An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Black sentiment in the late eighteenth century, it should not be surprising
why Cuffe emphasized his Indigenous identity more often, especially early
on, and would later fight to return himself and others to his father’s
homeland. He understood one aspect: that he was marked as Black. It seems
that throughout his life, he vacillated between being African and
Indigenous. Of course, his identity was shaped by antiblackness, and the
prospects of living in a world that was both anti-Black and anti-Indigenous,
but where the mark of blackness forced him to be seen a certain way.
Cuffe was instrumental in advocating for Black folks to travel back to
Africa, particularly Sierra Leone. Why would Cuffe want to go back to
Africa, given his mother’s Indigenous roots? Quite simply, it was because
of the anti-Black racism of the time. While Native people in the northeast
were experiencing what historian Jean O’Brien has called “dispossession by
degrees,” as an Afro-Indigenous person, Cuffe was also dealing with racism
toward Black folks as well. He experienced dispossession and the stigma of
blackness. 34
Cuffe was well known, even by the British. For instance, on August 2,
1811, the London Times documented Cuffe’s travels from Sierra Leone.
Traveling with a group of Black folks from the US, Cuffe arrived in
Liverpool. At the age of fifty-six, the newspaper described him as solely
Black and asserted that any success he had was attributed to coming from
the white society of Massachusetts. The article alleged that after Cuffe read
Thomas Clarkson’s Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808), who was a staunch
advocate of ending the slave trade in Britain, it stoked in him “all the
powers of his mind to a consideration of his origin, and the duties owed to
his people.” 35 Importantly, Cuffe also imagined a world where Black and
Indigenous peoples would live together. In 1817, he recommended that
there be two Black nations. One would be in Africa and the other in the
western part of the US. Cuffe, as someone who was Indigenous on both
sides, could imagine a social and political world in which Black and
Indigenous peoples could live free from the oppression of white society. 36
What is important about Cuffe is that he tried to imagine a different life
for his people. Though Black and Indigenous, he did not want to deal with
the total climate of antiblackness, and therefore sought to return to the
African continent. Though he might have had some settler-colonial ideas
which he learned in the colonies—surely a part of his upbringing in colonial
America—he desired to return to the land of his father. In the history of