» Cherokee Slave Revolt 1842
#1 Jul-30-2010 01:25:pm
Registered: Feb-27-2010
Cherokee Slave Revolt 1842
I have just discovered this very informative articlein Oklahoma History Society archives.
SLAVE REVOLT OF 1842
Of the Five Civilized Tribes, the Cherokees were the largest holder of Africans as chattel slaves. By 1860 the Cherokees had 4,600 slaves. Many Cherokees depended on them as a bridge to white society. Full-blood Indian slave owners relied on the blacks as English interpreters and translators. Mainly, however, slaves worked on farms as laborers or in homes as maids or servants. The Cherokees feared the aspect of a slave revolt, and that is just what happened in 1842 at Webbers Falls.
On the morning of November 15 more than twenty-five slaves, mostly from the Joseph Vann plantation, revolted. They locked their masters and overseers in their homes and cabins while they slept. The slaves stole guns, horses, mules, ammunition, food and supplies. At daybreak the group, which included men, women, and children, headed toward Mexico, where slavery was illegal. In the Creek Nation the Cherokee slaves were joined by Creek slaves, bringing the group total to more than thirty-five. The fugitives fought off and killed a couple of slave hunters in the Choctaw Nation.
The Cherokee Nation sent the Cherokee Militia, under Capt. John Drew, with eighty-seven men to catch the runaways. This expedition was authorized by the Cherokee National Council in Tahlequah on November 17, 1842. The militia caught up with the slaves seven miles north of the Red River on November 28, 1842. The tired, famished fugitives offered no resistance.
The party returned to Tahlequah on December 8, 1842. Five slaves were executed, and Joseph Vann put the majority of his rebellious slaves to work on his steamboats, which worked the Arkansas, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers. The Cherokees blamed the incident on free, armed black Seminoles who lived in close proximity to the Cherokee slaves at Fort Gibson. On December 2, 1842, the Cherokee Nation passed a law commanding all free African Americans, except former Cherokee slaves, to leave the nation.
NanticokePiney
From: Hopewell Twp., New Jersey
Registered: Jul-10-2007
Re: Cherokee Slave Revolt 1842
Good Article cuzzen!
I don't have anger issues...just violent reactions to B.S.
Warning: Some Profanity
This might cause you to experience reason
#3 Jul-31-2010 08:52:am
I've found quite a lot of information on race, slavery and the 5 tribes. When I first started to research in this field there was little available except Perdue and Katz. Now there are numerous graduate dissertations, scholarly articles and journals. Most of the research suggests as I have that those people who owned slaves and practiced racial slavery were no different in their attitudes towards Africans than white slaveowners. To suggest otherwise is pure folly. This article is an indication of that fact. If Cherokee slaves were treated differently than slaves owned by white why did slaves rebel with disasterous consequences? Herbert Aptheker's work on slave revolts in the US suggests the same.It becomes clear that just as racial prejudice apparent in the states is rooted in ante bellum slavery, therefore it follows logically that the descendants of Indian slaveowners still harbour the same ideas and prejudices. To suggest otherwise would simply be denial based on "projudice". I argue that you cannot fight prejudice without fighting "projudice" and denial...
TrueNorth wrote:
I argue that you cannot fight prejudice without fighting "projudice" and denial...
That is your father teachings and something he would say.
Clarence was a progressive and in many ways far far ahead of his contemporaries, but he was also a product of his times. When he was in Philly City Hall he was an asture politician and broke lots conventions to write lots of laws for minorities, women and gays, to do what was unpopular when it was unpopular. He understood prejudice and race in America and made some real changes, a lesson to Obama (you want to make change don't run for office). He did teach us that race was only a few traits and not a barrier to anything. I took that lesson with me to SCLC/SNCC in Mississippi and Georgia on the '60s. My dad taught me when ever anyone talks about the "good ole days" that they're probably a racist.