 1820 census, where he is shown owning both Indian and African slaves.



source
ngeorgia.com...

[edit on 26-2-2008 by frayed1]

Like the Native American's, civilizations throughout history have been capturing other races/tribes/enemies and forcing slavery on them. I was aware the Native Americans did this too.... I just never heard anything about them owning black slaves.

I guess even wealthy black men had slaves though too, or whats what I heard when I brought this up to someone else. Everyone was doing it back then.

I live near the eastern Chrokee reservation, and I was aware that some of the prosperous Cherokees owned black slaves before the civil war. These were among the ones who assimilated into white society pretty thoroughly. Attitudes and practices were different then.

Good point.

But the issue isn’t that of recognizing that fact. It’s the issue that certain people with agendas are trying to suppress or deliberately ignore such facts.

I think that we can all agree that enslavement, by anyone, of anyone, is wrong. The problem is that the burden of shame is only being placed upon certain groups – while pointedly overlooking the participation of other groups. That’s not good history. But as the OP pointed out, they were surprised by such information when they discovered it. Why? Why weren’t they given the full picture?

That's an excellent question.

Well, first off, where are people getting their information, right? Public school, mostly. Who influences public school curricula? The Federal government. Now, what would they have to gain by omitting this little bit of history?

Southern states-rights proponents would argue that the Federal government has always had it out for them.

“Had it out for them”… now that’s an understatement – they declared WAR on them.

But I’ve always had it out for anyone (or organization) that tries, or has tried, to suppress history. Whether it’s the idiots that burned the library of Alexandria, the Conquistadores that destroyed the Mayan knowledge or modern university professors that want to rewrite history so as not to be offensive or uncomfortable. The only way we can truly learn from history is to examine all it’s parts, no matter how painful or harsh it may be.

It was meant to be.

I'm not sure why you believe that modern history professors are to blame. Contemporary adults would have learned their 'slavery basics' in middle school, at least 15 years ago. Dr. Henry Louis Gates and Cornell West, and their colleagues, had nothing to do with publishing the textbooks we used.

I was implying that perhaps the false depictions of slavery could be attributable to "spin" by the Federal government. The victor gets to write the history books.

Well sure, the U.S. Government has a reason to downplay some of their more unsavory activities. They did so in the past and continue to do so. And, of course, it follows that because of Federal funding to education a lot of this information is deliberately withheld. But there also exists an almost religious aspect in the attitudes and teachings of some educators. Many of them are seemingly intent on expressing a viewpoint that is very biased and selective in presentation. Perhaps it’s a symbiotic combination of the two that such truths are suppressed?

Again, my point is that we should be told the whole truth and then allowed to make conclusions for ourselves. Any editing, for whatever reason, of historical facts is misguided.

I find it curious that you can dismiss the influence of federal funding so easily, yet place so much weight in an as-yet-unproven notion that historians (some of whom so happen to be black) are so blinded by some unmet need to 'blame the white man' that they have purposely excluded evidence from the historical record.

The host of the PBS show in question, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the guy who announced to America that the Chickasaw nation once owned black slaves, heads Harvard's African and African-American Studies Department. I was trained as a historian and, let me tell you, you couldn't even write a thesis with the sort of bias you're alluding to, much less get tenure at one of this nation's most competitive universities and then become chair of the department. The guardians of the ivory tower would never allow it.