Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South

by Barbara Krauthamer

Overview

From the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians bought, sold, and owned Africans and African Americans as slaves, a fact that persisted after the tribes' removal from the Deep South to Indian Territory. The tribes formulated racial and gender ideologies that justified this practice and marginalized free black people in the Indian nations well after the Civil War and slavery had ended. Through the end of the nineteenth century, ongoing conflicts among Choctaw, Chickasaw, and U.S. lawmakers left untold numbers of former slaves and their descendants in the two Indian nations without citizenship in either the Indian nations or the United States. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara Krauthamer rewrites the history of southern slavery, emancipation, race, and citizenship to reveal the centrality of Native American slaveholders and the black people they enslaved.
Krauthamer's examination of slavery and emancipation highlights the ways Indian women's gender roles changed with the arrival of slavery and changed again after emancipation and reveals complex dynamics of race that shaped the lives of black people and Indians both before and after removal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469621876
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/01/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Barbara Krauthamer is associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A brilliant exploration of the entangled histories of African American slavery and Indian dispossession. Rich, superbly researched, and fascinating." —Stephanie M. H. Camp, University of Washington, Seattle

Black Slaves, Indian Masters is a broad, lucid, robust study of Blacks in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations from the period of slavery through emancipation. Barbara Krauthamer carefully asserts critical insights and tough arguments about the nature of slavery, racial hierarchy, and Black resistance in these communities. Her sharp analysis not only reveals variations in slaveholding practices and outcomes in Indian Territory, but also the integral links between an expanding U.S. cotton kingdom, Indian Removal, and Native slave ownership." —Tiya Miles, author of The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story

In this powerfully written and carefully researched study, Barbara Krauthamer tells a wholly new story of slavery and emancipation. Her attention to the declining land and sovereignty of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations in the context of their ownership of slaves complicates our understanding of the ways African Americans experienced and resisted bondage. The traditional historical landmarks along the road to the Civil War and its aftermath will never look quite the same." —Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." —Choice

An important overview of the lives of African and African American peoples who played relevant, active roles in United States affairs, adeptly navigated tribal and United States federal bureaucracy, and effectively articulated their views on race and identity." —Ohio Valley History

Such a rich and meaningful work from a significant era of national history that it could offer breadth and depth to any U.S. History collection, but especially library collections focusing on the pre-Civil War South, African American history, Native American history, 18th and 19th century history, and slavery and emancipation." —Tennessee Libraries

In this compelling study Krauthamer successfully demonstrates black Americans' struggle for their liberation and subsequent rights as citizens." —Southern Historian

Krauthamer's study utilizes a wide variety of sources that weave together social, political, legal, racial, and indigenous history in important ways." —Journal of Interdisciplinary History

In this new book readers will find the most detailed picture yet of the lives of enslaved peoples living in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations." —Journal of American History

Provides a wonderful context for those interested in more contemporary questions about Native people's right to define their own citizenry." —Journal of the Civil War Era

Make[s] an important contribution to the literature on Indian slavery, the Civil War in Indian Territory, and Reconstruction." —American Historical Review

Krauthamer's history substantially enriches our understanding of the Civil War era and its connections to the history of race in America." —H-Net Reviews

[A] fine book [that] joins a small but growing and critical body of scholarship dedicated to returning American Indians to their rightful place within the nineteenth century." —The Historian

Offers an excellent analysis and contextualization of American Indian sovereignty and African American rights within the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. . . . [and] reveal[s] important ideas and information on notions of 'racial superiority' and how they evolved before and after Indian removal." —Journal of African American History

From the Publisher