The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship

by Daniel F. Littlefield Jr.

Littlefield unravels the complex history of the demise of the Cherokee nation. In overwhelming detail he reconstructs the nation's 40 year struggle to define the social, political, and legal status of the freed blacks among them. The freedmen issue led to federal intervention on behalf of the blacks, which eroded the nation's autonomy; it exhausted the nation's resources; it bred division among the Cherokees; and it persuaded white Americans that the Cherokees had no special claim to Indian land or governmental favors.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 4, 1978

Reviews

[Valerie]

I THINK this is the book I read. I got interested in Native Americans of African descent when I met some in Oklahoma. When various tribes were force-marched to "Indian Territory" (later Oklahoma), their slaves went with them, and many were freed and incorporated into the tribes of their former masters. Also, of course, some escaped slaves were adopted into various tribes (notably the Seminole).

We tend to think of African American and Native American histories as being perennially separate--books like this, or the folk tales of Black Indian Krewes in Mardi Gras, remind us that it wasn't that simple.