Cherokees eject descendants of their former slaves

This is a sad day.

The Cherokee nation announced yesterday that its members voted to expel descendants of slaves once owned by the tribe, as well as freedmen and whites who married into the tribe. The press release from the Cherokee nation website is below. The New York Times article, published just before the vote has good background on the dispute. The descendants of the Freedmen also have a website.

The press release says that this is a matter of Cherokee self-determination, ratified by treaty and paid for by the Trail of Tears.

The Cherokee were one of several indigenous American tribes who owned African slaves; others included the Choctaw, Chickasaw and the Creek. This site (which unfortunately has a pop-ups) has excerpts of several narratives of former slaves of Native Americans. The narratives come from the WPA archives.


A few facts about Cherokee slave ownership:

1. The estimate is that about 1/2 of 1 percent of the heads of Cherokee households had slaves.
2. Cherokee slave ownership was part of a process of "civilization" that was encouraged at the beginning of the 19th century.
3. Cherokee slave owners imitated their Euro-American counterparts, with all of the cruelty that implies.
4. Slavery was an institution grafted onto what had been an egalitarian Cherokee culture.(1)

Before these contributors to Cherokee history are completely dismissed, their stories ought to be remembered for what they tell us about the complexities of race, power and identity. For example, here is Patsy Perryman, born about 1848:

The Taylor place, where I was born , was in the Caney Creek settlement, near Walkingstick Spring, in the old Flint District of the Cherokee Nation. The Taylor family was Cherokees and the mistress and master always treated us mighty good. We didn't know what whippings were, only what he heard about other slaves getting beaten for trying to run away or too lazy to work.

My mother had always been with mistress Judy Taylor and she was the only mother my mama ever had, least the only she could remember for her own mother (my grandmother) died when she was three days old. She was raised by the Indians and could talk Cherokee.

There was two boys and three girls; myself, Jude and Victoria, "Boney" (Bonaparte) and Lewis. Father belonged to some other man for a long time; he would get a pass to visit with mother and us children, then go back the next day. The Taylors bought him so that we could all be together.

My brother Lewis married a full-blood Indian woman and they got lots of Indian children on their farm in the old Cherokee country around Caney Creek. He's just like an Indian, been with them so much, talks the Cherokee language, and don't notice us Negroes any more.

The last time I saw him was thirty years ago when he come to see mamma at the agency. We started out walking and pretty soon he dropped behind, leaving me to walk in front. I looked back and there he was standing in the middle with his eyes shut.

"What's the matter brother Lewis?" I wanted to know. "Sister wants you to come on, " I told him.

"I darn tired looking at Negroes!" he said keeping his eyes shut tight and I knew just how he felt.

That's what I use to tell Mistress Taylor when I leave my own mammy and run to the mistress, crying to stay with her, even after the peace come that set us free.

I will be looking for comment this in the Native American press.

Cherokee Nation Special Election Results

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A Cherokee Nation Constitutional amendment restricting membership to descendants of Indians listed by blood on the Dawes Rolls has passed.

Cherokee voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the Cherokee Nation Constitution in a special election Saturday, March 3, by a decisive vote of 6,693 (77%) for the measure to 2,040 (23%) against. The amendment limits citizenship in the Cherokee Nation to descendants of people who are listed on the Final Rolls of the Cherokee Nation as Cherokee, Delaware or Shawnee and excludes descendants of those listed on Intermarried White and Freedmen rolls taken at the same time.

"The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right to vote," said Chad Smith, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. "Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination. It was a right of self-government, affirmed in 23 treaties with Great Britain and the United States and paid dearly with 4,000 lives on the Trail of Tears."

Smith added that the number of voters who turned out to vote on the constitutional amendment was actually more than the approximately 6,700 who approved the Cherokee Nation Constitution four years ago.

"This was an unexpectedly high turnout, considering it was a special election with nothing else on the ballot," Smith said. "I think that reflects the idea that this is an issue that has been close to the heart of the Cherokee people and an issue they have thought about carefully before voting."

The special election was brought about by a petition of registered Cherokee voters, and was an historic event for the Cherokee Nation, as its first ever stand-alone election to vote on a Constitutional amendment.

Election results are unofficial until certified by the Cherokee Nation Election Commission, but percentages are not expected to change significantly.

(1): Red over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians, Review author[s]: Charles Hudson The American Historical Review © 1977 American Historical Association

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