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| Crispus Attucks |
Few
eyewitnesses to the March 1770 Boston Massacre knew much about Crispus Attucks.
However, historians now know he was not the coffee-colored slave on 19th
century posters promoting abolitionists’ cause for emancipation.
Some called him ‘mulatto.’ Others said he was a Nantucket
Indian. But the key to his identity is in his name, said Judy Kertesz, a Lumbee
Indian and assistant professor at North Carolina State University. In 2009, she
spoke as co-curator for Smithsonian Institute’s IndiVisible: African-Native Lives in the Americas National Museum of
the American Indian Symposium.
Attucks is the English version of the Wampanoag name, Ahtugees (ahtu-gees), meaning “little deer.” While Europeans assigned family identity through the father’s line, Native Americans did not, explained Kertesz.
“According to matrilineal Wampanoag and some West African peoples who were oftentimes matrilineal as well, identity was, and continues to be, reckoned according to who one’s mother is. As I like to put it, ‘it’s not who’s yo daddy, it’s who’s yo mama!”
Attucks’ father was Ashanti and his mother was Wampanoag, according to symposium presenters. In early 18th century New England, an African-Native love-child wasn’t that rare.
17th century Northeastern Indians faced extinction
No one disputes that early encounters with Europeans proved disastrous for Native peoples.
Between 1617 and 1619, nearly 90-percent of the Wampanoag tribes, living on the Massachusetts and western Rhode Island borders, died of an epidemic. Modern researchers suspect it spread through rodents from European fishing and trading ships, according to a 2010 study published by the Centers for Disease Control. In 1633, just 14 years later, small pox nearly decimated all the region’s tribes including the Narragansett, Mohegan and Niantic.
Only 3,000 Pequot were left when English settlers and
their Narragansett and Mohegan allies ambushed them in 1636. The survivors of
the Mystic River attack were either enslaved or escaped among other groups.
Thirty years later, after the Pequot resettled in Connecticut, surviving Wampanoag, Narragansett and Nipmuck tribes attacked the colonists. Known as King Philip’s War, it was a desperate attempt to prevent further European encroachment on their land because they outnumbered Native peoples.
By the mid-1700s, remaining Natives joined with colonists in the French and Indian War, and later, the American Revolution. Indian men were dying out because of war and disease, according to Vicki S. Welch, a New England Native American genealogist.
“The number of men from given villages, often who served, included many between the ages of 16 and 60. They were scouts and experienced very high death rates, up to 80% in a given village,” according to Welch.
African man, Native woman
However, African men were available.
Rhode Island was the hub of the New England slave trade
by the beginning of the 18th century. By the end of the century, the
African population – both slave and free – grew from 1,000 in 1700 to roughly
16,000.
Slavery wasn’t as restrictive as it later became. Slaves were allowed to grow and sell from their small allotments at market once a week. Also, in many cases, slaves weren’t necessarily bound for life. Owners often chose to release them after, say, a decade of service.
For Indian women, African men brought a lot to the table. “The slaves worked one day a week for themselves and a lot of them bought their freedom and preferred to marry Native women for free offspring,” Welch said in an interview.
Hiding out in the open
The descendants of these unions aren’t easy to detect. While some live on reservations, others live hidden within the African American community.
The Northeastern Black Indian story is different from the turbulent relationship between Africans and the five “civilized” tribes – Cherokee, Chocktaw, Chicasaw, Creek and Seminole. In those cases, African-Native families formed when tribesmen harbored runaway slaves or became slave owners. Also, free Blacks assimilated into tribes after forming trade relationships with them.
In recent years, historians and genealogists have studied Black Indians of the five tribes more than ever before. But, precious little has been documented about the mixed-race tribes of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
One reason is many African-Americans with Indian heritage have identified with the Black community for generations. Family stories about Indian ancestors may have survived, but cultural affinity with them has been forgotten. Moreover, they don’t always look Indian.
Secondly, many African American families claim to be part Indian, but, in fact, they’re not. Only 4-percent of African Americans can actually prove they have “measurable Native American ancestry” – that is, 12.5-percent or the equivalent of one great-grandparent, according to Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in a recent article posted on The Root.
“That means there's probably another explanation for your great-great grandmother's high cheekbones and straight black hair that swung all the way down her back!”
IndiVisible:African-Native
American Lives in the Americas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_iMjRJUJ0
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe http://mwtribe.exstream.tv/timeline
“New Hypothesis for Cause of
Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616–1619”Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, February 2, 2010, http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/2/09-0276_article.htm
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe http://mwtribe.exstream.tv/timeline
“New Hypothesis for Cause of
Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616–1619”Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, February 2, 2010, http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/2/09-0276_article.htm
Mystic Voices: The Story of
the Pequot War http://pequotwar.com/history.html
“Native
American Genealogy in Connecticut,” by Vicki S. Welch, CSG #7856 S, Connecticut
Genealogy News, Fall, 2009, www.csginc.org.
“Chronicling
Black Lives in Colonial New England: Historians and archaeologists piece
together a revealing look at free and slave life in the North,”The Christian
Science monitor, Ocotber 29, 1997. http://www.csmonitor.com/1997/1029/102997.feat.feat.1.html
“Seeking
Proof of Native American Roots? Tracing Your Roots: A reader hopes a fire that
destroyed family records won’t halt his search,” By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
posted March 29, 2013 at 12:47 AM http://www.theroot.com/views/seeking-proof-native-american-roots
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