Cartoon depiction of slavery in the Southern United States
The history of slavery in Oklahoma began in the 1830s with the five Native American nations in the area: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.[1] Slavery within these Native American nations began simply by placing a lower status on them than their master. The slavery in these tribes varied in style, being specifically different from American slavery. Slavery in the area continued to grow for many years, even throughout the entirety of the Civil War. The growth was significant, slaves making up a portion of the population in the new Indian territory.[2] Slavery ended in the Oklahoma area with the completion of the Civil War. Treaties were made with the nations regarding citizenship and slavery for African Americans. The repercussions of slavery that followed greatly affected the state, with prominent racial issues.
In 1830 the Indian Removal Act forced southern Indian nations out of their land and into new territories further west, the treaty stated that the options were to give up the land and move to the west or become citizens to the state.[3] This was the reason for the movement of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole to the land which would one day become Oklahoma. With these nations moving to the west, they brought with them black people, including slaves. This was the beginning of slavery in the land of Oklahoma. When the Cherokees were relocating it was estimated that ten to fifteen percent of the nation were African Americans. This nation in particular brought not slaves, but freed blacks. This was one of the main reasons that they were forced out of their previous land. The nation had become a safe space for slaves to run away to and slave owners wanted to diminish that possibility for slaves in the south.[4] With the forced removal of the five nations into the land of Oklahoma throughout the course of time, slavery began and progressed in the Indian territory.[5] Specifically, in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, slavery and the ownership of black people became common. Beginning in Mississippi, both nations became very familiar with the idea of slavery. Following the Indian Removal Act those nations brought slavery into the Indian territory that became Oklahoma. As time continued, both nations would buy and sell slaves through other slave owners and slave traders.[1]
Overview
Native Americans had long taken other people as prisoners in a form called captive-taking. They would replace a lost servant or family member with another to fulfill the sexual or labor needs.[6] With the Creek Indians, slaves were treated almost as prisoners of war but through time and hard work, could elevate their status in society and become part of the family that owned them. As European influence strengthened, Native Americans joined the slave trade and became owners of black slaves themselves. If a Native woman married an African man, him and their children would be free of servitude, and could rise in the ranks of the community. After the American Revolution, Native Americans signed the Treaty of Holston in 1791, which had the Cherokee adopt a sedentary and farming-based life in which the United States would provide the basics for them. These basics included slaves for manual labor, and a majority of Euro-Cherokee individuals used them. Though some pure-blooded Cherokee members held slaves, a majority of slaveholders were of European descent, as they were taught the benefits of slavery from their family. For decades, these slaves provided labor, relations, and translation to settlers, becoming a part of Indian culture and history. Because slaves mostly did the work that women did, they were looked down on as inferiors in some tribes. The reason for the switch from traditional captive-taking to chattel slavery is disputed, but many believe it was on the basis of assimilation. Assimilation occurred either from government force or in an effort to prevent removal. Tribes became "westernized" as Europeans and American settlers moved through and tribal leaders of mixed race rose to power. In 2017, a federal court ruling ensured that African Americans who were descendants of those owned by the Cherokee were entitled to tribal citizenship and the rights thereof.
On the Joseph Vann plantation in 1842, slaves locked their masters in their homes and stole supplies. The escaping Cherokee slaves met Creek slaves and headed to Mexico, where slavery was illegal. The group of 35 runaways were eventually caught or executed by a Cherokee-ordered militia.[7]
Civil War
The first Confiscation Act was passed August 6, 1861, and declared that the Union could seize property used in the rebellion. Most of this property was slaves. The second corresponding act was passed July 17, 1862, and authorized the seizure of property from traitors, not just the Confederacy. It also stated that slaves captured by the Union would be emancipated . Neither law was fully executed and therefore did not free the slaves living in Oklahoma, as Lincoln was scared the pressure put on southern and border states would cause them to secede, and the emancipation of Confederate slaves could only be applied to Union-occupied areas in the South. The laws did, however, put more emphasis on the slavery aspect of the War, evident in the battles fought in Indian territory to preserve their right to hold slaves.[8]
Cabin Creek was located by the Texas Road on Indian Territory, becoming the site of two Civil War battles. The road was used by both Union and Confederate forces to supply nearby forts. The first battle was between July 1 and 2, 1863, as Confederate troops aimed to seize a wagon train . Union troops waited until the next day to send infantries across the creek, eventually driving out Confederate forces. On the Union side, the First Kansas Colored Infantry was the first black infantry to fight alongside white soldiers in the Civil War. The second battle, occurring September 19, 1864, consisted of Confederate soldiers capturing 300 wagons, surprising them by attacking at night. The First and Second Cherokee regiments, the First and Second Creek regiments, and the Seminole Battalion fought with the Confederacy, ultimately leading to the successful capture of 130 wagons and 740 mules. The Second Battle of Cabin Creek was the last battle in the Civil War fought on Indian Territory.[9]
Reconstruction and post-slavery racism
Negro drinking at "Colored" water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
The end of the Civil War had a different impact on each of the Five Nations on the Indian Territory. As part of a series of treaties, in 1866 the federal government required Indian nations to emancipate their slaves. Not all of the nations immediately banned the practice, and the eventual demise of slavery came slowly. Three of the five nations abolished slavery at the end of the Civil War, the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations did not. Nations that governed themselves did not have the immediate need to get rid of slavery, thus causing those two nations to be much slower to remove slavery. It was not until the following year that both nations joined a treaty to abolish slavery.[1] Changes, specifically in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, came slowly. Even after the emancipation, the masters were violent and harsh to those previously enslaved to them.[2] Many Native Americans and African Americans struggled to find the correct meaning of equality, freedom, and their relation. This led the topic of race to be a constant narrative in the history of Oklahoma. The people continually struggled to understand citizenship.[2] Throughout the time period of reconstruction there were multiple black towns that were formed in the Indian territory. There were more black towns on the territory than anywhere else in the United States. These towns were created to give African Americans the chance to avoid white surveillance and experience freedom within their own communities.[10] The many issues in reconstruction were prominent and led to segregation. Segregation was found specifically in schools in the late 1800s, each county making segregation decisions.
A building on fire during the Tulsa Race Riots, 1921
In the 1910s, Tulsa was the oil capital of Oklahoma, or the world as some claimed.[11] The oil industry caused Greenwood, the African American side of Tulsa, to boom, being coined "Black Wall Street".[12] On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland stepped into an elevator to reach the segregated bathrooms in Drexler Building, and was assisted by Sarah Page, the white female operator.[13] Stepping out of the elevator, Page claimed that 19 year old Rowland assaulted her. Though the police did not charge Rowland, newspapers ran with the rumors, and Rowland faced death. A group gathered outside Tulsa County courthouse jail, with some demanding the man be lynched, and others protecting him. Shots were then fired, with 12 dying. Various shootings and vandalisms occurred through the end of the day, but tensions escalated through the first week of June as machine guns and air bombing was employed, intent on destroying Greenwood. In all, over 1500 homes were burned or looted. After receiving a telegram from Tulsa's mayor, the Red Cross set up residence in Oklahoma, treating Greenwood's citizens as prisoners of war. The Red Cross left Tulsa on December 31, 1921, after months of aid.[12]
1 2 3 Krauthamer, Barbara (2013). Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN978-1-4696-2187-6.
↑ Chang, David A. (2010). The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN978-0-8078-7106-5.
↑ Halliburton Jr., R. (1977). Red Over Black: Black Slavery Among the Cherokee Indians. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
↑ Siddali, Silvana R. (2005). From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861-1862. (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War.). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN978-0807130421.
↑ Rampp, Lary C (1969). "Negro Troop Activity in Indian Territory, 1863-1865". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 47 (1): 531–559.
↑ Baird, W. David and Goble, Danney (2008). Oklahoma: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN978-0-8061-3910-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign independent state. The tribes ceded land they occupied in exchange for land grants in 1803. The concept of an Indian Territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Chickasaw are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as a member of the Muskogean language family. In the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Chickasaw Nation.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminoles. Americans of European descent classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture. Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved African Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the European Americans, before the United States promoted Indian removal of these tribes from the Southeast.
Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.
The Fort Smith Council, also known as the Indian Council, was a series of meetings held at Fort Smith, Arkansas from September 8–21, 1865, that were organized by the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dennis N. Cooley, for Indian tribes east of the Rockies.
The history of Oklahoma refers to the history of the state of Oklahoma and the land that the state now occupies. Areas of Oklahoma east of its panhandle were acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, while the Panhandle was not acquired until the U.S. land acquisitions following the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).
The Cherokee Freedmen controversy was a political and tribal dispute between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen regarding the issue of tribal membership. The controversy had resulted in several legal proceedings between the two parties from the late 20th century to August 2017.
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission, emancipation, or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing.
The Choctaw freedmen are former enslaved African Americans who were emancipated and granted citizenship in the Choctaw Nation after the Civil War, according to the tribe's new peace treaty with the United States. The term also applies to their contemporary descendants.
During the American Civil War, most of what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma was designated as the Indian Territory. It served as an unorganized region that had been set aside specifically for Native American tribes and was occupied mostly by tribes which had been removed from their ancestral lands in the Southeastern United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. As part of the Trans-Mississippi Theater, the Indian Territory was the scene of numerous skirmishes and seven officially recognized battles involving both Native American units allied with the Confederate States of America and Native Americans loyal to the United States government, as well as other Union and Confederate troops.
William Clyde Thompson (1839–1912) was a Texas Choctaw-Chickasaw leader of the Mount Tabor Indian Community in Texas and an officer of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. After moving north to the Chickasaw Nation in 1889, he led an effort to gain enrollment of his family and other Texas Choctaws as Citizens by blood of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory. This was at the time of enrollment for the Final Roll of the Five Civilized Tribes, also known as the Dawes Rolls, which established citizenship in order for the nations to be broken up for white settlement and to allot communal tribal lands to individual Indians. The Choctaw Advisory Board opposed inclusion of the Texas Choctaw as well as the Jena Choctaws in Louisiana, as they had both lived primarily outside of the Choctaw Nation. Thompson's case eventually went to the United States Supreme Court to be decided where he and about 70 other Texas Choctaws who had relocated to Indian Territory ultimately had their status restored as Citizens by Blood in the Choctaw Nation.
The Cherokee in the American Civil War were active in the Trans-Mississippi and Western Theaters. In the east, Confederate Cherokees led by William Holland Thomas hindered Union forces trying to use the Appalachian mountain passes of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Out west, Confederate Cherokee Stand Watie led primarily Native Confederate forces in the Indian Territory, in what is now the state of Oklahoma. The Cherokee partnered with the Confederacy in order to get funds, as well as ultimately full recognition as a sovereign, independent state.
The Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws was a treaty signed on July 12, 1861 between the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Confederate States. At the beginning of the American Civil War, Albert Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, one of the most important being with Cherokee chief John Ross, which was concluded in 1861. The treaty was ratified and proclaimed on December 20, 1861 by the Confederacy. The Choctaw and Chickasaw also duly ratified the treaty.
The Yowani were a historical group of Choctaw people who lived in Texas. Yowani was also the name of a preremoval Choctaw village.
The Choctaw in the American Civil War participated in two major arenas—the Trans-Mississippi and Western Theaters. The Trans-Mississippi had the Choctaw Nation. The Western had the Mississippi Choctaw. The Choctaw Nation had been mostly removed west prior to the War, but the Mississippi Choctaw had remained in the east. Both the Choctaw Nation and the Mississippi Choctaw would ultimately side with the Confederate States of America.
The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation was the largest escape of a group of slaves to occur in the Cherokee Nation, in what was then Indian Territory. The slave revolt started on November 15, 1842, when a group of 20 African-Americans enslaved by the Cherokee escaped and tried to reach Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829. Along their way south, they were joined by 15 slaves escaping from the Creek Nation in Indian Territory.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
An Organic Act is a generic name for a statute used by the United States Congress to describe a territory, in anticipation of being admitted to the Union as a state. Because of Oklahoma's unique history an explanation of the Oklahoma Organic Act needs a historic perspective. In general, the Oklahoma Organic Act may be viewed as one of a series of legislative acts, from the time of Reconstruction, enacted by Congress in preparation for the creation of a united State of Oklahoma. The Organic Act created Oklahoma Territory, and Indian Territory that were Organized incorporated territories of the United States out of the old "unorganized" Indian Territory. The Oklahoma Organic Act was one of several acts whose intent was the assimilation of the tribes in Oklahoma and Indian Territories through the elimination of tribes' communal ownership of property.
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Native American slave ownership refers to the ownership of enslaved Africans and Native Americans by Native Americans from the colonial period to the American Civil War. Waves of European colonization brought enslaved Africans to North America. Following this development many indigenous tribes began to acquire Africans as slaves. Many prominent people from the "Five Civilized Tribes" purchased slaves from their white neighbors and became members of the planter class.
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