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Race and the Cherokee Nation: Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century
"We believe by blood only," said a Cherokee resident of Oklahoma, speaking to reporters in 2007 after voting in favor of the Cherokee Nation constitutional amendment limiting its membership. In an election that made headlines around the world, a majority of Cherokee voters chose to eject from their tribe the descendants of the African American freedmen Cherokee Indians had once enslaved. Because of the unique sovereign status of Indian nations in the United States, legal membership in an Indian nation can have real economic benefits. In addition to money, the issues brought forth in this election have racial and cultural roots going back before the Civil War.
Race and the Cherokee Nation examines how leaders of the Cherokee Nation fostered a racial ideology through the regulation of interracial marriage. By defining and policing interracial sex, nineteenth-century Cherokee lawmakers preserved political sovereignty, delineated Cherokee identity, and established a social hierarchy. Moreover, Cherokee conceptions of race and what constituted interracial sex differed from those of blacks and whites. Moving beyond the usual black/white dichotomy, historian Fay A. Yarbrough places American Indian voices firmly at the center of the story, as well as contrasting African American conceptions and perspectives on interracial sex with those of Cherokee Indians.
For American Indians, nineteenth-century relationships produced offspring that pushed racial and citizenship boundaries. Those boundaries continue to have an impact on the way individuals identify themselves and what legal rights they can claim today.
Race and the Cherokee Nation examines how leaders of the Cherokee Nation fostered a racial ideology through the regulation of interracial marriage. By defining and policing interracial sex, nineteenth-century Cherokee lawmakers preserved political sovereignty, delineated Cherokee identity, and established a social hierarchy. Moreover, Cherokee conceptions of race and what constituted interracial sex differed from those of blacks and whites. Moving beyond the usual black/white dichotomy, historian Fay A. Yarbrough places American Indian voices firmly at the center of the story, as well as contrasting African American conceptions and perspectives on interracial sex with those of Cherokee Indians.
For American Indians, nineteenth-century relationships produced offspring that pushed racial and citizenship boundaries. Those boundaries continue to have an impact on the way individuals identify themselves and what legal rights they can claim today.
- GenresHistory
200 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2007
39 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 31, 2019
I came across RCN in one of the bibliographies of another Native American related book I read some months ago. As I have read some other books on the Cherokee in the last few years I thought this one might expand my knowledge.
To Yarbrough’s credit it did, at least in some respects. Through a systematic review of primary and secondary sources she made her argument: that Cherokee views of race evolved from practically nonexistent in the late 18th century to rigidly hierarchical by the end of the Civil War where they saw themselves as equal to White EuroAmericans and superior to African Americans. She attributed this to two factors. First, they were trying to preserve their sovereignty in the face of the onslaught, physical and cultural, of White Americans. Second, by the early 19th century some of them had become slave owners themselves. Thus, as they assimilated into American culture in some respects they adopted many of the racist attitudes Whites held towards African American slaves.
The author deserved kudos for her introduction. With the assistance of a few maps she provided a succinct summary of the history of the Cherokee in what became the southeastern USA.
Unfortunately, the book does not sustain this clarity and conciseness. First, as it goes along it becomes quite redundant. Second, its prose has far too many complex, compound sentences for my tastes. These two elements taken together made for tedium and/or frustration because it is slow going at times. I might well have not finished the book save for the fact that its text is only 130 pages in length.
As I was as much relieved as I was satisfied when I finished it I would rate it at 3 stars. About half way through I wondered, ‘Where was the editor on this book? Why allow it to get published in this style?’
For those readers wanting to learn about this topic I recommend Ties that Bind by Tiya Miles. It is about the complex and ambivalent relationships that African American slaves had with their Cherokee owners in a still scholarly but non-redundant and much more readable format. Citizen Creek by Lalita Tademy is historical fiction about an African American slave and his granddaughter living with the Creek tribe in the 19th century.
To Yarbrough’s credit it did, at least in some respects. Through a systematic review of primary and secondary sources she made her argument: that Cherokee views of race evolved from practically nonexistent in the late 18th century to rigidly hierarchical by the end of the Civil War where they saw themselves as equal to White EuroAmericans and superior to African Americans. She attributed this to two factors. First, they were trying to preserve their sovereignty in the face of the onslaught, physical and cultural, of White Americans. Second, by the early 19th century some of them had become slave owners themselves. Thus, as they assimilated into American culture in some respects they adopted many of the racist attitudes Whites held towards African American slaves.
The author deserved kudos for her introduction. With the assistance of a few maps she provided a succinct summary of the history of the Cherokee in what became the southeastern USA.
Unfortunately, the book does not sustain this clarity and conciseness. First, as it goes along it becomes quite redundant. Second, its prose has far too many complex, compound sentences for my tastes. These two elements taken together made for tedium and/or frustration because it is slow going at times. I might well have not finished the book save for the fact that its text is only 130 pages in length.
As I was as much relieved as I was satisfied when I finished it I would rate it at 3 stars. About half way through I wondered, ‘Where was the editor on this book? Why allow it to get published in this style?’
For those readers wanting to learn about this topic I recommend Ties that Bind by Tiya Miles. It is about the complex and ambivalent relationships that African American slaves had with their Cherokee owners in a still scholarly but non-redundant and much more readable format. Citizen Creek by Lalita Tademy is historical fiction about an African American slave and his granddaughter living with the Creek tribe in the 19th century.
June 27, 2015
Interesting portrayal of how the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma owned black slaves, and how the Cherokee kept the black freedmen in a subordinate class of citizen after the Civil War. Yarbrough stretches her sources to the limits, though, and she raises more questions than she answers. The book needs more context about the Indian Territory, which eventually became Oklahoma.
October 29, 2019
"Cherokee nations represent one site for the exploration of how one race group suspended within a web of power responded to the precariousness of its own position by racializing another group (131)"
May 9, 2021
Didn't know what I didn't know. Read it for work related purposes.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews