This paper
was written in 2007 with the help of a Professor/mentor
The Sovereignty of Racial Identity
Genealogy,
Racial Identity and Sovereignty
Throughout the history of The United
States the dominant society, through its laws and social practices, has sought
to define racial identity precisely, and in “either-or” terms. This has serious
implications for individuals of mixed ancestry, who did not, and do not fit
into conventional racial classifications. Multiracial individuals such as
those with mixed Native American, African American, and European heritage often
struggled against the dominant society’s classification system in a number of different
ways. These actions, or forms of resistance can be understood as
demonstrations of personal agency, or the ability to direct one’s own future,
not to mention that of future generations. Drawing upon genealogical records,
as well as the current, and contentious, literature on persons of mixed African
American and Native American heritage, this paper will explore my own African
American and Cherokee ancestral line in order to shed light on the complexities
of racial identity in the southeast United States. Consequently, this
paper raises a number of controversial questions about identity
formation. For example, who determines racial identity? What
are the implications of self- identification, the practice currently employed
by the United States Census? Conversely, what are the implications when
agencies, governments, and courts determine individual identity? To make
matters more complicated, Native American nations claim sovereign rights over
citizenship. What does this mean? Who has the right to determine
tribal membership? Since historical experiences, forces, and
personalities, influence questions of racial identity, this paper also will
look to the past for clues that determined a Native American’s identity, and
when and where were these decisions made? Finally, and perhaps most
intriguingly given contemporary events, do individuals have the right to
challenge official racial designations?
Most
Important findings, how genealogy meets the history of race
The longing to learn of one’s own
history lies buried in most everyone’s heart. Like many others, my family has
stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. There
are many components in telling a story; experiences, experiences of others,
characters, clues, misconceptions, the full gamut of emotions, intuition,
historical records and academic research, to name a few. Personal
experiences, oral family history and hidden history, contact with family
members, genealogical records will set the stage to examine issues of racial formation
and racial designations explored in academic literature. The necessity of
focusing on a family line to examine larger issues is expressed here, “The
family can thus be read as a barometer for the society, tracing and reflecting
the atmospherics of social life and social change.”[i] I will use oral history of my family,
genealogical records and academic literature in attempts to trace my African
American and Cherokee ancestral line to show the complex nature of racial
formation and how that has affected families’ identities for generations.
I will assert that racial designations are challengeable, taking into
consideration the tumultuous history in the southeast United States in regards
to racial formation specifically of those who are mixed with African American
and Cherokee. Hopefully the information shared in this paper will aid in
healthy discussions, on race, and exclusionary behavior in our current affairs.
My
starting Point
My
family’s oral history stretches as far back five generations, but the few paper
records that I have found do not reflect the fullness of my family’s story,
particularly their racial identity. What I know of my ancestors has
changed as I contacted living relatives, and learned of a racial identity
different from what I had originally known. These differences are reflected in
paper records, and through oral history. This information, contradictory
as it is, has helped me gather up clues and begin to piece them together.
The first source that a person should start with when beginning genealogical
research is gathering oral history from living family members, because you may
be the first person to write it down for future generations.
Genealogists recommend beginning
with oral histories, gathered from living family members, if for no other
reason than capturing memories before they are lost. Genealogists also
suggest starting with one’s self and slowly working back one generation at a
time, particularly when gathering vital information like birth, death, marriage
certificates. Fortunately, I already knew of my Cherokee Great-Great
Grandmother, her Daughter and her two sisters. The first Daughter mentioned had
a Daughter, who is my Grandmother, and her first Husband was my
Grandfather. My Grandmother and Grandfather had five children; my father
is their second oldest child. - Conversations with family members also
revealed different opinions and beliefs regarding racial dynamics that are
common among many families from the American Southeast. To make matters
more complicated, scholarly literature suggests that words like ancestors,
miscegenation, conflict, heartbreak, family bonds, survival, kin, sovereignty,
land ownership, belonging, and redemption, racial formation, and identity are
loaded with meaning, and controversy.
I have been particularly interested
in my Native American heritage, even as I have been frustrated by the absence
of concrete information. My Father spoke of his part-Cherokee
blood, but one of my brother’s recalled that my Dad also claimed descent from
other tribes. I settled on Cherokee partly because my father was from
Tennessee, which lay at the heart of that Cherokee Tribe’s pre-Removal
homeland. My high school textbook contained a paragraph about the “Trail
of Tears” that did not satisfy my thirst for knowing about my past. As a
high school student, I also noticed a picture of a Cherokee woman who resembled
my father. This was my most vivid memory of reading about the Native part
on my past. As a small child this desire to know more of my ancestors
left me feeling bewildered because of the fact that there really was not much
available for me to learn.
I did not have any relatives living near my immediate
family. My mother’s family, from which I
derive my English ancestry) was spread out, and we visited a couple of times
during my childhood. I knew of my Father’s family but had never seen nor met
them. I remember only one picture of my
Father and his Sister when they were small children. Still, I understood that
my Father’s side of the family was Cherokee, Italian and Irish; at least, this
is what my Brothers and I were told. I knew the names of my Great-Great
grandmother, Great Grandmother and her Sisters, Grandmother and Grandfather,
and my Father Brother’s and Sister’s and some of their children, but never met
them.
There were no talks of visits either. I
had many questions for my Father about my Cherokee Great-Great Grandmother. My
father attended to My Great-Great Grandmother’s garden over the period of a few
summers in his early life, he observed some of the ways in which she lived. My
Father said that if someone approached her land unannounced in the night, she
with her “left hand, would shoot first, and then ask, “Who’s there?” Literature
has shown that Cherokee people had gardens.[ii] My Great-Great Grandmother built
her own home and had a garden that my Father helped tend. Even though this
could be true of many other ethnicities at the time, it does imply that her
ways were that of a Native American women, and that extended family recalled
here as such as well. She also had control over the dominion of the household.
She allegedly kicked her husband out of the house for drinking and spending up
all his money. It was not until I was
older that I had a chance to make strong inquires about my father’s people. One
night, during that time when I lived in a friend’s basement, I had a strong
sensation to look at a book that my brother gave me about Native American myths
and legends. As I reread, I suddenly experienced a strong impression to call my
Dad’s sister. Since I already had her phone number due to her calling my Father
a year or so before, I called Aunt in Nashville, and spoke to her for the first
time inquiring of my ancestry.[iii] Aunt affirmed my desire to know of those
before me, and invited us down for Thanksgiving. I proceeded to write her a
letter explaining my desire to learn more about our Native history, but also
whether we had African American heritage as well. I inquired about Black
ancestry largely because of a few life experiences. While studying in Florida,
African American students from the South sometimes grabbed my hair and asked
whether I was “mixed.” I soon learned that this question, repeated many times,
had something to do with the fact that questioners hailed from a region where
people had a longer view of historic events, specifically the
history of “miscegenation.” The way in which they asked this question lead me to
believe that they had a deeper understanding of something that was unknown to
me. History indicates that
miscegenation took place, but under forced conditions of rape between slave
owners and slaves. “Sometimes a White
master or overseer would rape a woman in the fields or cabins.”[iv] Women were
often more vulnerable to objectification by men. This left women, particularly
women of color alone, or with someone other that the biological father raising
the children on their own, with no involvement/support from the men that had
impregnated them. Numerous academic writings indicate this.
When Thanksgiving came around my brother and I drove down to Nashville.
When Aunt opened the door, I saw my Father in female form:
shorter, smaller and more feminine. This Southern Black woman invited us into a
house very similar to the ranch style home I grew up in. Later, I discovered
that my Father’s other Siblings also chose similar houses.[v] Whether by mere
availability or affinity. New family members and new, really just old culture,
entered into my life. Aunt’s house had a lot of African American Art and photos
of family I had never met, even though some names were familiar. We met my
first male Cousin that night, and most of his Sisters during the remainder of
the trip.
Since that time, I have met more relatives on my Father’s side of the family
and am blessed to know strong, African American women, who identify as such,
that are my Kin. I have been amazed over our rich history, and struck by the
realization that this history is more common than many American’s may or may
not appreciate, or do not yet know that their children may appreciate.
In my letter to my Aunt, I expressed a desire to know anything about our
ancestry. Sitting at her kitchen table, during that first visit, she offered
what she knew, hand written on a torn yellow sheet of paper. She said that my
great-great grand mother was Cherokee, Black and White. This information
differed from my father’s version, which was that she was a full-blooded Native
American. According to our oral history, a Jewish man impregnated my Great
Grandmother, who was the first daughter of my Great Great-grandmother that I
had previously mentioned, while she was living and working for his family in
Canada. On the way to Nashville, she delivered the baby along the railroad in
Marion, Illinois, who turned out to be my Dad’s Mother. My Great-Great
grandmother, raised the baby with the help of my Great Aunt.
The baby born along the railroad tracks in Southern Illinois was my
Grandmother. She married a man whose mother was impregnated by an Irishman. My
Great-Grandmother on my father’s father’s side, was also a Black Indian woman,
who married a man from whom my Sir name originates. This came as some surprise
to me, and could have generated animosity toward my parents for withholding
family information. But I had long since forgiven my parents, and myself, for
mistakes in the past. I also understood that my father grew up a “colored man”
in the South before the civil rights movement. I cannot begin to fathom what
that must have been like. This meant that genealogical research has actually
strengthened my identity, and motivated this quest. I have been blessed to meet
people who have encouraged me to seek the truth, and even by those who have not
been so encouraging, through whom I have come to value. I have been encouraged
to show kindness toward elders[vi], and an appreciation for America’s complex
history with race. Academic literature provides context for political,
historical and social issues that shaped my experiences. I have found clues to
the reason behind the motivation of my parent’s decision making withholding our
African American and Jewish ancestry.
In Confounding the Color Line, Welburn argues that “most of us living on the
Indian-Negro color line grew up with mixed signals and coded information. Our
elders had learned to protect us from the ridicule and abuse they had
experienced as Indians or from which their parents had sheltered them. They
instilled in us the sense that we are “different” form our peers; but that we
were Indian or of Native descent, when it was raised, was a covert issue. Why
we should live such a covert identity was seldom explained. At best, in some
families, we were to view ourselves as “Americans” or as “Colored people,”
which actually provided an inclusive ring for non-Indians and a social safety
valve.”[vii] This literature reference is speaking largely about a mixed blood
author with in the boundary lines of a “colored community”. Persons who were
mixed and lived in a “white” community and people who were mixed within an
“Indian” community felt this tension.
In past decades, light-skinned persons of mixed ancestry sometimes “passed’
into dominant white society.[viii] Passing was said to be commonplace (although
difficult to measure precisely), at least until the 1960s when “black pride”
movements denounced the practice as an exercise of self-denial that divided the
African American community along different hues of skin color.[ix] This act of
unification may have intentionally or unintentionally left out Native American
Ancestry from African American identity. Paradoxically, movements promoting
racial pride contained no space for multiracial persons to embrace their full
ethnicity within different communities.
Passing might move in multiple directions. Literature scholar Sharon Holland a
former University of Illinois at Chicago Professor, described a part of her own
family history in a recently published text where Holland is recalling a
conversation a tribal records administrator from the Narragansett Nation.
According to Holland “She then asked me about my family, and I told her about
my grandmother’s secret and her revelation to me: that my grandfather’s mother
was an “Indian from Alabama” and that he left Georgia one day and passed for
black for the remainder of his life.”[x] The author explains her family story
while during research in New England. As she spoke with this understanding
women from the Narragansett Tribe she continued her experience, “Across decades
and generations, we silently acknowledged our losses.” [xi] On the one hand, if
a multiracial person was of “Negro blood,” he or she had to hide this fact for
fear of enslavement and/or discrimination. On the other hand, if a multiracial
person was of Native descent, he or she had to hide this fact to escape Indian
removal and/or discrimination, and sometimes enslavement. Often, hiding
multiracial identity was a method of avoiding discriminatory practices and
ultimately a means of survival.
Another reason why racial designations are challengeable would be the history
of African American and Native American relations since contact with Europeans
and the slave trade for hundreds of years there were relationships among these
two groups.[xii] Because of the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans
and the common foes of colonialism, these two groups joined forces in an act of
resistance.[xiii] Some of the first contacts may have been in bondage and later
making contact as slaves running away and living within a native community
beyond the boundaries of new colonies and states, as and as kin. In the 1800’s
is where things really got messy. Slave trade became profitable for the elite group
of Cherokee because of colonial influences internally and externally. Leaders
in the Cherokee Nations were of mixed ancestry, particular mixed European.
Chief John Ross was and eighth Cherokee and was a slave owner. Literature is
somewhat conflicting on Ross because in some text he did not take sides with
the minority who were for slave trade and ownership, and took sides with those
of his tribe who were not for slave owner ship nor were they for relocating,
yet Ross was a slave owner himself. “Well to do” Cherokees similar to Ross in
their mixed ancestry, took positions of Leadership and changed the dynamics of
Cherokee laws and customs.[xiv] Cherokees were forbidden to marry Blacks, or
people of slave ancestry. Even though at this point in time, there in the
Cherokee nation existed individuals who had parentage of both. This is
controversial to some because of the lack of documentation.
Also, many Cherokees did not pay mind to laws such as these that separated
family and ancient customs of kinship. Often, poor Afro Cherokees were
marginalized and were not in the center of Cherokee life but occupied the space
on the boarders of towns and villages. The lives of these individuals would be
harder to track. Even harder today because many individuals avoided removal
during the 1830’s and did not register upon any roll. Because of this history
it is imperative that racial designations should are challengeable. “The places
where blacks and Cherokees had raised families together were now behind the
state live s of Georgian and Tennessee. In a new landscaped devoid of embedded
mutual memories, the people were separated by a cavernous divide of race and
caste”.[1] The author expresses that a division amongst Cherokees and blacks
began to widen. This widening of the relationship is due largely to the
influences of colonialism that penetrated Cherokee society that should be
refutable. No one has the right to cut another person off from their ancestry.
Particularly Cherokees with thousands of years of Kinship bonds and African
Americans who were stripped from the content of origin, transplanted, and
forced to procreate, and live upon land that was at first foreign to them.
In the Article, “Analysis of Blood Politics, Racial
Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trial and Tribulations of
the Cherokee Freedmen,” Circe Sturm explores how racial ideologies have
filtered from the national to the local level, where they have been
internalized, manipulated, and resisted in different ways by Cherokee citizens
and Cherokee freedmen. She also argues that as a result of this continuing
dialectic between the national and the local, many Cherokees express
“contradictory consciousness.” This means that while they resent discrimination
on the basis of race they still use racially hegemonic concepts to legitimize
their social identities and police their political boundaries. Today, this
contradictory consciousness is illustrated by discrimination, amongst some
Cherokees, toward African ancestry, particularly when it comes to eligibility
for tribal benefits.
Strum tries to answer why the Cherokee Freedman experience is not widely known
or documented. The author states that the Cherokee people have a long history
of excluding multiracial individuals of Cherokee and African ancestry, who are
treated in different ways from multiracial individuals with Cherokee and
European ancestry. This is reflected in policy, wherein the Dawes Rolls, the
critical baseline for Cherokee citizenship, formalized distinctions between “Cherokee
by blood.” According to the Dawes Rolls, even though many Cherokee Freedmen
were blood descendants of Cherokee people, they were categorized as Cherokee
Freedman on the basis of appearance. Many others chose not to register at all.
The author alludes to the fact that the Dawes Act, which was designed to
undermine tribalism and in turn eroded some of the sovereignty of Indian
Nations.
The Dawes rolls, which later influenced construction of Cherokee citizenship
specifically west of the Mississippi, labeled Cherokees as Intermarried,
Freedman, or Cherokee by blood. The Cherokee Nation later the Dawes rolls as a
basis of citizenship. Cherokee Freedman; even though this labeling did not
accurately reflect individuals on rolls was used by the Cherokee Nations as a
separator between who is in and who is out of citizenship. The crux of the
article is a great example of Native American sovereignty. Another historical
fact that thickens the controversy is that a Government Building in Texas that
housed data on persons of mixed ancestry conveniently burned down at a time
where proving lineage would have proven land ownership rights and tribal
registry, and it would have been questionable if those records would have been
accurate, due to historical “pencil genocide”
The right to define citizenship is a sovereign right of Native Nations. In The
Nations Within: The Past and future of American Indian Sovereignty, Vine
Deloria Jr. a benchmark Native Scholar, states that “The United States, after
successfully revolting against the King of England, claimed to inherit Great
Britain’s right to buy the lands of the Indians, and this doctrine, modified to
fit the internal, domestic law of the United States, has been the primary
conceptual focus for all subsequent federal Indian law. Every legal doctrine
that today separates and distinguishes American Indians from other Americans
traces its conceptual roots back to the Doctrine of Discovery and the subsequent
moral and legal rights and responsibilities of the United States with respect
to Indians.”[xv] Deloria is explaining the origins of sovereignty of Native
Nations within the United States. He goes on to state that, with the help of
the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 “which gives all Indians born within the
territorial limits of the United States full citizenship but adds that such
status does not infringe upon the rights to tribal and other property that
Indians enjoy as members of their tribes. A dual citizenship exists here, which
is not to be hindered in either respect: Indians are not to lose civil rights
because of their status as members of a tribe, and members of a tribe are not
to be denied their tribal rights because of their American citizenship.”[xvi]
Deloria continues to state the historical events of federal law in regards to
Native Nations. Considering a duel citizenship that protects civil rights but
honors ancient laws of Native Nations would therefore be inclusive to
Afro-Cherokee people. Trouble stirs with this line of reasoning though.
Historically, it would have not been advantageous for tribes applying for
federal recognition to admit individuals who descended from slaves. This would
have been a disqualifier for individuals. So in a sense, Native Tribes like the
different Cherokee Bands, in denying kinship with African Americans sought
survival particularly survival of tribal sovereignty.
Polices, social attitudes and the aftermath of slavery have excluded African
Americans since the birth of the U.S. In contrary, Indian policies have tied to
absorb indigenous people into the population. Expressing a Jeffersonian
thought, “ The Indian need not be destroyed; in fact, most involved in
government Indian affairs, and all those privately interested in the native’s
welfare, agreed that the white man had a moral obligation to himself and to his
posterity to see that the tribesman survived. If the Indian were transformed if
he adopted civilization and lived like a white man, his savage ways would
disappear, and he would endure to become a useful member of the white man’s
world.”[xvii] To the contrary, African Americas have historically been excluded
from citizenship, largely because a nineteenth century notion that they were
not fully human and were used as property. “One should not take at face value
the legendary indifference of aristocratic planters to profits. More often that
not the successful planter was bent on maximizing profits. While the
profitability of slavery has been a long-standing subject of controversy, in
recent years economic historians have concluded that slaves on the average
supplied about a 10 percent annual return on their cost. At the time that was
an enticing profit margin, just as it is now. By a strictly economic
calculation, slave and land on which cotton could be grown were the most
profitable investments available in the antebellum South.”[xviii]
An inalienable right of any person should be to identify themselves as in
kinship with their ancestors. Shouldn’t Afro-Cherokees have rights to any
agreement of treaties with the federal government as much as Euro-Cherokees
whether or not their brothers and sisters, distant cousins or other people
within the Cherokee Nation or the United States government believe they belong
or not, but issues of sovereignty and reparation, historical colonialism and
racism complicate matters, especially for those who fall in between strict
racial identities. It is a very saddening affair that there is such
discrimination and racial injustice between and towards Native Americans and
African Americans peoples, especially when one considers the tumultuous history
of racial discrimination in the Southeast United States. The struggle of
Cherokee Freedman goes on in Oklahoma today. Unfortunately dissention amongst
Native Americans does not stop there. There are Natives from the reservation,
those from the city, those who are more traditional, and those who take on more
modern values that don’t necessarily get along with one another. There has
always been tension with those who are from mixed racial descent compared with
those who are full blooded, or fully documented as “authentic” within a certain
time period. In the 1970’s for example, the second Wounded Knee, in part was
due to tensions between mixed bloods and full bloods.
Welburn offers another vantage point of racial tensions. According to. “ I
encountered people like my self who had been confused by the Native and Black
color live and had misread its signals, experiencing its ridicule and its
embarrassing ignorance, and who had been advised by their families to “forget
about it.” Their families ‘ refusal to engage Indian identity except through
coded language, and their silence, translated to a “colored” identity, which in
the argot of race relations meant African ancestry.”[xix] Confusion and ill
feelings were a human response to the racism felt by persons of mixed heritage.
I received methodology on genealogical research through a workshop that I
attended at the Newberry Library in the Spring of 2007. It is recommended to
gather as much information as possible with each generation starting with ones
self, then work back wards. Genealogists recommend gathering vital records
like, birth and death, and marriage certificates. I gathered my information,
and then my parents and I ordered records on my Grandparents. Death
certificates on my Grandparents came in but some of the birth and marriage
certificates on microfilm are on back order through the Mormon Church.[xx][xxi]
On my Grandmother death certificate he father that is listed as a man, which is
actually her Grandfather. Oral family history would explain this because my
Grandmother was raise by her Grandmother, who is my Great-Great Grandmother.
Information that could be gathered on records such as these would be race
categories and parentage information. The death records indicate that my
grandparents are Negro and Black, these documents would not tell the whole
story if one compared them to my families’ oral history, and the academic
literature.
I had to ask my Father for help in obtaining a death certificate for his
Father. I was very hesitant to do this because at the start of my research in
2003, I asked him if I could record our conversation about my Great-Great
Grandmother. He declined my request. I felt as though I started to pry into a
past that was not ready to be revealed. I had read warned of this sort of
reaction. Genealogy experts suggest that elders often resist inquiries
regarding painful episodes. Much to my surprise my father agreed to help and we
ordered my Grandfather’s Death certificate and faxed down my father’s drivers
license to Nashville. I await the arrival of these documents as well.
Another source for material is the Social Security Death Index. This is
available through the Administration for anyone who passed after 1962. I was
able to order this information through rootsweb.com.[xxii] I ordered
information and my Grandparents and my Great Grandmother and her Sister.[xxiii]
This information is further confirmed parentage for my great grandmother. My
Great-Great Grandparents were the parents of my Great Grandmother. The Social
Security Death Index shows the original application for a social security
number in the applicant’s handwriting. The application on my Grandmother
confirms that her mother is my Great Grandmother, which we knew by our oral
history. On my Great Grandmother, application it showed that she worked for the
Works Progress Administration. This also revealed my Great Grandmother‘s maiden
name on my Father’s Father’s side. This is a lead for information in the
future.
Also, another great source of information is census records that can be
accessed through Ancestry.com.[xxiv] Through Ancestry.com, and Federal census
books at the Newberry, I was able to locate my predecessors on the census of
1870 and 1880 as well as 1900 and 1930, The 1930 census shows that my newly
weds grandparents were living with my Great-Great Grandmother. Going backward,
the 1900 census shows my Great-Great Grandmother and my Great-Great
Grandfather, with their four children one of which is my Great Grandmother. The
1870 census shows My Great-Great Grandfather, with his siblings and their
Mother. who may be my Great-Great-Great Grandmother. This document shows that
she was born in Virginia, and that the father of her children, who is not
present, was born in Tennessee. This is generation that we don’t have any oral family
history on. The race category is listing my family in 1870 as black with would
concur with the literature that I found on multi racial persons. The 1880 and
1870 census on parents my Great-Great Grandmother is conflicting. On the 1870
census she, is listed at age 3 with parents particular parents, but in 1880 she
is listed at age 13 with another set of parents. This is also another
generation that we don’t have any oral family history on, in which my family is
listed as Black according to census information.
A limitation to genealogical research would be revealed at this point in my
work. Because I have nothing yet to confirm parent information my Great-Great
Grandparents, I shouldn’t go back any further. There is an enormous amount of
information to look through, so narrowing the search is the harder part. I was
hoping that my Great-Great Grandparents marriage certificate would have
revealed their parentage but it did not. I will have to go back to reference
materials on methodology and search for more confirming information.
Another limitation in genealogical research for persons of mixed ancestry would
be the fact that genealogical methodology as largely been developed form a
Northern European background, with guidelines that are strict concerning
factual evidence. So therefore, a person with mixed ancestry will most likely
but up against “pencil genocide”, where accurate records are not kept of mixed
individuals, or racial ideology determines what is written down on paper. At
one point in history, records of mixed persons were sent to a Government
building in Texas, which happened to burn down This could have possibly proven
more thoroughly Native American, African American and Caucasian ancestry of
mixed persons, but with known methods racism at the time, this may have
inaccurate if the records were even preserved.
A great example of pencil genocide is found in Tiya Miles book, Ties that Bind.
In it, she reveals that one of the daughters of the two main characters,
Shoeboots, a full blooded Cherokee, and his wife, Doll a former African
American Slave, is in one record sold into slavery. After her father’s death
and in order to justify this action, Georgia’s records indicate her as mulatto.
Later, after she had been freed with the help of kinship ties to the Cherokee
community, during Indian removals she is considering Cherokee when the State of
Georgia is taking her land away.[xxv]
There is a collection of works that lists the government rolls of registered
Cherokees throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work
includes the famous Dawes rolls, which are used today by the Cherokee Nation
(Western Band), to determine if a person is of Cherokee descent. Many people on
all of the rolls that were created during this time period did not officially
become apart of the rolls.[xxvi] The government-imposed rolls discriminated
between people who were Cherokee by blood, Cherokee Freedman, and Cherokee by
marriage. A Cherokee Freedman was considered a former slave who was set free
within the Cherokee Nation. Due to the racial discrimination of the time, if a
person appeared to have traits of African descent or admitted to have a “drop”
of African-American blood her or she was labeled as Cherokee Freedman and
sometimes rejected from tribal enrollment altogether.
An example of where a racial ideology effects record keeping can be found in
the application for the Miller Guion rolls. The census rolls that I gathered at
the Tennessee National archives in 2003, lists a question a census interviewer
asks evokes an answer by one Amanda F. Fuqua who was rejected from a roll and
of no known relation to my family, answered a question in # 9 in a application
number 39898, wrote out referring to her ancestors “No they were not slaves”
showing that for whatever be the reason, the question of African American Blood
had to be distinguished when classifying rolls for Eastern band Cherokee decedents.[xxvii]
So far my relatives are listed as Black under race, according to the federal
census information posted by Ancestry.com. Another interesting web site that I
have come across has been www.usetinc.org[xxviii], which is the United
South and Eastern Tribes association. On that web site under genealogy it
states that during the late 1800’s native living with Whites were listed as
white and Natives living with Blacks were listed as Black. This is the first time
that I have read this statement, but not the first time I have heard this
orally. I found this the Government Archives web site with the help of a
staffer at the Newberry, John Aubry an expert on Native American records at the
Newberry. Also on another great resource that I have found on the Internet has
been Nativeweb.org, which has linked me to a site addressing African American
and Native American Ancestry. Angila Y Walton Raji put this site together an
African American and Native American women out of Indian Territory in
Oklahoma.[xxix]
Networking and exploring the Newberry Library in Chicago have both been very
helpful in doing genealogical research. Making new friends who understand your
desire to find your ancestors is invaluable. Having a building like the
Newberry gives you awesome access to information that you didn’t even know was
there. After a seminar one evening a few of us talked about people that you
meet along life’s journey, How people and places open up to you when you are on
your way. This has been the experience in my life when I have changed and moved
into a more healthy direction. In literature, encounters like this are not
isolated. “Our dinner that night was magical: good weather, good food, good
talk. William (Bill) Yellow Robe and I smoked and talked at length about
African and Indian connections, about our families and the persistence of
racism at home and abroad.” Sharon Holland writes this in her experience of
searching for information on a Nargansett and African American women.[xxx]
Racial Identity has been under the influence of many different factions through
out American history. New persons were created in the Americas as Native
American, African American and European Americans intermingled (under a number
of different circumstances) and created off spring. Particularly, relations
with Native, and African Americans began when contact with European Americans
began. English rule, though benefiting from the labor and land of others did
want the union of persons of color because of a fear, these two groups, would
retaliate from their subjugated status. In records, Indians and Africans or
mixes of any persons with darker complexions, particularly people of African
and Indian decent where not white. Therefore, terms like Negro, colored,
mulatto maybe encompassing of individuals of mixed ancestry, Euro-Native,
Afro-Native, Afro-Euro-Native, etc. These terms referred to people who labored
side-by-side, as indentured servants, slaves, and free people, runaways,
survivors, and as family. Although some would object to this statement, I have
found in my oral history and academic research that this statement reflects a
more accurate history other than a biracial category.
What are the implications of self-identification? At different time periods,
the implications would have been very different. The identity of “mixed blood”,
“Black Indians”, “multiracial”, Afro Cherokee, people was sometimes hidden in
the Southeastern part of the United States between the eighteenth and twentieth
centuries. On one hand, if a multiracial person was of Native descent, he or
she had to hide this fact to escape Indian removal and/or discrimination, and
sometimes enslavement. On the other hand, if a multiracial person was of “Negro
blood,” he or she had to hide this fact for fear of enslavement and/or
discrimination. In all cases, the hiding of multiracial identity was a method
of avoiding discriminatory practices and ultimately a means of survival.
What are the implications when agencies, governments, and
courts determine individual identity? The historical events enamored with
racism with in the Cherokee Nation are astounding. African Americans and
Cherokees had hundreds of years of interaction. But due to the effects of
colonialism in the 1800s things really got ugly, People in the tribe, leaders
mixed white ancestry, where educated Colonial institutions. They came back to
the Cherokee Nation and changed political structures. They wrote into law
blatantly racial rulings that excluded people of African decent from serving in
the Cherokee Nation in official positions, and outlawing intermarriage, and
citizenship.[xxxi] At the same time wrote into law opportunities for mixed
bloods of white ancestry to be apart of the nation. These changes disrupted
matriarchal systems and those of kinship and family.
Like wise, Census takers or those who made the
rules for census takers, categorized individuals into boxes based on what the
household appeared to be. So if a native person, or mixed blood was living with
a family that looked mostly black that is what would be recorded. Like wise, if
the family appeared white the same thing happened. My assertion at the
beginning of the paper as a result of my research this questions is yes, we
should challenge racial designations, for our people it is intertwined with
identity.
In the style of psychology paper, I would be strongly interested in the
psychological effect of historical genocide in the Native American and African
American communities, and everywhere else in between. Also, I believe a study
like this one could help to examine immigration laws and the effects that laws
have on mixed status families, such as children born in the U.S. with parents
undocumented.
