attakullakulla, the cherokee diplomat who went to london in 1730 and signed a treaty with the king of england — he’s in my tree. his son dragging canoe refused to sign away 20 million acres and started a guerrilla war instead. father and son. diplomacy and resistance. in the same bloodline. in my bloodline.
james logan colbert, my 5th great grand-father, a scottish trader who married three chickasaw women and became a captain in the british army during the revolutionary war. his mixed-race sons became the elite of the chickasaw nation. they also became slaveholders. that part is harder to sit with.
the part that sits heavy
because here’s what i had to read alongside the chiefs and the warriors and the diplomats.
i also read the names of women listed only as “slave of.” enslaved concubine of edmund perry. slave mistress of colbert. slave of pitman colbert. no first names. no birth dates. just property lines in someone else’s record.
i read about mobile colbert stevenson — a man who walked the trail of tears while enslaved. and his wife lena (lanie) colbert — the mixed-race daughter of a prominent chickasaw leader and an enslaved woman. their children were born into both indigenous identity and legal bondage at the same time.
additional reading:
- The African-Native American Genealogy Blog “The Stevenson Families of the Chickasaw Nation – One of the more complex and fascinating sets of family lines comes from the Stevensons who were Freedmen of the Chickasaw Nation. The challenge in researching these families stems from the fact that several families all had a wife or mother called Elsie Stevenson. These families were large, several of them lived in Pickens County, and some in the same town as well.” l
- TRAIL OF TEARS – The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture “The term “Trail of Tears” refers to the difficult journeys that the Five Tribes took during their forced removal from the southeast during the 1830s and 1840s. The Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole were all marched out of their ancestral lands to Indian Territory, or present Oklahoma.”
i read about the dawes commission, which forced every person in indian territory to enroll on a roll. if you looked Black, you went on the freedmen roll — 40 acres. if you looked indigenous, you went on the “by blood” roll — 320 acres. same family. same language. same land. different line on a government form. different future.
and then i read about buck colbert franklin…
continue reading part 2 -from powhatan to the tulsa race massacre
