The Building of A New World

With the arrival of twenty "negars" aboard a Dutch man-of-war in Virginia in 1619, the face of American slavery began to change from the "tawny" Indian to the "blackamoor" African, a period of transition lasting some one hundred years between 1650 and 1750.¹⁹³ Though the issue is complex, the unsuitability of the Native American for the labor-intensive agricultural practices, their susceptibility to European diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape for Native Americans, and the lucrative nature of the African slave trade led to a transition to an African-based institution of slavery.¹⁹⁴ In spite of a later tendency in the Southern United States to differentiate the African slave from the Indian, the institution of African slavery was in actuality imposed on top of a pre-existing system of Indian slavery.¹⁹⁵ In North America, the two never diverged as distinctive institutions.¹⁹⁶

During this transitional period Africans and Native Americans shared the common experience of enslavement.¹⁹⁷ In addition to working together in the fields, they lived together in communal living quarters, began to produce collective recipes for food and herbal remedies, shared myths and legends, and ultimately intermarried. The intermarriage of Africans and Native Americans was facilitated by the disproportionate numbers of African male slaves to females (two to one) and the decimation of Native American males by disease, enslavement, and prolonged war against the colonists.¹⁹⁸

During the intertribal wars encouraged by the English in order to produce slaves, the largest majority of those enslaved were women and children, in accordance with historic patterns of warfare among Native Americans.¹⁹⁹ Therefore, the largest numbers of Native American slaves in the early Southeast were women; there were as many as three to five times more Native women than men enslaved.²⁰⁰ Slave owners often desired African men paired with Native American women to work the fields and to help around the house, respectively. John Norris, a South Carolina planter estimated the costs of setting up a plantation:

J. Leitch Wright suggests that the presence of so many women slaves from the Southeastern Indian nations where matrilineal kinship was the norm helps to explain the prominent role of women in slave culture.²⁰²

As Native American societies in the Southeast were primarily matrilineal, African males who married Native American women often became members of the wife's clan and citizens of the respective nation. As relationships grew, the lines of racial distinction began to blur, and the evolution of red-black people began to pursue its own course. Many of the people known as slaves, free people of color, Africans, or Indians were most often the product of an integrating culture.²⁰³ Many aspects of African American culture, including handicrafts, music, and folklore, may be Native American rather than African in origin. The cultures of Africans and Natives intertwined in complex ways in the early Southeast, and the emerging culture reflected the blending of these two peoples.²⁰⁴

The Cherokee having accepted African Americans from the very earliest points of contact, the European colonial powers feared an alliance between the mountain Indians and runaway blacks, as had been done in Jamaica and Haiti. On the eve of the Revolutionary War, Cherokee traditional leader Attakullakulla spoke of how, within the Cherokee Nation, there was a house of cultural accommodation in which blacks had a room of their own.²⁰⁵ Among the people of the Chickamagua region of the Cherokee Nation and those who spoke the Kituwhan dialect, there was a particular "ethnic openness," and the people were "more receptive to racial diversity within their towns than the mainstream Cherokees."²⁰⁶

In areas such as Southeastern Virginia, the "Low Country" of the Carolinas, and around Galphintown²⁰⁷ near Savannah, Georgia, communities of Afro-Indians began to arise. The term "mustee" came to distinguish between those who shared African and Native American ancestry from those who were a mixture of European and African. Even after 1720, black and red Carolinians continued to share slave quarters and intimate lives; many wills continued to refer to "all my Slaves, whether Negroes, Indians, Mustees, Or Molattoes."²⁰⁸ The depth and complexity of this intermixture are revealed in a 1740 slave code in South Carolina that ruled, "...all negroes and Indians, (free Indians in amity with this government, and negroes, mulattoes, and mustezoes, who are now free, excepted) mulattoes or mustezoes who are now, or shall hereafter be in this province, and all their issue and offspring...shall be and they are hereby declared to be, and remain hereafter absolute slaves."²⁰⁹

Increasingly toward the end of the century, Africans began to flee slavery in larger numbers to settle among the Indians in their immediate vicinity and in doing so became mediums of exchange for the dominant culture. At the same time, Africans who had absorbed Native American languages and culture brought them to Europeans. Apart from their collective exploitation at the hands of colonial slavery, Africans and Native Americans possessed similar worldviews rooted in their historic relationship to the subtropical coastlands of the middle Atlantic.²¹⁰ Considering historic circumstances, environmental associations, and metaphysical affiliations, the relationships among African Americans and Native Americans was much more extensive and enduring than perhaps most contemporary observers acknowledged.

In the middle to latter part of the eighteenth century, white colonists began to recognize that, especially in areas such as South Carolina and Georgia where Africans and Indians outnumbered whites three to one, a great need existed "to make Indians & Negro's a checque upon each other least by their Vastly Superior Numbers, we should be crushed by one or the other."²¹¹ In 1775, John Stuart, a senior British official, complained "nothing can be more alarming to the Carolinians then the idea of an attack from Indians and Negroes;" he further believed that "any intercourse between Indians and Negroes in my opinion ought to be prevented as much as possible."²¹² William Willis, in his "Divide and Rule: Red, White, and Black in the Southeast," believed that one of the main reasons that Indian slavery was curtailed in the colonies was related to white fears of an alliance between Native Americans and African immigrants.²¹³

The colonists' fears were not without basis. Indians and Africans had begun to form alliances, and African runaways followed pathways to Native America.²¹⁴ Nearby maroon communities, as well as Indians and Blacks from Spanish territory, harassed isolated settlers; the threat of violence became real as slave revolts spread throughout the Carolina frontier.²¹⁵ Though the Stono Rebellion of 1739 is often described as a slave revolt, there is little doubt that many of those enslaved at Stono were Native Americans; the very name Stono itself comes from a Native American people enslaved by the Carolinians.²¹⁶

A 1759 insurrection plot in Southern Carolina was of particular note. It was inspired by Philip Johns, a free mulatto, and coordinated among the Cherokee, the Creek and local blacks. Johns was possessed of a particularly apocalyptic religious vision having been energized by an enthusiastic Anglican clergy "of much learning but of an overheated imagination."²¹⁷ Johns carried with him a peculiar note, which detailed the plans for the rebellion, "...a written paper and charged them to carry it to all Negroes and show it to them...[which said] that the 17th day of June was fixed upon for killing the Buckraas [whites], but afterwards told him that it was agreed to wait til the corn was turn'd down and the Indians were then to be sent to and they would come and assist in killing all Buckraas." ²¹⁸ In 1768, another revolt occurred near Charleston led by "a numerous collection of outcast mulattoes, mustees, and free negroes." ²¹⁹

Various mechanisms began to be developed throughout the colonies to differentiate between the imported African and the indigenous Americans. Thomas Jefferson had already begun to articulate this difference in his Notes on the State of Virginia when he said that the Indian could "astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as to prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated," but that "never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture...[they are] inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."²²⁰ South Carolina Governor James Glen believed that white security depended upon creating hatred between these two peoples, as "it has always been the policy of this govert to creat an aversion in them [Indians] to Negroes."²²¹ By 1721, most Native Americans were prohibited from entry into English settlements; within the next ten years persons taking Africans into Native American territory were fined the sum of one hundred pounds.²²²

The colonies passed miscegenation laws that discouraged the union of people from different races. "Interracial sexual union" was prohibited in Massachusetts in 1705, North Carolina in 1715, South Carolina 1717, and Georgia in 1750.²²³ A law from North Carolina attempting to prevent "that abominable mixture and spurious issue...by white men and women intermarrying with Indians, Negros, Mulattoes, or Mustees" provided that any white person who married with "an Indian, Negro, mustee, or mulatto man or woman, or any person of mixed blood, to the third generation" be fined fifty pounds.²²⁴ Slave codes began to distinguish among the people; from North Carolina the curious language of "free persons of color" arose to define a whole class of people who lay on the periphery of the racial constructs of early America.²²⁵

The colonists began to use African slaves against "Indian uprisings" and they served extensively with the South Carolinians in their wars with the Yamasee, the Spanish in Florida, and the Cherokee.²²⁶ Native American agents quelled slave revolts such as the Stono, and the Carolinians offered bounties to Native Americans for catching and returning runaway slaves.²²⁷ The policy of fostering hatred among the races became an enduring element in the relationships among the varied peoples of the South; it was codified by the Virginia Supreme Court in 1814 when it made provisions related to the natural rights of white persons and Native Americans, "but entirely disapproving, thereof, so far as the same relates to native Africans and their descendants."²²⁸

The Europeans brought with them a vision of America that distinctly contrasted with the "old ways" of the indigenous peoples. In the early stages of colonial history, many resisted the tendency to engage in the commerce of human commodity. The Cherokee consistently refused to negotiate contracts and treaties with whites, which required them to return runaway slaves, and even when they did sign them, they refused to live up to the agreement. The headman at Nuquasee in negotiating with the English, stated: "This small rope we show you is all we have to bind our slaves with, and may be broken, but you have iron chains for yours; however if we catch your slaves, we shall bind them as we can, and deliver them to our friends again, and have no pay for it."²²⁹

Native Americans came to understand that there was, indeed, a profound chasm between themselves and the Europeans; increasingly, the Europeans came to understand this difference as "race."²³⁰ Native Americans also came to understand that the Europeans would use this understanding of self based on "race" to enforce a racial hierarchy and enslave an entire population.²³¹ Being first themselves enslaved and then seeing others enslaved, the followers of the "old ways" came to understand the concept of "natural rights" as it extended to all people of color: