BLACK INDIANS
DEAN SCHOMBURG
Generations of young minds have been trained to think of life on the American Frontier as a testimony to white gallantry. John Wayne whipped Indians and children of every race rejoiced in this version of the frontier served up every Saturday afternoon at the movies. But for some reason I always rooted for the underdog, and still do. That’s why I wanted the Indians to win those pitched battles on the big screen. But they never did.
My maternal grandfather, Theodore Warren,
pictured here in Brooklyn New York in 1950
(Photo by Dean Warren Schomburg)
was a Shinnecock Indian but of a darker hue than normally associated with Native Americans. I had often wondered why. My later visits to the Shinnecock reservation on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, after having seen many of the Shinnecocktribal members with equally dark skin and remembering the western movies in my youth where the Indians were never as dark as my grandfather, caused me to wonder about the source of this seeming anomaly.
It turns out that the first Africans brought to the new world by European slave traders probably arrived in April 1502 on board a ship that brought the new governor of Hispaniola, Nicolas de Ovando. Soon after they landed some Africans escaped to the woods and found a new home among the Native Americans (Black Indians, William Katz, Athenaeum Books N.Y. 1986). The first link of friendship between the two was a common foe…the Europeans…which was motivation for an alliance. Since the Native peoples willingly embraced newcomers to their villages Africans found they were welcome. Indians were often willing to accept outsiders to take advantage of their skills and to enlarge the tribe. Some Africans took on important roles in tribal life. They began to identify with their new friends of the hills, streams and mountains. Naturally intermarriage took place among the villagers. The native peoples were not concerned and seemingly undeterred by the social construct we call race. Darker skin was no deterrent at that point in history, although that changed as the Eurocentric racist ideals gradually took hold over time and insinuated themselves into the native population. In fact, Circe Sturm writes in Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (Berkeley: University of California, 2002) that “by the late eighteenth century, in response to various maneuvers on the part of European colonists, Cherokees had internalized an understanding of racial differences and racial prejudice that articulated with Western views. At the same time, Cherokees manipulated the existing racial hierarchy, aggressively placing themselves at the top.”Meantime, British colonists tried to play one dark race against the other on the southern frontier..
The Maryland assembly, for example, offered Indians rewards for recapturing runaway slaves. So many slaves had fled to the six colonies of the Iroquois Confederacy that in 1776 a governor of New York made the leading chiefs promise to return all fugitives in their villages. In 1764 Hurons, to the North, made the same promise. The following year Delaware followed suit. However, there is no word of a single slave ever being returned by these indigenous hosts.
In the decades between the American revolution and the civil war, black Indian societies were reported in New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, Tennessee and Massachusetts.
With the abrupt conclusion of Reconstruction in 1877, thousands of blacks made their way from the South to the West, heading for Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Indianterritory. These migrants were seeking to escape from the onslaught of white racial violence in a period of escalating attacks, and sought to resettle in a location where they could find economic opportunity, demonstrate their self-sufficiency and preserve their dignity. By the inception of the Civil War, New England Indian communities had experienced several generations of intermarriage with African Americans. (Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds, Tiya Miles & Sharon P. Holland, Duke University Press, 2006.)
As the westward expansion continued, Africans constituted a significant portion of the population in California, then under Spanish rule, and mixed easily with Native Americans. A Spanish census of 1790 found 18 percent of the population of San Francisco, 24 percent of San Jose, 20 percent of Santa Barbara and 18 percent of Monterey could be traced to black ancestors.
In spite of strenuous efforts (by colonizers) to promote hatred between Indians and Africans a surprising number of slaves were harbored within the Indian communities throughout the colonial period. In most cases fugitive slaves disappeared into Indian society where they took Indian wives, produced children of mixed blood and contributed to Afro-Indian acculturation in the same fashion as those slaves who lived with the settlement Indians in the coastal regions.
The problem ofidentifying who was an Indian became complicated with the arrival of European settlers, traders, missionaries, adventurers and African slaves. Three conditions resulting from these contacts were important. First, outsiders mated with Indian women to produce offspring of mixed genetic heritage. Second, Indians sometimes captured blacks and whites and made them “Indians”. Third some Indians lost their identity because of assimilation with the outsiders. Likewise, Indians who did not associate with other Indians came to be judged as non-Indians. (Identity in Mashpee, James Clifford, Cambridge Mass. 1988)
By 1770 there were 2.3 million people living east of the Allegheny Mountains. 1.7 million were white, ½ million were black and 100 thousand were indigenous. What is surprising is that efforts to keep the races separate were thwarted in a society where the dominant group was involved in strenuous attempts to keep its bloodlines from being “contaminated” (Red,White and Black:The Peoples of Early America. Gary B. Nash, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs N.J., 1982).
Moving ahead to the late 19th century, birth records of black Indians were often surreptitiously changed to reflect black only and eliminated the Native reference. There were several reasons for this. The federal government had always attempted to limit the number of claimants to Indian heritage so that there would be less of a financial strain on the government’s resources. After all, the promises made to the Indians, many of which were never fulfilled, included health care, job training and other benefits as a result of having lost their tribal lands. Even today, the process by which a tribe or tribal member must substantiate Indian heritage is complex, involving written records going back to first contact, proof of tribal territory and language, and substantiation of consistent involvement in tribal affairs. Since most of the record keeping was done by the colonizers it’s extremely difficult to provide written proof of many of the Indian claims, and the oral tradition is deemed by the federal government as not trustworthy.
Black Indians who declare their heritage are sometimes subject to ridicule by their African-American acquaintances, some of whom say to claim Native American heritage is not authentic, and simply an effort to boost one’s self esteem. In current situations, even some Native American tribes are disputing the authenticity of many black Indians. It appears to be an effort to limit tribal numbers, particularly among tribes which have opened gaming and casino establishments where some of the proceeds are divided among tribal members. They claim there is a run on Native American “wannabees” who would like a share of the gambling proceeds. On the other side of that spectrum, during the civil rights era it was politically incorrect for black folks to declare anything but an African heritage, and so the Indian ancestors remained under cover.
I often wish that my grandfather knew that I took his advice and visited the Shinnecock Reservation, starting about 20 years ago, and return every other year for the Powwow. When I see and hear the tribal members, I see and feel him. I am glad that his blood is coursing through my veins. I am angry at the way Native Americans have been treated in this, their original land, and continue to struggle. I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that as of this past December 15th, the Bureau of Indian Affairs officially recognized the Shinnecock as a tribe, but given the history of that Bureau, I’m not so sure what, if any, benefits will be forthcoming for the tribal members. Let us hope for the best.