African & Native Americans share a rich history (1984 hits)
November 3 *From the beginning of U. S. history, American Native populations and Africans had a historical relationship of both cooperation and confrontation. Europeans first enslaved Indians, introducing Africans to the Americas shortly after. Nicolas de Ovando, Governor of Hispaniola first mentioned African and Indian interaction in a report, circa 1503. Indians who escaped generally knew the surrounding areas, avoided capture, and returned to help free enslaved Africans. Europeans feared an Indian/African alliance. The first slave rebellion occurred in Hispaniola in 1522, while the first on future United States soil (North Carolina) occurred in 1526. Both rebellions were organized and executed by coalitions of Africans and Indians.
Europeans feared communities of escaped Africans, known as Maroons or quilombos in frontier areas. The largest of these communities, the "Republic of Palmores," originated in the 1600s, and at its peak had a population of approximately 11,000. This community composed primarily of Africans but including Indians, contained three villages, spiritual gather places, shops, and operated under its own legal system. Its army repelled European military attacks until 1694.
White reaction to such communities was extreme despite their limited numbers. Europeans sought to keep the two peoples separated and, if possible, mutually hostile. They taught Africans to fight Indians and bribed Indians to hunt escaped Africans, promising lucrative rewards. Indians who captured escaped Africans received 35 deerskins in Virginia or three blankets and a musket in the Carolinas. Further sowing division, Whites introduced African slavery into the Five Civilized Nations in the United States...
In 1816, a U. S. soldier reported that prosperous plantations existed for fifty miles along the banks of the Apalachicola River. The African-Seminole forces repeatedly repelled U. S. slaveholders' posses and the U. S. Army. The Second Seminole War resulted in 1,600 dead and cost over $40 million. The purchase of Florida from Spain was the U. S. government's attempt to eliminate it as a refuge for runaways. Before the Civil War, many Native American nations on the eastern seaboard of the United States became biracial communities.
African-Americans were well represented in the Trail of Tears. By 1860, the Five Civilized Nations in the Indian Territory consisted of 18 percent African Americans. The Seminoles appointed six Black Seminoles members of its governing council. After the Civil War, the Buffalo Soldiers, six regiments of African American U. S. Army troops, helped to end Indian resistance to U. S. control after the Civil War. The most significant African-Native American was John Horse, a Black Seminole Chief who was a master marksman and diplomat in Florida and Oklahoma and by the time of the Civil War, the Black Seminole Chief in Mexico and Texas.
Horse negotiated a treaty with the U. S. government in 1870. On July 4th of that year, when his Seminole nation crossed into Texas, it was a historic moment: an African people had arrived together as a nation on this soil, under the command of their ruling monarch, Chief John Horse. Today, many African Americans can trace their ancestry in part to an Indian tribe.
http://www.aaregistry.com/detail.php?id=42... Reference: African American and Native American History Princeton Public Library 65 Witherspoon Street Princeton, NJ 08542 609-924-9529
Excellent post, Jen. Thanks to my [late] father, he ensured that we knew our tribal connections to the Cherokees. This sheds more light on history than I knew about, though. Thanks for posting.
Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 at 12:01PM
Craig Amos
Hello to all,
This blog is nonsense, irrelevant and moot. The hell with how things used to be. What is important is how things are now and what they will be in the future. The fate of the Indians has already been decided. The fate of Black Americans is yet to be decided from a Black perspective.
Black Americans who are descendents of slaves are not Indians nor are Indians Black Americans who are descendents of slaves.
Black Americans are a new breed or race of people that has emerged out of the ashes of slavery.
Black Americans are going to become a sovereign people or have complete independence on a portion of this continent that we could call our very own country with borders and this decision has been made by God.
Black Americans are a people that have never tasted absolute sovereign freedom since we were all born into slavery. Black Americans have never ruled over themselves or had any form of self-governance while native Indians and Whites have.
I want you all to stop this nonsense of looking backwards and taken pride in being subverted people.
Why it is that you all cannot think in terms of being a collectively sovereign prosperous people? Why it is that you all cannot want as a people your sovereign freedom as the Hebrew people wanted their Exodus from Egypt?
Every blog that I read from you all is always about looking backwards. What is wrong with you all imagination? Is there something wrong that you all cannot at the least dream?
Brother Craig you are very welcome and thanks for your comments about the blog.
Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 at 2:37PM
Jen Fad
..."Every blog that I read from you all is always about looking backwards. What is wrong with you all imagination? Is there something wrong that you all cannot at the least dream?"...
Brother Harry I will agree to disagree with what you have said. When I post things like this about history, I like doing so not that I'm living in the past, but because these are facts in history that I'm just discovering and find fascinating. When I was a student in public school, I never learned the real facts but distorted facts. Besides how can a people hope to be sovereign people without the knowledge of History so that they won't repeat history [so to speak]? Didn't the Hebrews know about their own history? It didn't stop them from being a sovereign nation did it?
Let me make this clear to you, I love you. I am not against you despite how abrasive I may be. You belong to me and I belong to you, we are one in the same.
Ms. Jen, knowing your history is irrelevant to the point that I am making. The Hebrews knowing what they could remember of their own history after Pharaoh enslave them had nothing to do with their desire to come out of bondage.
The psychological reason you all do not talk about your future is that you have no imagination for a positive future. A certain part of your brain has been zapped out.
I am here only by God’s do with this because our time has come.
What I want you to do is to even imagine how you could see Black Americans sovereign, prosperous and being sought after by many.
Alright Brother Harry I know that we are one and the same... I wasn't upset but merely stating my mind. I will have to get back to you about this 'imagination' stuff, but in the meanwhile I just a few seconds ago added a UTUBE clip and 2 other web links since you posted your most recent comment. Please view the information and let me know what you think, because the narrator speaks of sovereign Natives. It makes sense in a way of what you are saying about being sought after [for knowledge, wealth, wisdom, etc...] kinda like the Queen of the South sought after Solomon when she heard of his great wisdom and wealth.
Hello, Jen. I am so glad you posted this. You are always posting things that are highly interesting, intelligent and relevant.
I like the fact that this video talks about the Indians who owned African slaves.
I am part Indian (i.e. Native American) on both sides of my family and was brought up to be proud of my Indian blood. However, I recently learned that there is a big controversy going on in the Cherokee nation. They are saying that many African American people, who are part-Cherokee, have no right to membership in the Cherokee Nation. The African American Cherokees are being treated more or less as second class citizens. So unfortunately, it's not all a happy, harmonious history. Still many of us did inter-breed and many Indian people helped runaways to escape and to live off the land.
Blessings, Zhana
Wednesday, November 4th 2009 at 6:32AM
Zhana Books
Also, being aware of how the U.S. Government slaughtered the Indians and stole their land (and lied about it) helps us to understand what was done in Africa, i.e. the exact same thing. This is why Africa is in the state of dire poverty which exists today.
Wednesday, November 4th 2009 at 6:37AM
Zhana Books
..."So unfortunately, it's not all a happy, harmonious history"... I agree with you Sister Zhana that the story isn't all happy, but we can agree with the blog title that it is a rich history. I don't condone the Cherokee Nation for treating Black Natives as second class, but Black Americans aren't exactly embracing Africans who have become citizens into the African American family either. I can't really point any figures at the Cherokee sistah. (((Lol)))
Wednesday, November 4th 2009 at 11:14AM
Jen Fad
Sister Irma you are one of the many 'seasoned' members on this site and your comments are always welcomed. I love to read them even if sometimes I don't understand them...the wisdom that my mind can't comprehend at times. ((Lol))
Friday, November 6th 2009 at 5:51PM
Jen Fad
Thank you Jen for informing those that did not know. Now on to something else, which is a major fact for me and my entire family. Both of my great-great grandparents were full blooded Cherokee Indians. My mother's father is Brazilian where many slaves were sent. Therefore, I am a proud Black-Indian and could careless about what certain people (shall they remain nameless) has to say about my heritage. I know of which I came and where I am going, I know the blood that pumps through my veins.
Friday, November 6th 2009 at 11:45PM
Marquerite Burgess
Thanks Jen. This post was so enlightening.
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
Jen, it is not because I am a 'know it all' that I keep adding things like I do...but it is because like you the more I learn about US as Black in America the more proud I become and the more I want to know.....especially things like this you just posted that is the truth about these beautiful, proud peoples...
Because they had a Black Indian chief they were never, ever defeated...the most feared leader of anyones by the White military was a Black Indian chief...in time we will all be able to learn more and more about how they would not even fight against Indians if led by a Black chief.(smile)
I was luck enough to have the many, many Native-American classes that I took being taught by Native-Americans and in a Native-American department of the college.
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
Jen, this attutude of yours is the reason that our culture and race has remained such survivers. Like the Native-Americans we relied on Mother nature and natural wit for our way of creating such a lasting race of peoples.
We are oral learners and rely on our elders as our teachers of history.actually your blog on Ebonics is such a reminder of my pride in my culture and my race's ability to survive.We made due with what we had to work with even in language.
Here is something I would like for you to take a look at. The people who are in America from Africa and learned to speak the King's English and the people who live in the state of South Carolina especially the African-americans in the state of Georgia have the same dialects.They also tend to speak 'backwards as people who learn Engl ish do-smile)This is very interesting.
And, now that I have just remembered this I will at some times in the future put this on your Ebonic's site...For someone who has never paid any attention to this they will just let it go as that person is from the south...but, as I have said before, in the deep south we are more in common with Africa in many thing more so than the USA, but, we just still don't know enough of our true Black In America's true history...but we are learning.(smile)
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
