A History

Long Forgotten
Intersections of Race in Early America
By Arwin D. Smallwood

F
or centuries America has attempted to simplify discussions of race
into three broad categories: Native American, African American,
and white. But a significant number of Americans have never
seen themselves as belonging to only one race. They embrace
and celebrate an identity that blends these cultures. In the 2010 U.S.
Census, over nine million people identified themselves as multiracial—
the majority sharing some combination of Native-American, African-
American, or Caucasian heritage.

It is a historical fact that millions of Americans that identify themselves

as “black” or “white” have some Native American ancestry. Native
Americans, too, have intermixed—between tribal nations and with other
races—resulting in a diverse lineage. We are a nation of mixed peoples
and have been for hundreds of years. This truth is little known and
little accepted, both socially and politically. For example, many Native
American tribes are litigating who, and who is not, a member—who
may receive tribal services or vote in tribal elections. This is just one of
many issues of race relations our country has dealt with, despite our pride
in “equality for all.” The stakes can be high and dialogue is necessary.
Understanding our history is a good first step to understanding each
other.

First Contact: When Race Meets Race

The origins, history, and impact of Africans and Europeans on Native
Americans, particularly those of the Northeastern and Southeastern

Arwin D. Smallwood is Associate Professor of History at the University of Memphis. His

research focuses on African-American, Native-American, and Early American history
and the meshing of cultures during that era. His published works include The Atlas
of African-American History and Politics and Bertie County: An Eastern Carolina
History. Dr. Smallwood’s many fellowships and awards include, among others: a
National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant; The John D. Rockefeller Jr.
Library Fellowship; the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Fellowship; and the Gilder
Lehrman Fellowship.
Map of early Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland. Courtesy Library of
Congress, Geography and Map Division. Inset: Spanish map depicting present-day
Florida and lands to the east. Courtesy Rick Hill (Tuscarora, Beaver Clan)

Oklahoma Humanities 11
Woodlands, began with first contact and early exploration by Europeans. brought to Roanoke Island by explorer John White. In Northeastern Native
The Spanish were the first to have a major impact on Native peoples of communities, mixed-bloods were adopted to replace tribal members lost
the western hemisphere. As Jack D. Forbes described in his landmark in wars and to disease. Once adopted, they became one with the tribes and
work Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the children they had with Native women were seen as full members. As early as
Evolution of Red-Black Peoples, Africans and Natives of the Americas were the 1600s, there were mixed-race Indians throughout present-day Virginia,
first brought together in large numbers when Columbus and the Spanish took Maryland, and North Carolina. Tribes such as the Powhatans, Delawares,
thousands of Caribbean Natives back to Spain as slaves. These Native peoples Nanticokes, and Tuscaroras mixed with former indentured servants (black
were mixed with Spaniards and Africans (both slaves and free citizens). In and white) and runaway slaves. Many of their offspring called themselves
Spain, Portugal, and parts of Western Europe, mixing between Europeans, “Black Dutch” or “Protégée” to denote in later years that, although they
Sephardic Jews, Moors, Muslims, West Africans, and Christians had been were of mixed race, they were descendants of free blacks, people brought to
taking place since at least 650 A.D. In the Old World, contact between these Virginia by the Dutch in 1619 to work as cheap labor on tobacco plantations.
groups brought wealth, knowledge—and mixed races. Virginia encouraged free blacks who were former indentured servants to
live on its eastern shore and the Roanoke River to serve as buffers between
From 1521 to 1607, tens of thousands of these Native peoples were enslaved Indians and white settlements.
with Africans in Europe or on sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations in the
Americas. These peoples sometimes willingly, sometimes through force, By the 1600s, the Dutch, French, English, and Swedes began to compete
intermarried or intermixed with each other and their white owners (the with the Spanish for control of sugar islands in the Caribbean, and for trade
Spanish and Portuguese) throughout the Caribbean and North and South footholds on the North American Atlantic coast. As Allan Gallay notes in his
America, creating a mind-boggling array of mixtures and terms to define book The Native American Slave Trade, when the English arrived in South
them. Thus, many Africans and Natives of the Americas became mixed- Carolina in 1670 and began trading in Native American slaves, they found
blood, bi-racial (Native and black) and tri-racial (Native, black, and white) willing partners among Southeastern tribes. Subsequently, tens of thousands
peoples. of North American Indians were sold into slavery. Some Southeastern Indians
(particularly the Cherokee, Creeks, Catawba, Yamasee, and Westos) became
In the late 1600s, mixed-race people in most of the thirteen colonies were slaver traders in exchange for European-manufactured guns, knives, and
classified as Mulatto, which could be a person of Indian and white lineage, axes.
Indian and African lineage, African and white lineage, or any combination
of the three. Once classified as Mulatto or black, poor whites and white Dividing Nations, Commingling Peoples
indentured servants who intermarried with Indians, Africans, and mixed- A huge divide opened between Northeastern and Southeastern tribes over
bloods eventually were classified as “Negro” and were mandated with their slavery following the Tuscarora War from 1711 to 1713. Although the
descendants by law to be slaves for the rest of their natural lives. To avoid this Tuscarora fought against the Colonies of North and South Carolina and
fate, many mixed people moved to the frontier and mixed further with what their expansion into Indian lands, the war also involved Southeastern Indian
were then powerful Indian nations in the Northeastern and Southeastern allies who had become heavily involved in and dependent on slaving. The
Woodlands. war represented far more than what we traditionally think of as simply
an Indian/white conflict over land. It altered the racial and political
The Tuscarora were one of the first Northeastern Native American tribes landscape of what would become the eastern United States. Even before the
to adopt whites and Africans. They began to mix with them as early as establishment of U.S. boundaries between the free North and slaveholding
1586, when they absorbed over 300 West Africans, Carib Indians, Muslims, South, Northeastern and Southeastern Indians divided the continent into
Sephardic Jews, Moors, and Turks left in North Carolina by the English pro-slavery and anti-slavery regions.
privateer Sir Francis Drake. A year later, they absorbed white colonists
In 1715, whites dealing in the Native American slave trade were killed by
By the end of the 1800s, mixed peoples Southeastern tribes, ending the practice of enslaving Natives. However,
inhabited much of the Southeastern and
Northeastern Woodlands, including the Southeastern Indians expanded their involvement in the African Slave Trade,
Peoria Indians, the last of which is pictured
here. Courtesy Peoria Public Library and serving as slave catchers and slave holders. From the end of the Tuscarora
Cullom Davis Library Special Collections, War, sharp differences remained between Northeastern and Southeastern
Bradley University, Peoria, IL
tribes over African slavery and mixed Indian-African, Indian-African-white
peoples. So intense was the warfare between the two groups that the King of
England authorized William Byrd of Virginia in 1728 to draw a dividing line
on what became the North Carolina/Virginia, Tennessee/Kentucky border.
This line separated Northeastern tribes from Southeastern tribes, and non-
slaving Indians from slaving Indians.

Southeastern tribes captured and returned runaway African, Indian, and

mixed slaves. They also began to practice slavery, amassing thousands of
African and mixed-race slaves by the time of Indian Removal in the 1830s.
By 1835, at least ten percent of the Cherokee Nation was black slaves.

12 Summer 2012
 As a major in the Virginia militia, twenty-year-old George Washington parleyed at a council of the Six Nations leading up to the French and Indian War. Washington in
Conference w/Representatives of Six Nations. Julius Stearns, artist. Courtesy Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK

The practice was not without conflict among Southeastern tribes. Many full- avoided enslaving other Natives, mostly due to their involvement with the
blood Indians believed that slavery was inconsistent with their traditional fur trade which kept them supplied with guns, powder, lead, knives, and
ways. Part-white Indians disagreed and were unwilling to give up African axes. From the 1670s, these Northeastern Indians often refused to return
slavery. The conflicts led to civil wars in some nations. Many mixed-blood runaway slaves from the Colonies, instead choosing to intermix with them
tribal members separated from their nations before and during Indian and with a host of maroon communities (independent settlements made up
removal in the 1830s, choosing to live in the swamps and mountains of their of runaway slaves). By the start of the Civil War, mixed-blooded (Indian,
ancestral homes instead of moving to Indian Territory.

Even before their removal to Oklahoma, many Southeastern Woodland

Indians, including the Cherokee, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and
Seminoles (subsequently known as the Five Civilized Tribes), mixed with the
African slaves they held, with whites, and with other Native nations. In North
Carolina and Virginia, anthropologists note that regional tribes (including
Algonquians, Iroquois, and Siouan peoples) were genetically similar before
first contact with Europeans, most likely due to the taking and adoption
of each other’s women and children. Culturally, however, each group was
distinct, having its own language, foods, political system, and cultural
traditions. These societal systems and folkways—not genetics—are what
held these tribes together.

The Iroquois Confederacy (including Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, The term mulatto was often used to describe mixed-race Indian-black and
Indian-black-white, slaves. Greenleaf’s New York Journal and Patriotic Register,
Onondagas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, also known as the Six Nations) Weds. 12/17/1794. No. 101, Vo. XLVII. Courtesy Gilcrease Museum,Tulsa, OK

Oklahoma Humanities 13
black, and white) communities could be documented in nearly every state on Centuries of history show how American Indians and enslaved Africans
the Eastern Seaboard from Georgia to Massachusetts. Northeastern Indians became mixed, how their peoples and cultures became blended. In the modern
also developed friendly relations with Quakers, Moravians, The Society for community of Indian Woods in Bertie County, North Carolina (established in
the Proclamation of the Gospel, and other antislavery groups. At Quaker 1717 as a Tuscarora reservation), many African Americans today possess this
and Moravian missions among these tribes, Indians, Africans, and whites mixed heritage. Communities like Indian Woods are scattered all over the
lived, worked, and worshiped together, died and were buried together in Northeastern and Southeastern United States. These people may have lost
church cemeteries. Even today, in places like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, these the name of their nation, their Native language, and tribal traditions and
Moravian cemeteries still remain as a testament to their positive attitudes customs, but the blood mixtures and ancestry remain. They are a microcosm
concerning race. and the United States is a macrocosm of this phenomenon.

From the time of first contact with Europeans to the American Revolution, Embracing a Complex Heritage
over ninety-five percent of all blacks in this country lived on the South The merging of culture and blood among Native Americans, Africans, and
Atlantic coast. Most were moved to the Deep South to clear land and work Europeans is clear when we take the time to examine the early history of our
cotton plantations between 1783 and 1861; therefore, nearly the entire black country. Our history is not unlike that of the rest of the Western Hemisphere,
population (except for then-recent arrivals from West Africa) would have had where peoples like those of Brazil readily embrace their mixed heritage. But
some Native mixture. From the South, these blacks spread to the Northeast, because of race-based slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, Indian Removal,
Midwest, and Far West throughout the early twentieth century. As a result of acculturation, and other exclusionary measures, many of our ancestors were
Indian and African slaving, anthropologists were aware as early as 1890 that forced to deny a mixed-race heritage. Those that could, often identified
the majority of blacks on the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico were mixed themselves as “white” to survive. Others, who appeared to have some mixture
with Native Americans. These are the reasons that Native-African ancestry is of black races, were forced to identify themselves as “Colored” or “black.” As
common across America today. a result, today, a significant number of mixed-race people identify with tribes
and other groups but cannot readily document a connection to them.
By the time of the Civil War in 1861, 200 years of slavery and racial mixing had
had a profound impact on everyone in the Eastern United States. Members If we are to fully understand and appreciate what it means to be Native
of the Six Nations and their mixed-blood kin in New York, Oklahoma, American, African American, or American we must fully understand and
Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Carolina sided with the Union. The Six acknowledge the relationship between Indians, Africans, and Europeans
Nations and their allies had become so mixed that, even though they could over the past 500 years. Explaining how we came to be and acknowledging
document their Native ancestry, many were forced to fight with U. S. Colored the role of mixed-race people in America’s evolution will help us deal more
troops. Most of the Southeastern Nations sided with the Confederacy—a sensitively with modern conflicts over ethnicity and identity—and, in time,
controversial choice, for many had kin who were part black. embrace the whole of our rich, diverse heritage. n
By the time Englishman John White and his landing party arrived in Jamestown,Virginia, tens of thousands of Native peoples had been enslaved and mixed with whites, Africans,
and other Native Americans. Captain John and Party Landing at Jamestown, May 14, 1607. John Mix Stanley, artist. Courtesy Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK

14 Summer 2012