Black Presence on the Trails of Tears - Oklahoma Black History

In the 1830s and 1840s, thousands of native people were forced from their homelands in the southeastern United States to

Indian Territory, Modern-Day Oklahoma

Accompanying the natives were the Black people they enslaved. Slavery continued until the end of the Civil War.

The United States assumed control of the land that eventually became Oklahoma in 1803, with President Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory. Meanwhile, land-hungry settlers poured into the southerneastern states over the next three decades. These lands, including Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi, were already occupied by Native tribes, among them the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”: Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole.

Settlers wanted Native lands. The solution was simple; the Natives had to go. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, forcing southeastern tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Five Tribes purchased lands in Indian Territory, in what is today modern-day Oklahoma. For several decades, the Five Tribes continued a practice they had picked up from the European Americans and had employed since the late 18th century: chattel slavery.

Natives and Enslavement

North American Natives had taken captives and forced them into involuntary labor for centuries before European contact. Similar to the slavery practiced among many African tribes and other parts of the world, this form of bondage was not racially motivated, trans-generational, or permanent. However, in the 1500s, the European settlers brought with them a new model of slavery, the slave trade. Like their new European neighbors, Native tribes began to permanently enslave Natives from other tribes, a practice that continued for centuries, but died down following the Yamasee War of 1715-1717.

The Yamasee War began after English colonists in Carolina began enslaving members of tribes that were their allies. The Yamasee tribe lost the war, but the practice of Native enslavement was deemed impractical and soon abandoned. To make up the difference, the Trans-Atlantic African slave trade picked up momentum to make up for the loss of the Native slave trade.

During the 18th century, members of the Five Tribes adapted to Euro-American norms, including dress, governmental structure, and starting in the late 1700s, enslaving Black people for domestic and agricultural work. However, the enslaved were tied primarily to wealthy Native families who could afford them. While slavery was legal, most Native peoples, like the majority of United States citizens, did not own slaves.

Despite adopting Euro-American customs, Native people were not able to save their homelands from white settlement. Starting in 1830 and lasting through the Civil War, dozens of tribes and thousands of Native people were brutally forced from their homelands and sent west to live in new lands. The Black people they enslaved, and the practice of slavery, went with them.

Slaves on The Trail of Tears

Nearly 125,000 Native people lived in the southeastern states at the beginning of the 1830s. By the end, most were gone. While Indian Removal occurred in the northern states as well, the most extensive removal happened in the south, where settlers pined for the rich, fertile land. And among these forced removals, none was more extensive or cruel than what is today called “The Trail of Tears,” a forced march across nine states and 2,200 miles.

In 1836, 15,000 Creeks set out for Indian Territory; 3,500 did not survive. In 1838, the federal government sent 7,000 soldiers to force the Cherokee people into stockades at bayonet point, where they were marched by the thousands to Indian Territory. Of the more than 14,000 Cherokee who made the march, over 5,000 died along the way. The main culprits were epidemics of typhus, dysentery, cholera, whooping cough, and starvation.

Among the marchers were Black enslaved persons belonging to wealthy Cherokees, as well as Cherokees of African descent. The Cherokee slaves labored for their masters along the journey, including hunting game, chopping wood, washing clothes, preparing meals, nursing the sick, removing obstructions along the roads, and guarding the camps at night. Besides the 5,000 Cherokees who died on the Trail of Tears, an unknown number of the enslaved never made it to Indian Territory.

Slavery in Indian Territory

Wealthy members of the Five Tribes continued to enslave Black people in Indian Territory. Thirty years after the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the tribes owned nearly 10,000 slaves; the Cherokee citizens owns 2,511 slaves (15 percent of their population), Choctaw citizens owned 2,349 slaves (14 percent), Creek citizens owned 1,532 slaves (10 percent), and Chickasaw citizens owned 975 slaves (18 percent).

While slavery was confined to the wealthy, like in the rest of the United States, the practice of slavery in Indian Territory varied among the tribes. Creeks and Seminoles afforded certain freedoms to their slaves, and even intermarried with them, while the Choctaw and Chickasaw closely modeled their practices off those of white slaveholders. Black enslaved persons adapted to the tribal cultures of their Indian masters. Some escapees from slavery in the south showed up in Indian Territory.

Indian Territory during The Civil War

Tribal factionalism and violence spread throughout Indian Territory with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. While all of the Five Tribes officially signed agreements with the Confederacy in order to preserve their political autonomy and slavery, there was dissention within tribes. Many individual Natives declared allegiance to the Union. In 1861, the war broke out in Indian Territory when Union-supporting Creeks, Cherokees, and runaways from slavery were attacked while trying to enter Kansas. For the next four years, there were several guerilla raids by Union and Confederate Indian units, as well as battles, in Indian Territory.

In June 1863, the Cherokees freed their enslaved Black persons, the only one of the Five Tribes to do so during the Civil War. However, few Cherokee slaveholders acknowledged or followed this law, while many slaveholding Natives simply sold their property and left the territory. Meanwhile, Black Natives enlisted in both the Union and Confederate armies. The Civil War ended in Indian Territory when Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Waite surrendered in June 1865. With the defeat of the Confederacy, the Five Tribes lost their right to exercise autonomy over their own tribal affairs.

Freedmen and Citizenship

Following the end of the Civil War, the United States signed separate treaties with all Five Tribes, called the Treaties of 1866. Despite the divisions within the tribes’ leadership, the federal government treated each of the tribes as rebels and enacted punitive peace agreements, in large part to take over Native American land. These treaties included land cessions, American settlement, and railway construction in Indian Territory. The treaties also forced the tribes to abolish slavery and grant full citizenship rights to their formerly enslaved persons. While the tribes were willing to abolish slavery, granting their former enslaved persons citizenship was more complicated, as it would involve conferring land, money, and political power.

The Seminoles promptly granted full citizenship to their formerly enslaved persons, while the northern and southern bands of Creeks granted citizenship after numerous negotiations. The Choctaws did not grant full citizenship rights until 1883, while the Chickasaws never did. The Cherokees were the first to free their formerly enslaved persons, but they were the last to conclude negotiations. In July 1866, the Cherokees offered full citizenship to Freedmen within their territory and those who would return within six months. In November, they amended the Cherokee Constitution, and conferred full citizenship to their Freedmen. However, while the Cherokees granted full citizenship to the Freedmen, that citizenship did not fully and permanently extend to the Freedmen descendants until August 31, 2017, when the United States District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Cherokee Freedmen descendants must be accorded full citizenship rights within the Cherokee Nation.