An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

esistance to obtain their freedom and to create the steps for liberations.
They used nationalism and sovereignty, violence, the breaking of tools and
poisoning of masters, the law, writing and forms of solidarity, and even, at
times, the adoption of US forms of racism. Led by Black women like
Harriet Tubman, along with white allies, enslaved Africans used the
Underground Railroad to escape their capture. Even during the Civil War,
as Du Bois puts it, as soon as possible, “the slave entered upon a general
strike against slavery.” And because of their flight, their “withdrawal and
bestowal of [their] labor decided the war.” 8 The point is, they tried to resist.
This chapter documents those examples throughout the nineteenth century.
In general, when people think of Afro-Indigenous history in the United
States, a major focus is on the history of the Cherokee Nation and how
some of that nation’s elites enslaved Africans. In casual conversation with
my Black brothas and sisters over the years, when I speak about the
possibilities of Black and Indigenous solidarity, many look at me and say,
“But Native Americans enslaved Blacks?”
Let me offer two examples. I remember reading Black Labor, White
Wealth by polemical author Claud Anderson for a Black Politics course.
Anderson contends, “All of the five civilized Indian nations were black
slave owners and slave traders. Worse, all of these Indian nations supported
and fought on the side of the South in the Civil War in fear of losing their
black slaves.” 9 I remember reading this, shocked, because in my Native
American history course I was taking during that same semester, I learned
the exact opposite, and therefore understood the nuances of Indigenous
enslavement of Africans. I won’t spend too much time disputing these
historical misinterpretations, but Anderson’s commentary is likely more
pervasive in the Black community than we might think. As academics, we
often tend to easily dismiss errors in interpretation, but we must consider
who is reading the work. Go and check out the reviews on Anderson’s book
on Amazon: it has received 349 reviews, averaging a 4.9 rating out of 5.
When I attended a conference in London at the British Library in 2018, a
Black American scholar in the audience responded to my comment about
the possibilities of Afro-Indigenous solidarity with, “The Indians enslaved
Africans. What solidarity can we even have?!” We have to confront these
misconceptions by finding ways to disseminate the true nature of this
history. We have to remind people that history is complicated and can be