RACISM AND THE CHEROKEE NATION

by William Loren Katz

As President Bill Clinton and others arrived for the 42nd anniversary of Selma's "bloody Sunday" that assured Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Cherokee Nation took a different road. It voted overwhelmingly to revoke citizenship rights for 2800 members because their ancestors included people of Africa descent.

Marilyn Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, has long fought racism from both governmental officials and Indigenous figures. In this instance, she claims, Cherokee leaders misled voters by insisting "freedmen don't have Indian blood", "the freedmen were forced on the tribe", "the freedmen do not have a treaty right to citizenship", "the people have never voted on citizenship provisions in the history of the tribe", and "the amendment will create an all Indian tribe." Cherokee voters were also influenced by the racist charge "that the freedmen if not ejected, would use up all of the tribal service monies."

The design of the constitutional amendment, Vann points out, is patently discriminatory. It removes membership from descendants of enrolled freedmen members whose documentation of Indian ancestry was affirmed by the Dawes Commission more than a century ago as well as those without documentation of Indian ancestry. On the other hand it accepts Cherokee members with white blood or even people whose ancestors are listed as "adopted whites."

This development comes at a moment of intense examination of the African and Indian alliances that began after 1492. Governor Nicolas de Ovando of Hispaniola arrived in the Americas in 1502 with a Spanish armada that carried the first enslaved Africans. Within a year Ovando wrote to King Ferdinand that the Africans "fled to the [Taino] Indians and never could be captured." To the fury of Europeans, Native Americans, the first people enslaved in the New World, accepted African runaways. Obviously, Indians saw no reason to face the invasion
alone.

In maroon colonies beyond the European coastline settlements, each group contributed invaluable gifts. As victims of the triangular trade, Africans brought a unique view of European goals, weapons, and diplomacy. Native American villages offered runaways a safe haven for families and a base for operations, and the two peoples of color forged their maroon settlements into the "first rainbow coalition." So ubiquitous were maroons that a French scholar called them
"the gangrene of colonial society." And so threatening were they to white hegemony, that Europeans repeatedly dispatched search and destroy armies.

British colonial officials in what is now the United States required Indian Nations to sign treaties promising the return of Black runaways. (There is no record of any fugitives being returned!) To keep Native American villages from becoming an escape hatch, officials offered Indians staggering rewards for runaways. And finally, British traders introduced African slavery to the Five Nations -- the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles. Once these Nations adopted European-style dress, Christianity and African bondage, they were called "The Five Civilized Tribes." But in the age of Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831, southern planters, still frantic about leaks in their labor system, demanded removal of the Five Nations. Presidents Jackson and Van Buren authorized the Army to conduct a Trail of Tears that pushed 60,000 Indians, including black members, to barren lands in Oklahoma. Black and red Cherokees
comforted one other as thousands perished on the painful march.

By then African bondage dominated the social, political and economic life of the Five Nations, and created class and racial divisions that persist today. A minority of Cherokees with white blood owned slaves and claimed a superior status. The majority "pure Indian blood" Cherokees became "inferior." Africans were kept on the lowest rung. However in the 1850s, Heinrich Mollhausen, a noted German artist visited the Indian Territory and described a form of bondage
unlike that practiced on southern plantations:

"These slaves receive from the Indian masters more Christian treatment than among the Christian whites. The traveler may seek in vain for any other difference between master and servant than such as nature had made in the physical characteristics of the races; and the Negro is regarded as a companion and helper, to whom thanks and kindness are due when he exerts himself for the welfare of the household."

In 1860 Cherokees in Oklahoma owned 2511 slaves, and at the outset of the Civil War the Five Nations with 8,000 slaves, pressured by pro-slavery Indian Agents and surrounded on three sides by Confederate forces, agreed to support the Confederacy. However, Opothle Yahola, a wealthy Creek Chief, was able to lead 7,600 people -- including half of the Seminole Nation, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and others, to federal lines in Kansas. By April 1862 the young men of the multicultural exodus had joined the Union Army, fought early
battles and helped free slaves in Missouri.

The Union victory in the Civil War allowed U.S. officials to scrap its Indian treaties. Whites, who forced African slavery on Indians, suddenly demanded they accept freedom. The Seminoles quickly embraced equality, and elected African members to high office, and the other nations were slower. However, in a few years Black Cherokees ran barbershops, blacksmith shops,
general stores and restaurants, and some became ferryboat operators, cotton-gin managers, teachers and postmasters. O.S. Fox, editor of the Cherokee Afro-American was enthusiastic about the Indian Territory:

"The opportunities for our people in that country far surpassed any of the kind possessed by our people in the U.S. . . . It is nonsense for any Afro-American to emigrate to Africa or anywhere else if he can make a living in the Indian Territory."

In 1879 Cherokees of African descent in petitioning for their rights recalled their legacy in these words:

"The Cherokee nation is our country; there we were born and reared; there are our homes made by the sweat or our brows; there are our wives and children, whom we love as dearly as though we were born with red, instead of black skins. There we intend to live and defend our natural rights, as guaranteed by the treaties and laws of the United States, by every legitimate and lawful means."

In 2007 Cherokees of African lineage still have to fight for their natural rights and against the racial bigotry carried across the Atlantic by the invaders.

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William Loren Katz is the author of BLACK INDIANS: A HIDDEN HERITAGE and forty other books. His webwsite is WWW.WILLIAMLKATZ.COM

Taino Gold

By Gerald Singer



Early depiction of Taino panning for gold for the Spaniards

On September 6, 1492 Christopher Columbus set out on a voyage that was to significantly change the history of the world. His goals were to establish trade with the court of the Great Khan in China and to obtain gold, slaves, spices and other valuable commodities.

On Oct. 12, 1492, Columbus landed on the island of Guanahaní in the Bahamian archipelago. He believed that he had reached the outskirts of China. Guanahaní was inhabited by the Lucayo tribe of the Taino People. (Lucayo means dwellers on cays. Our word cay, meaning small
island, comes from the Taino language.) Columbus renamed Guanahaní San Salvador and declared it to be a territory of Spain. The Taino inhabitants who he called Indios (Indians) were declared to be Spanish subjects.

The official interpreter for Columbus' fleet was Luis de Torres who was a converted Jew. Torres was chosen as fleet interpreter because he spoke Hebrew and Arabic, which, for some reason, would enable him to communicate with the Chinese. Apparently Torres was unable to
converse with the Taino in Hebrew so another course of action was deemed necessary.

Several Tainos were kidnapped. One young man named Guaikan was taught to speak Spanish and became the interpreter for the expedition. Guaikan became Cristobol Colón's (Christopher Columbus) adopted Taino son. He took the name Diego Colón and sailed with Columbus on his subsequent voyages. Six of the captives were eventually brought to Spain and baptized with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela acting as godparents. They were later allowed to return home with the exception of one who chose to remain at the Spanish royal court. He died two years later.

Columbus was finally able to communicate his desire to find the source of certain amulets and nose rings worn made from a yellow metal, which the Taino called guanin and the Spanish called oro. The guanin (an alloy made from gold silver and copper) had been obtained through trade with the Lucayan's neighbors who inhabited a large island to the south; today called Cuba.

The Lucayo captives guided Columbus to Cuba and agreed to help him find the gold, which was caracuriso dear to his heart. They followed their traditional canoe route through the Bahamian Cays. Their first stop was an island thought to be today's Rum Cay, where, according to the captives, the inhabitants wore massive golden bracelets and anklets. No gold was found. Columbus wrote "All they said was humbug in order to escape". (Two of the Lucayo prisoners took advantage of a lapse of vigilance and jumped overboard. Fellow Taino who had been following the fleet in their dugout canoe picked them up. The natives paddled away so fast that all attempts to recapture them were in vain.)

The fleet then sailed to what is today Long Island, which Columbus named Fernandina. Here Columbus was more successful. One of the islanders was wearing a gold nose stud, which he referred to as a caracuri. The owner of the caracuri refused Columbus' attempts at trade and ran away.

Columbus then guided the ships to an island the Taino called Saomete. He renamed it Isabela after the Queen, and it is now thought to be Crooked Island. According to his guides there was a
gold mine on this island and a king who wore cloths and had much gold. No mine or king was found, but Columbus was able to trade with the inhabitants, exchanging trinkets for gold caracuri.

From Saomete (Isabela) the fleet sailed on to Cuba. A return trip to the Bahamian Island of Great Inagua called Babeque by the Taino was attempted after Columbus learned from the Taino of Cuba that on Babeque the natives "gathered gold on the beach by candles at night,
and then made bars of it with a hammer". Headwinds forced Columbus to give up the voyage, but Martín Alonzo Pinzón, captain of the Pinta was successful. No gold was found on the beaches of that island; not at night, nor at any other time.

In a letter at least partly intended to solicit financial support from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela, Columbus wrote: "…Finally, to compress into few words the entire summary of my voyage and speedy return, and of the advantages derivable therefrom, I promise, that
with a little assistance afforded me by our most invincible sovereigns, I will procure them as much gold as they need, as great a quantity of spices, of cotton, and of mastic and as many men for the service of the navy as their Majesties may require. I promise also rhubarb and other sorts of drugs, which I am persuaded the men whom I have left ... have found already and will continue to find…" It is interesting to note that only one report of a potential gold producing area was actually verified on the first voyage. The other riches promised were even more disappointing.

The spice that Columbus refers to in his letter was Canella alba, a plant that smells like cinnamon but is not useful as a spice. The mastic mentioned in the letter turned out to be the sap of the turpentine tree and not the valuable resin of the gum mastic tree.

The prospective slaves for service in the navy had such a low survival rate that the few survivors were returned to their island homes as an act of mercy by the crown. The rhubarb that was supposed to have been found was in fact not rhubarb at all but a plant known
now as false rhubarb. The promise of drugs probably refers to the discovery of an abundance of what was thought to be the medicinal plant aloe, but which was in reality the relatively worthless, century plant. Another worthless item that Columbus brought back to Spain as evidence of the riches that could be exploited from the continuance of his adventures was the unpleasant-tasting fruit of the icaco, which he believed to be the coconut mentioned in the
writings of Marco Polo.

Notwithstanding these inconsistencies, Columbus was successful in obtaining the desired financial support for his second voyage in which he was instructed by the crown to establish gold mines, install settlers, develop trade with the Tainos, and convert them to Christianity.

Marginally productive gold mines were eventually discovered in Hispaniola and later in Puerto Rico and Cuba. At first it was Spanish settlers who panned for gold in the rivers and worked the
newly discovered mines, but the combination of disappointing yields, harsh working conditions and high mortality rates quickly led to the abandonment of this activity by the Spaniards.

The task of gold mining was then given to enslaved Tainos. Most died from disease brought on by unsanitary conditions, overwork and lack of resistance to European illnesses. Countless others succumbed to famine that resulted when the Taino were not given sufficient time
to provide for their own sustenance. The chronicler, Las Casas, reported that only ten percent survived after three months of service and that there was a constant shortage of workers. As a
result inhabitants of other Caribbean islands were captured and enslaved. The mines in Hispaniola became depleted in the 1520's and those of Puerto Rico and Cuba became exhausted within the following decade.

The Taino cacique Guacanagari, who befriended Columbus and who was later sold into slavery by his "friend" twice sent Columbus facemasks with nose, tongue and ears made of gold.

Masks traditionally have spiritual significance. Was Guacanagari trying to make a statement about the true nature of Columbus's character?

Article Source: stjohnbeachguide.com

UCTP Taino News Moderator's Note: The above information is presented for educational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed within "Taino Gold" by Gerald Singer are not necessarily those of The Voice of the Taino People News Journal or the United Confederation of Taino People.