Chapter One
Red, Black and White in the Old South
In truth, sacred bonds between blacks and Native Americans, bonds of blood and metaphysical kinship, cannot be documented solely by factual evidence confirming extensive interaction and intermingling -- they are also matters of the heart. These ties are best addressed by those who are not simply concerned with the cold data of history, but who have "history written in the hearts of our people," who then feel for history, not just because it offers facts but because it awakens and sustains connections, renews and nourishes current relations. Before the that is in our hearts can be spoken, remembered with passion and love, we must discuss the myriad ways white supremacy works to impose forgetfulness, creating estrangement between red and black peoples, who though different lived as One.1
bell hooks
Black Looks: Race and Representation
As she approached the bank of the river, their eyes met for the first time. She, the "Beloved Woman" of Cofitachiqui, was seated upon pillows and borne upon a royal vessel accompanied in other canoes by her chief men. He, a slave of Andre de Vasconcelos, was a follower of Hernando De Soto in his expedition to explore and exploit the natural resources of the American Southeast. Yet another of De Soto's followers described this first encounter, "She was a young girl of fine bearing...and she spoke to the governor quite gracefully and at her ease."2 She placed pearls upon the neck of De Soto and stated, "With sincerest and purest goodwill tender you my person my lands, my people, and make you these small gifts."3
Without a doubt, the Cacica had heard of De Soto's coming. When her fellow countrymen had refused to show De Soto to her village, he burned them alive. When a misguided warrior counted coup upon him and challenged De Soto to a manly duel of skill, the Spaniard set his huge Mastiffs upon him and tore him to pieces. Word spread quickly of the coming of these dark men. When the Beloved Woman and De Soto met, this was most certainly a reckoning with forces of power and she knew that her steps must be delicate.
However much De Soto attracted the lady's attention, her eyes continued to fall upon the a different person - the African slave standing a short distance from the main party. There is little doubt that this was not the first time that she had encountered an African, but there was something particularly captivating about this one. Their eyes met and spoke a language beyond words. Two worlds met and yet the vast expanse was crossed in the matter of moments. Over the next couple a days, it was an attraction she could not resist. What was to be a matter of state had become a matter of the heart.
On the third day, the Queen disappeared. De Soto sent his guards to find her but she was not to be found. Taking advantage of her absence, De Soto entered one of the ancient temple mounds that were scattered about the town of Talimico, the religious and political center of the people of Cofitachiqui. The temple mound was one hundred feet long and forty feet wide with massive doors; as he entered the doors, he encountered paired rows of immense wooden statues with diamond shaped heads bearing first batons, then broadswords, and then bows and arrows.4 Like the ancient pyramids of Egypt, these temple mounds contained statues of notable persons of antiquity and chests filled with the remains of the elders. Scattered about the temples were bundles of fur, breastplates, and weapons -- tools for the next life -- covered with pearls, colored leather, and "something green like an emerald."5
De Soto and his men quickly plundered the ancient temple; among the booty were items of a European make, "Biscayan axes or iron and rosaries with their crosses." 6 De Soto and his men determined that these materials were the remnants of the earlier expedition of Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon and his aborted settlement on the Carolina's coast. African slaves were had accompanied de Ayllon's settlement colony on the Peedee River in 1526. When there was a crisis over leadership, the colony fell into disarray. In the midst of this crisis, a slave revolt further ripped the settlement apart. When the colony crumbled, many of the African slaves fled to live among the nearby native people.7 According to De Soto, these refugees must have lived among the Cofitachiqui and taught them the craftwork of the Europeans.8
When the Lady of Cofitachiqui finally returned from her absence, De Soto seized her and forced her to tell him where there was more wealth to be gained. She said that there were riches further inland. De Soto and his men set about to find this land carrying with them the "woman chief" of Cofitachiqui "in return for the good treatment they had received from her."9 After seven days of travel, the party traveled over lofty ridges and arrived at the "province of Chalaque." More specifically they stopped in the high mountains of the Appalachian homelands of the Cherokee people in western North Carolina.10 After staying a few days in Qualla, the party set out for Guaxule where "there were more indications that there were gold mines."11
As they were making their wayon their journey, the Lady of Cotafichiqui "left the road, with the excuse of going in the thicket, where, deceiving them, she so concealed herself that for all their search she could not be found."12 De Soto, frustrated in his quest to find the Beloved Woman all the much more because she had fled with a box of "unbored pearls" of great value, moved on to Guaxule.13 It seems that the Lady had prearranged a rendezvous with other members from De Soto's party. These included an "Indian slave boy from Cuba," a "slave belonging to Don Carlos, a Berber, well versed in Spanish," and "Gomez, a negro belonging to Vasco Goncalvez who spoke good Spanish."14 Alimamos, a horseman sent by De Soto who "got lost," wandered upon the refugee slaves and "labored with the slaves to make leave of their evil designs." Two of the slaves did just that and returned to De Soto but "when they arrived, the Governor wished to hang them."15
However, the horseman Alimamos reported yet another story that was something altogether shocking. He stated that "The Cacica remained in Xualla, with a slave of Andre de Vasconcelas, who would not come with him (Alimamos), and that it was very very sure that they lived together as man and wife, and were to go together to Cutafichiqui."16 In an effort that would be repeated countless times over the next three hundred years, refugee slaves fled from their masters to the sanctuary village of Qualla and were thus protected and given welcome by friendly Indians. Equally important to our collective history, the "Queen of Cofitichiqui" and the "slave of Andre de Vasconcelas" returned to their "village of the dogwoods" on the banks of the Savannah River near Silver Bluff, S.C. where they would begin a life together in what would become a prominent Aframerindian17 community.
1 bell hooks, "Revolutionary Renegades: Native Americans, African Americans, and Black Indians" in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 183. 2 Ranjel in Edward Gaylord Bourne, ed., Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida as told by a Knight of Elvas, and in a Relation by Luys Hernandes de Biedma, Factor of the Expedition; tr. by Buckingham Smith, together with a[n] account of de Soto's Expedition based on the Diary of Rodrigo Ranjel, his secretary, tr. from Oviedo's Historia General y Natural as Indias, (New York, A. S. Barnes and Company, 1904), vol. ii, 100. 3 Gentleman of Elvas in J. Franklin Jameson, Original Narratives of Early American History: Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States (New York: Charled Scribner's Sons, 1907), 172-176. 4 Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976), 111. 5 Bourne, 100. 6 Ibid. 7 R.R. Wright, "Negro Companions of the Spanish Explorers," American Anthropologist 4 (1902): 217-28. 8 Bourne, 101 9 Bourne, 105 10 Jameson, 175 11 Bourne, 104. 12 Jameson, 177 13 Ibid. 14 Bourne, 104 15 Jameson, 177. 16 Ibid. 17 "Thus we observe that relations between Negroes and Indians have been of significance historically, through influencing on occasion the Indian relations of the United States government, and to a much larger extent biologically, through modifying the racial make-up of both the races and even, as some believe, creating a new race which might, perhaps, for want of better term, be called "Aframerindian." Kenneth Wiggins Porter, "Notes Supplementary to `Relations between Negroes and Indians' " in The Journal of Negro History XVIII (January, 1933, Number 1): 321.