Mixed Race Studies

The black Americans suing to reclaim their Native American identity

The Guardian
2018-10-02

Caleb Gayle

Rhonda Grayson, with an image of her great-great grandfather Willie Cohee. Photograph: Brett Deering for the Guardian

Their ancestors were black slaves owned by Native Americans. Now they’re suing the Creek nation to fully restore their citizenship

Johnnie Mae Austin and her grandson, Damario Solomon-Simmons, can tell you everything about their ancestry. They can go back as far as 1810, the year Solomon-Simmons’ great-great-great-great-grandfather, Cow Tom, was born. With undeniable pride, they recount the man’s feats of bravery during the civil war, and his leadership within Oklahoma’s Creek population.

In fact, they are so determined to let the world know exactly who Cow Tom was that they’re suing the Creek nation to make sure his descendants aren’t forgotten.

Solomon-Simmons and his grandmother are black, but they argue they’re also Creek, and they’re fighting to reclaim their identity…

Red the entire article here.

African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation

University of Oklahoma Press
2007
368 pages, 6″ x 9″
Illustrations: 15 color illustrations, 4 maps
Hardcover ISBN: 9780806138152
Paperback ISBN: 9780806168951

Gary Zellar, Assistant Professor of History
University of Saskatchewan

A narrative history of the African Creek community

Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste—black people—and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish entradas. They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods, and shared kinship ties. Their only difference was the color of their skin.

This book tells how people of African heritage came to blend their lives with those of their Indian neighbors and essentially became Creek themselves. Taking in the full historical sweep of African Americans among the Creeks, from the sixteenth century through Oklahoma statehood, Gary Zellar unfolds a narrative history of the many contributions these people made to Creek history.

Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Zellar reveals how African people functioned as warriors, interpreters, preachers, medicine men, and even slave labor, all of which allowed the tribe to withstand the shocks of Anglo-American expansion. He also tells how they provided leaders who helped the Creeks navigate the onslaught of allotment, tribal dissolution, and Oklahoma statehood.

In his compelling narrative, Zellar describes how African Creeks made a place for themselves in a tolerant Creek Nation in which they had access to land, resources, and political leverage—and how post–Civil War “reform” reduced them to the second-class citizenship of other African Americans. It is a stirring account that puts history in a new light as it adds to our understanding of the multi-ethnic nature of Indian societies.