1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation
Part of North American slave revolts |
The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation was the largest escape of a group of
The fugitives met with two
What has been described as "the most spectacular act of rebellion against slavery" among the Cherokee, the 1842 event inspired subsequent
Background
Prior to
The Cherokee adopted the practice of using enslaved African Americans on their plantations from European Americans. Most Cherokee held fewer slaves and labored with them at subsistence agriculture.[2] Slaves worked primarily as agricultural laborers, cultivating both cotton for their master's profit and food for consumption. Some slaves were skilled laborers, such as seamstresses and blacksmiths. Like other slaveholders, affluent Cherokee used slaves as a portable labor force. They developed robust farms, salt mines, and trading posts created with slave labor.
The Cherokee brought many of their slaves with them to the West in the
By 1835, the time of removal, the Cherokee owned an estimated total of 1500 slaves of
By 1860, the Cherokee held an estimated 4,600 slaves, and depended on them as farm laborers and domestic servants. At the time of the Civil War, a total of more than 8,000 slaves were held in all of the Indian Territory, where they comprised 14 percent of the population.[2]
Events of the revolt
The mass escape of 20 enslaved African Americans from the Cherokee territory began on November 15, 1842, and has been called "the most spectacular act of rebellion against slavery" among the Cherokee.
Along the way, the fugitives encountered two slave catchers, James Edwards, a white man, and Billy Wilson, a
On November 17, the Cherokee National Council in Tahlequah passed a resolution authorizing Cherokee Militia Captain John Drew to raise a company of 100 citizens to "pursue, arrest, and deliver the African Slaves to Fort Gibson." (The resolution also relieved the government of the Cherokee Nation of any liability if the slaves resisted arrest and had to be killed.) The commander at Fort Gibson loaned Drew 25 pounds of gunpowder for the militia.[4]
The large force caught up with the slaves seven miles north of the
The slave revolt inspired future slave rebellions in the Indian Territory. By 1851, a total of nearly 300 blacks had tried to escape from Indian Territory.[5] Most headed for Mexico or the area of the future Kansas Territory, where residents prohibited slavery.
Economic impact
Indian slaveholders bought and sold slaves, often doing business with white slaveholders in the neighboring states of Texas and Arkansas. The owners in both areas always considered enslaved Africans to be property.
After the revolt, the Cherokee often hired non-slave holding Indians to catch runaway slaves. In the past, some of these people had struggled to eat, while slave-owning families flourished in a market economy driven by slave labor. Some among these once poor Cherokee became wealthy by providing services to the 'rescue' company in catching fugitive slaves. When slave catching expeditions were mounted, such trackers were paid. They were also authorized to buy ammunition and supplies for the hunt, at the expense of the Nation (provided that the expedition was not "unnecessarily protracted and did not incur needless expenses").
Outcome
The slave revolt had threatened the security of the labor force and owners' profits. The Nation passed a stricter slave code and required expulsion of free blacks from the territory, as they were considered to foster discontent among slaves. After the American Civil War, planters and the upper class of the Cherokee Nation shifted from plantation agriculture to developing manufacture of small-scale products, which were sold internally, instead of being exported.
As a mass escape that resulted in casualties and deaths of both slaves and others, the 1842 slave revolt was widely reported by newspapers. Even 50 years later, when the Fort Smith Elevator of Arkansas published an anniversary article about the escape, the account had a kind of mythic power.[1] It recounted a morning when Cherokee slaveholders could not find their slaves and said that "hundreds" had disappeared overnight, rather than the 20 of fact.[1]
The slaveholder Joseph Vann was killed two years later in 1844, in the Lucy Walker steamboat disaster.
See also
- African American diaspora
- Atlantic slave trade
- Mascogos
- Cherokee Freedmen
References
- ^ a b c d e Tiya Miles, Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, University of California Press, 2005, pp. 170–73
- ^ a b c d "Slavery" Archived October 18, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society, Retrieved November 14, 2010
- ISBN 0-8078-2111-X
- ^ a b c d Art T. Burton, "Slave Revolt of 1842" Archived November 3, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History and Culture, accessed 14 February 2014
- ^ Art T. Burton, "Cherokee Slave Revolt in 1842," True West Magazine (June 1996)
Further reading
- Rudi Halliburton, Jr., Red Over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977).
- Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Africans and Creeks: From the Colonial Period to the Civil War, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.
- Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., The Chickasaw Freedmen: A People Without a Country, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.
- Theda Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979.
- Kaye M. Teall, Black History in Oklahoma: A Resource Book (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma City Public Schools, 1971).
- Morris L. Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 1838–1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977).
- Murray R. Wickett, Contested Territory: Whites, Native Americans, and African Americans in Oklahoma, 1865–1907, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.