🚀 go-pugleaf

Dianne Blackwell (dianne75@nospam.com) wrote:
: 
: We should take care of our black Americans before illegals.
: 
: Thousands To Rally for Reparations 
: Apology Also Sought For Slave Descendents 
: 
: By Manny Fernandez
: Washington Post Staff Writer
: Friday, August 16, 2002; Page B01 
: 

Are the Five Civilized Tribes expected to make reparations too ?....

   http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/slave_rv.htm
   CHEROKEE SLAVE REVOLT OF 1842

                      "CHEROKEE SLAVE REVOLT OF 1842
                                      
                              by Art T. Burton
                 __________________________________________
   
   Copyright 1996. Art T. Burton
   
   Black slavery in America usually evokes images of the antebellum
   South, but few realize that members of the Five Civilized Tribes--the
   Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles--in Indian
   Territory, today's Oklahoma, also had slaves. Like their counterparts
   in the South, Indian slaveholders feared slave revolts. Those fears
   came true in 1842 when slaves in the Cherokee Nation made a daring
   dash for freedom.
   
   In the 1830s and 1840s, initially at the insistence of President
   Andrew Jackson, the United States government forcibly removed the Five
   Civilized Tribes from their homes in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee,
   North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to Indian Territory west of the
   Mississippi River. Their removal opened the lands to white settlers
   and planters.
   
   When they moved, all of the tribes took with them established systems
   of slavery. Mixed-blood Indians, the offspring of white traders and
   frontiersmen who married Indian women, were the principal slaveholders
   in the tribes, largely because their fathers had taught them the
   economics of slavery. Those mixed-blood Indians remained tribal
   members and became important middlemen between white settlers and
   Indian communities.
   
   Many Cherokees depended on black slaves as a bridge to white to white
   society. Full-blood Indian slave owners relied on the blacks as
   English interpreters and translators.
   
   By 1860, the Cherokees had 4,600 slaves; the Choctaws, 2,344; the
   Creeks, 1,532; the Chickasaws, 975; and the Seminoles, 500. Some
   Indian slave owners were as harsh and cruel as any white slave master.
   Indians were often hired to catch runaway slaves; in fact,
   slave-catching was a lucrative way of life for some Indians,
   especially the Chickasaws.
   
   Seminoles attitudes toward slavery were different than those of other
   tribes. Never practicing chattel slavery, they took in fugitive slaves
   and claimed them as their own 'property' to protect the blacks from
   slave-catchers. In return, the blacks, who lived in separate villages
   in the Seminole country, gave livestock and crop tributes to the
   Indians. The blacks and Seminoles also formed a military alliance,
   with the blacks serving the Indians as warriors and strategists. In
   some instances, the blacks would intermarry into the Seminole
   community.
   
   All of the tribes except the Seminoles had slave codes. Even after
   their removal to Indian Territory, the Seminoles allowed their slaves
   to carry weapons and own horses and other property. Until a treaty in
   1845 provided for their relocation to the western area of the Creek
   Nation, the Seminoles lived in the Cherokee country around Fort
   Gibson, Indian Territory. Before that, Cherokee and Creek slaveholders
   complained about the influence of Seminole slaves on their own slave
   populations.
   
   The blacks locked their masters and overseers in their houses and
   cabins while they slept. Then they burglarized a store, stealing guns,
   horses, mules, ammunition, food, and supplies. At daylight the group,
   which included men, women, and children, headed toward Mexico, where
   slavery was illegal.
   
   The Cherokee slaves at the Arkansas River port of Webbers Falls, not
   far from Fort Gibson, would have had ample opportunity to observe the
   Seminole slaves. Most of the Cherokee slaves farmed cotton and other
   crops, but some worked at the landing where steamboats docked and
   where Joseph Vann operated a public ferry. The Seminoles disembarked
   at Webbers Falls after their journey from Florida, and the Cherokee
   slaves may have been impressed with the blacks dressed in Seminole
   fashion and carrying rifles and knives. The black Seminoles settled in
   the Illinois River bottoms near Webbers Falls, allowing the Cherokee
   slaves to socialize with them regularly.
   
   About 4:00 a.m., November 15, 1842, more than twenty-five slaves, most
   from Vann's plantation at Webbers Falls, rendezvoused at a prearranged
   location near the port town. The blacks locked their masters and
   overseers in their houses and cabins while they slept. Then they
   burglarized the store of a man named Bigelow, stealing guns, horses,
   mules, ammunition, food, and supplies. At daylight the group, which
   included men, women, and children, headed toward Mexico, where slavery
   was illegal and many runaway slaves sought refuge. When the fugitive
   slaves entered the Creek Nation southwest of Webbers Falls, slaves
   from the plantations of wealthy Creeks named Bruner and Marshall
   joined them, increasing the number of runaway to more than
   thirty-five.
   
   When the Cherokees discovered that their slaves had departed, about
   forty of them took guns and dogs and went in pursuit of the fugitives.
   Each slave reportedly had a horse or mule to ride, and they had taken
   some of Vann's blooded racehorses, so they were highly mobile. The
   Cherokees followed the slaves into the Creek Nation. There a group of
   Creek Indians organized a search party and joined the Cherokees.
   
   Within a few days of the escape, the Indians caught up with the blacks
   about ten miles beyond the Canadian River in the Choctaw Nation. The
   slaves found a depression in the prairie which provided a complete
   entrenchment for them and their horses, and they decided it would make
   an excellent place to fight. A pitched battle followed, with both
   sides suffering casualties. The blacks held the position for two days,
   but the Indians killed two of them and captured twelve others.
   
   The fight convinced the Cherokees and Creeks to go home and get
   reinforcements before continuing the chase. The remaining fugitives
   kept moving toward the Red River.
   
   During their flight, the fugitives met James Edwards, a white man, and
   Billy Wilson, a Delaware Indian, about fifteen miles from the battle
   site. Edwards and Wilson were fugitive slave hunters, whom blacks in
   the South called patrollers or "patty rollers." They had with them
   eight blacks--one man, two women, and five children--who had escaped
   in the Choctaw Nation. They had belonged to a white man named
   Thompson, who had married a Choctaw woman, making him a citizen of the
   Choctaw Nation. The fugitives had been headed west to join one of the
   Plains Indian tribes when a man named Chisholm spotted them and turned
   them over to Edwards, Wilson, and a Cherokee man for transport back to
   Choctaw authorities.
   
   Edwards and Wilson made good progress until they met the fugitive
   Cherokee and Creek slaves, who killed them. The Choctaw blacks gladly
   joined the Cherokee band as they continued on their journey toward
   Mexico.
   
   The slave outbreak was reported to the Cherokee National Council at
   the capital in Tahlequah on November 17, 1842. Immediately the council
   passed a resolution, which Chief John Ross approved, authorizing
   Cherokee Militia Captain John Drew to raise a company of one hundred
   men to pursue, arrest, and deliver the blacks to Fort Gibson. The
   resolution also relieved the Cherokee Nation of any liability if the
   slaves resisted arrest and were killed. The Cherokee national treasury
   would compensate Drew's militia, and Drew was authorized to purchase
   ammunition and supplies, provided that the expedition was not
   unnecessarily protracted and did not incur needless expenses.
   
   Ross told Indian Agent Pierce M. Butler about the expedition and asked
   him to inform the commander at Fort Gibson and the Creek and Choctaw
   chiefs. The commander at Fort Gibson loaned Drew twenty-five pounds of
   gunpowder for the militia.
   
   On November 21, Drew left Webbers Falls with eighty-seven well armed
   men in his command. By November 26 they had arrived at the site of the
   battle between the slaves and the Creeks and Cherokees.
   
   Picking up the runaways' trail, Drew's command came upon the bodies of
   slave hunters Edwards and Wilson, who apparently had been dead about
   four days. The militia found the trail again and two days later found
   the fugitives about seven miles north of the Red River, some 280 miles
   from Fort Gibson.
   
   The slaves offered no resistance; starving, they surrendered
   immediately. Drew captured thirty-one slaves--the entire group except
   two who were away hunting. Drew's men returned the slaves to the
   Cherokee Nation with no problem, arriving at Webbers Falls by December
   7.
   
   Drew reported to the Cherokee National Council on December 8. After an
   investigation, council members ordered five slaves to be held at Fort
   Gibson pending trial for the murders of Wilson and Edwards, then told
   Drew to deliver the remaining slaves to their owners. The Choctaw male
   slave was also turned over to Fort Gibson authorities. Drew kept the
   two Choctaw slave women and five children in custody until the
   Cherokees could ascertain their disposition from the Choctaw Nation.
   Joseph Vann took most of his black rebels out of the Cherokee Nation
   and put them to work on his steamboat, which worked the Arkansas,
   Mississippi, and Ohio rivers.
   
   The Cherokees thought the influence of "foreign" free blacks had
   caused the slave insurrection. On December 2 they passed "An Act in
   Regard to Free Negroes" directing that all free blacks, except those
   whom Cherokees had freed, leave the Cherokee Nation by January 1,
   1843, or as soon after as possible. Those who lingered or refused
   would be expelled. The act targeted the free black Seminoles living in
   the Cherokee Nation.
   
   Cherokee attitudes against free black Seminoles continued. In 1849,
   tired of harassment from slave-catchers, some of the free black
   Seminoles under black Chief John Horse fled Indian Territory. They
   joined Seminole Chief Wild Cat and his followers and successfully
   reached Mexico.
   
   By 1851, nearly 300 blacks had tried to escape from Indian Territory,
   most headed for Mexico or Kansas. In the northern Cherokee Nation, in
   what would later become Washington County, Oklahoma, an "underground
   railroad" trail led into Kansas. None of the escapes, however, equaled
   the scope or violence of the Cherokee slave revolt of 1842.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Please send comments or questions to:
   
                             LWF COMMUNICATIONS
                               P.O. Box 26148
                         Trotwood, Ohio 45426-0148
                            E-mail: lwf@coax.net"

--Jerry Leslie   (my opinions are strictly my own)
  Note: leslie@jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email