This
paper was written in 2007 with the help of a 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.
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.
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.
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.
[i] Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: A story of an
Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (California: University of
California Press, 2005), 3.
[ii][ii] Handbook on Native Americans, ed. Raymond
D. Fogelson, vol. 14th,Cherokee in the East, (Washington:
Smithsonian Institute, 2006),341-342
[iii] The first conversation with
my Father’s sister; “Hello Aunt .., this is Heather, your Brother….. daughter.”
“Hello
Baby” a hoarse and gentle southern voice replied back.
“Aunt … I was wondering about my family
history and wanted to know more.”
“How
old are you baby?”
“21”
“I
suppose that that is old enough. Let me just say that you come from good
people”
“I
have no doubt of that Aunt ….”
“Why
don’t you come down for this Thanksgiving and invite all of your family too.”
“Well,
I’ll ask them. I think that my brother ….
might be interested in coming down with me.”
“Well
we will plan to have you down then.”
“Thanks
Aunt …..”
[iv] George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, America:
A Narrative History 7th ed. (United States of America: W.W.
Norton & Company Inc, 2007),549
[v] Handbook
on Native Americans, ed. Raymond D. Fogelson, vol. 14th,Cherokee
in the East, (Washington: Smithsonian Institute, 2006),341-342[ there may be
historical reasons for the structure of the house that my
Great-Great Grandmother built and the garden that she attended to. She also built her own home, which was found in literature as well. “In many respects, the shapes and spatial arrangement of household clusters mirrored the large ceremonial center, which in turned served as a microcosm of the culturally constituted Cherokee universe.” . I intend to examine the property more closely to see if there is any historical resemblance to structures described in this text]341
Great-Great Grandmother built and the garden that she attended to. She also built her own home, which was found in literature as well. “In many respects, the shapes and spatial arrangement of household clusters mirrored the large ceremonial center, which in turned served as a microcosm of the culturally constituted Cherokee universe.” . I intend to examine the property more closely to see if there is any historical resemblance to structures described in this text]341
[vi] Tony Mack McClure, Cherokee Proud: A Guide for Tracing and
Honoring Your Cherokee Ancestors. (Somerville,
TN: Chunannee Books, 1999)
5. Ron
Welburn, Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black experience in North
America, ed. James F. Brooks (United States of America: University of
Nebraska, 2002),292-293.
[viii] Paul R. Spickard.
Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in the
Twentieth-Century America. (Madison,
WI: The University of Wisconsin Press 1989)329-339.
[ix] Paul R. Spickard.
Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in the
Twentieth-Century America. (Madison,
WI: The University of Wisconsin Press 1989)329-339.
[x] Sharon Holland,. Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds
The African Diaspra in Indian Country, ed.Tiya Miles and Sharon Holland
(United States of America: Duke University Press, 2006),xi.
[xi] Sharon Holland,. Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds
The African Diaspra in Indian Country, ed.Tiya Miles and Sharon Holland
(United States of America: Duke University Press, 2006),xiCheck the page
number.
s
[xii] “Black Indians: An American Story Narrated by James
Earl Jones”, Circle of Life Series, produced by Steven R. Heape, Directed by
Cip /Richie, Screenwriter is Daniel Blake Smith, Rich-Heap Films, Inc, a Native
American Owned Corporation, 60 minutes,2000,DVD.
[xiii] Katz, William Loren. A Hidden Heritage: Black Indians. (New
York, NY: Simon Pluse1986).
[xiv] Tiya Miles, Ties
That Bind: A story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom
(California: University of California Press, 2005),
[xv] Vin Deloria, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, The
Nations Within; The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. (Untied
States of America: University of Texas Press, 1998) ,2
[xvi] Deloria and Lytle, 3-4
[xvii] Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extiction (Chapel
Hill North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 4
.
[xviii] [xviii]
George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, 538.
[xix] Ron Welburn, Confounding the Color Line: The
Indian-Black experience in North America, ed. James F. Brooks (United
States of America: University of Nebraska, 2002),292-293.
[xx] State of California Certification of Vital Record
County of Los Angeles Registrar-recorder/county clerk. (0190-028805)
[xxi] State of Tennessee Office of Vital Records Tennessee
Department of Health Certificate of Death, (92 046473)
[xxii] www.Rootsweb.com
scroll down to Social Security Death Index
[xxiii] Treasury Department Internal Revenue Service Form
SS-5 U.S. Social Security Act Application for Account Number (4 different
applications for 4 relatives)
[xxiv] Ancestry.com Federal Census information
[xxv] Miles, Ties That Bind, 134-143
[xxvi] Bob Blankenship. Cherokee
Roots: Eastern Cherokee Rolls. Volume I.
(Cherokee NC: Bob Blankenship 1992).
[xxvii] Eastern Cherokees application of Amanda Fuqua and 3
children Residence of Croawford Tenn.
Action Reject no. 39898-9
[xxviii] www.usetinc.org
United South and Eastern Tribes association
[xxix] Nativeweb.org, Angila Y Walton Raji
[xxx] Sharon Holland, Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds
The African Diaspra in Indian Country, ed. Tiya Miles and Sharon Holland
(United States of America: Duke University Press, 2006)
[xxxi] Tiya Miles, Ties
That Bind: A story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom
(California: University of California Press, 2005),
