An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Indigenousness are not so different as to say one is worse than the other, but
in this case, there is a clear case of injustice.
When I first conceptualized this book, I hesitated to write about the
Freedmen issue for a few reasons. First, I’m not related to the Five Tribes.
It just isn’t my experience, and many of those folks are out there fighting to
receive or maintain their citizenship. Respect. This is their history and I
didn’t want to overstep my boundaries. The story of the Five Tribes and the
Freedmen dominates discussions of what it means to be an Afro-Indigenous
person. Whenever I mention Afro-Indigenous history, the case of the
Freedmen (and the Mardi Gras Indians; I still ain’t touched that one!) is
brought up, and I’ve spent my writing career letting others write about it. I
figured I didn’t have anything new to say. Frankly, I also want people to
appreciate other facets of Black and Indigenous histories. Nevertheless,
here we are. With some gentle nudging from the publishing game’s best
editor and also current events, and given the topic of the book, I might as
well offer my two cents here as a postscript.
The case of the Freedmen and the Five Tribes is an issue based on
political and moral questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and racism. I will
state my position clearly: I support the Freedmen across all Five Tribes
receiving their due citizenship. It is the right thing to do. Those tribes
enslaved them and they owe their ancestors for creating the condition of
Freedmen bondage, a harm that cannot be properly repaid. For those who
were not enslaved but are now hardly citizens because of their blackness,
the Five Tribes owe them something too. The scarlet letter of Freedmen,
their blackness, is now associated with their citizenship.
I am not comparing Indigenous genocide and African enslavement in the
sense that one is worse than the other; I don’t mean to ignore Indigenous
genocide. They are two different but equally irreparable forms of ongoing
terror that continue to shape the lives of Afro-Indigenous, Black, and
Indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, as the Choctaw and Chickasaw
Freedmen Twitter account has accurately noted, throughout the period of
enslavement individual Natives assisted in recapturing Africans who had
escaped their captivity.
For example, the 1791 Treaty of Holston, between the United States
government and the Cherokee Nation, bears the signature of a person
named Sawntteh, or “Slave Catcher.” I’m uncertain who this person was,
but their name represented their job, to catch slaves. 1 It is also important to