It would be years before I learned that the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—had enslaved Black people, that some Native people held (and hold) the same racist attitude toward Black people that many Whites do. There was no “natural” alliance. This displays very well the contingent nature of history, and how difficult it can be, when considering the history of a given time and place, to keep in mind that our view is colored by the knowledge of how things turned out. Writers, and consumers, of history must take great care not to import the
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