Originally Published
Monday, January 21, 2019
WHO KNEW? RUNAWAY SLAVES FOUND REFUGE WITH THE CHICKASAW PEOPLE
Runaway Slaves Found Refuge with the Chickasaw People
Just when you didn’t think it could get any crazier I wake up to find this on my Facebook page.
Runaway slaves found refuge with the Chickasaw people
Now I don’t know who wrote this, who gave permission to post it on an official Chickasaw Nation website but clearly someone got their “facts” twisted. Now I don’t know if any runaway slaves sought refuge in the Chickasaw Nation because I have not seen any documented history to demonstrate that. What I do know is the people; my people who were enslaved in the Chickasaw Nation were not met with a kinder and gentler form of the oppressive institution of slavery in all of its hideous manifestations.
I know when my great-great grandmother Margaret Ann WILSON came to Indian Territory; she came as the slave of Col. Benjamin LOVE. I know the LOVE family of slave owners held hundreds of African and African-Native people like Margaret enslaved and they were not runaways. There is no evidence they were just happy to be working on an Indian plantation as opposed to the one she would have been working on in Tuscumbia, Alabama before she made that trip on the trail to Indian Territory.
I know when she gave birth to her children some of them were enslaved prior to being emancipated in 1866. If they were runaways from white folks in the south why is it they had to be, HAD TO BE emancipated from enslavement some forty or sixty or ninety years later from a kinder gentler enslaver like those in the LOVE family? The inference is they ran away from enslavement to be enslaved by another group?
That defies logic or the instinct to be free from bondage.
Why is it when Margaret Ann Wilson gave birth to one of Col. Benjamin LOVE’S relatives did the Chickasaw Nation deny her the dignity of being recognized as a Chickasaw Indian?
Why is it that the children and descendants of those runaways are not welcomed into the nation TODAY and taken in like those so called runaway slaves if the nature of the tribe is to embrace the people that have a shared history and in some cases share blood with them?
The revisionist history of slavery in the Chickasaw Nation that the author of this story is writing is replete with omissions, half-truths and downright mischaracterizations. It is curious how this article was ever allowed to see the light of day; and that begs the question, why was it written and for what purpose?
The author(s) are using “statistics” (who knows where they got them) that should be cited if anyone is to take this article seriously.
By the latter part of the 18th century, more than 100 runaway African slaves had found refuge with some Chickasaw families. Gradually the number increased until records indicate that before Removal, the African slave population numbered 1,156.
You mean to tell me there was a population of over one-thousand runaway “African” slaves in the Chickasaw Nation prior to “removal” In what world does an individual seek refuge so they can be enslaved? Perhaps the authors were borrowing a little history from the Seminole Nation to make this statement? And they found “refuge” among the Chickasaw “families?” REALLY?
They arrived at a time when several Chickasaw families were moving out of traditional Chickasaw villages to establish farmsteads and plantations.
How convenient, I guess the runaway felt a debt of gratitude to allow themselves to remain enslaved for another 50 to 100 years because they enjoyed not having the freedom their enslavers failed to grant them?
The author of this article would have us believe the runaway slaves happened along JUST IN TIME to help with the transformation of the Chickasaw nation to a more “CIVILIZED” existence as they moved out of their “traditional Chickasaw villages to establish farmsteads and plantations.” Those are some amazing altruistic runaways with exceptional timing if you ask me.
Most African slaves worked on the larger Chickasaw plantations and were not subject to the brutality experienced by those who worked for many white slave owners.
Let’s start with the fact that if you looked at the 1860 Arkansas Slave Schedule of Indian Territory you will see a large percentage of SLAVES who were described as M for mulatto. Now they could have been runaway mulatto slaves or they could have been the product of Chickasaw men fathering children by their “grateful” runaway slaves only to enslave their own children, hmmm, I Don’t Think So! That doesn’t give me reason to think things were better as a slave of a Chickasaw than an enslaver in Alabama and Mississippi.
The Chickasaw slaves were free to attend church at the missions, and they often served as translators by virtue of their knowledge of English and Chickasaw.
The idea that slaves were allowed (ALLOWED) to attend church and serve as translators is probably the only truthful and verifiable statement in this article but that doesn’t mean it was good to be a slave; it only means you were being “allowed” to exist in a world that subjugated everything you did and still held you in bondage, not a citizen and not with rights and privileges of citizenship.
About 200 Chickasaw families owned African slaves who cultivated Chickasaw plantations, tended free range herds of cattle and assisted in household work.
This is historical malpractice and a weak attempt at distorting the history of the Chickasaw Nation. They should tell you about the memorial sent to the United States Congress that sought citizenship by adoption by all of these runaways only to be denied because the Chickasaws thought they would be perceived as a "black tribe" if they adopted their former (they ceased to be runaways once in Indian Territory if they ever were runaway) slaves.
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