Disfranchisement of Black Indians

I have been reluctant to begin discussing the disfranchisement of Black Indians among the Five Tribes. The history is extraordinarily complex and can shift from moment to moment depending on how an informant feels and the audience.  I have alluded elsewhere to Claudio Saunt's experience with Creek leader Buddy Cox and an official of the Creek Nation:

"As he peered at the blurry figures standing before the building, the officer joined him. "They all look lusti, don't they?" she asked under her breath. "Thank god for Claude slipping that constitution past." Claude Cox, Buddy's uncle, had overseen the passage of a new Creek constitution in 1979, still in effect today, that disenfranchised the descendants of Creek slaves." (Claudio Saunt. Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family (p. 129). Kindle Edition.)

"Lusti" being a brief way of saying "estelvste" or "Black" in the Mvskoke language. Later on, the three sit together at lunch and the conversation returns to the Estelvste:

We talked about black Creeks, and Cox, who is known around the nation for his independent opinions, warmed to the task at hand. He said in Creek, "I'm estelusti." Cox had broken a taboo, and the officer responded in kind. "My family is part black, too," she said in English. "But I don't show it, do I?" she asked, presenting her profile in both jest and anxiety. (Ibid)

Perhaps it is because this is a private conversation, perhaps because it is indoors, perhaps it is just the feeling of the moment.  In any case it is only a few minutes later when her entire family history miraculously changes: 

After lunch, we stood before the restaurant saying good-bye, and the subject again turned to the estelusti. "A number of Creeks have black blood, not just the Graysons," the officer observed. "Don't we all?" asked Cox. "Not me" were her last words to us before she turned down the street and walked away.

 Here is an attempt at some truth.  Among the Creeks, there were Black members before 1812 and they were mostly in the Upper Creek towns, known to US history as "Red Sticks," who fought the US Army and were defeated by Andrew Jackson with the aid of the Lower Creek towns.  Those Lower Creek towns were more apt to have African slaves, they were more apt to have members who were white married into the town, and those members (and their children) were more apt to be wealthy town leaders and slaveowners.  So, already, two decades before the Trail of Tears removals to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, there were Creek Indians who were racially "red," "white," and "black."  (Hence the title of Claudio Saunt's book about the Grayson family.)  And there were also Black people held as slaves.

During the Civil War, the tribal government, which was dominated by slave-owning Lower Creeks, allied itself with the Confederacy.  The traditionals, who tended to be from the Upper Creek towns, including the Black Creeks, were joined by many Black people who were slaves of the Creek leaders.  They had to flee the territory to seek the protection of the United States and many, many joined the Union Army: some as Indian troops, some as Black troops.  (And there were many racially "Black" Creeks in the Indian Home Guard.)

After the war, the United States government negotiated new treaties with the Five Tribe.  These treaties required the emancipation of all slaves and their receiving full citizenship rights in their respective nation.  This is the beginning of referring to most (not all) African Creeks as "freedmen," regardless of whether their parents and grandparents had been full members of a Creek town or held as slaves by Creeks.  It is a fully racial distinction.

During the late 19th century the political factions in the Creek council tended to be former Confederates versus former Loyalists.  The Loyalist faction were mainly traditional in their religious outlook and their economic standing, meaning small-scale farming and herding.  They included all  the leaders of the three new African Creek towns.  The former Confederates were more likely to be Christian and English speaking and they got into cattle ranching and then real estate speculation.

When the federal government forced other tribes into dividing their collectively-owned reservations into privately-owned individual allotments, the Five Tribes were able to resist this at first.  When Senator Dawes came to them again a decade later, the Creek factions were united in opposing this.  But it soon became apparent that allotment was coming, whether they liked it or not.  At this point most Creeks, with some important exceptions, decided to go with the program.

That program, though, included some very important racial distinctions.  First, all tribal members who were deemed to have any African "blood" were designated as "freemen."  (There were some exceptions to this, apparently for political reasons.)  Second, all other Creeks were assigned a "blood quantum," a fraction which purported to indicate how "Indian" they were.  Note that the rule for being a "freeman" is the "one-drop" rule, or hypodescent.  But a person with three white grandparents is still "Indian," albeit assigned a "quantum" of one fourth.  Further, if an "Indian" had one Creek and one Seminole parent, that made them one half Indian, either in the Creek or Seminole enrollment.

The enrollment was concluded in 1906, the same year Oklahoma entered the US as a state.  The state of Oklahoma immediately instituted Jim Crow laws and embarked on a campaign of lynching and terror against all racially Black people, including African Creeks.  There was a well-publicized lynching in Okemah of a Black mother and son in 1911 by a mob that included Woody Guthrie's father.  And there was the firebombing of thirty-five city blocks of Tulsa, the entire neighborhood of Greenwood, which had been -- until then -- considered the Black Wall Street of the United States.  An estimated three hundred people were murdered, six thousand were detained by the police, and twelve thousand were left homeless.

Meanwhile, for purposes of Jim Crow, "Indians" -- excluding the so-called "freemen" -- were designated as white.  That did not stop land speculators and oil companies from finding a thousand ways to rob them.  But it did succeed in consolidating a big wedge driven between Black Indians, including Creeks, and other tribal members.

It was in 1979 that the Creek tribal council moved to disfranchise the Creek "freemen."  The move received more support from the "Indian" members because of zero-sum economics: the fewer tribal members around to divide up any available gains, the more there was for each remaining individual.  For example, in 1962 the US awarded the Creeks nearly $4 million in damages for lands illegally seized in 1814 in what is now Georgia and Alabama.  When the money was distributed a decade later, it came to about $12 per capita.

There are African Creeks who have very little interest in asserting their Indian identity: the Creeks don't want them and they are quite proud to be African American instead.  But there are those who have retained language, religion and culture and continue to sue the Creek Nation for restitution of membership.  They maintain an interesting website at http://www.thecreekfreedmen.com

This begins to explain one part of this story.  I  will probably have to return to it.  "In the Midst of the Valley," the final chapter of Stones from the Creek, (http://www.amazon.com/Stones-Creek-Rick-Levine/dp/149447641X/) is a different kind of way to explain the personal horror of this history through one fictional family's experience.  I think that is all for today.