Eric Richardson asks, "is there then not the possibility of persistence of
Native communities across
the southeast? Applying Helen Rountree's argument about Native circular
community formation to the broader region."
This was probably directed at me, so I will reply.
So-called persistent Native communities in the Southeast were an invention
after the Civil War to allow for three castes in the Jim Crow system. In
"Pocahontas's People" Roundtree highlights the Bass family of Norfolk County
that descends from John Bass who married a baptized Nansemond Indian woman
in 1638. Rountree does not explain that they and their grandchildren lived
in the English community like any other colonist: bought and sold land, were
sued in court for debt, indicted for selling liquor without a license, paid
taxes, worked on the county roads, etc. And their grandchild William Bass,
of one-fourth Indian ancestry, married Sarah Lovina the "Mulatto" daughter
of Major John Nicholls and his "Negro" slave Jean Lovina. Nickols gave her
200 acres by his 1696 Norfolk County will but left her mother as a slave
[Will Book 6:95a-96]. When William and Sarah Bass sold 48 acres of this land
on the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in 1737, they described it as
land "that Major Nichols gave unto the said Sarah Bass before her marriage
to the sd. Wm. Bass" [Deed Book 12:188]. This William's brothers John and
Edward went to North Carolina where most of their children married free
African Americans.
So, their descendants were more African than they were Indian. None ever
married another Indian. This was true of nearly all familes with Indian
ancestry. They blended into the free African American community during the
colonial period. Joseph Douglas Deal did not find a single nuclear Indian
family on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. There was no such thing as an
Indian-White community in the Southeast during the colonial period.
The other supposed Nansemond Indian families were the Weaver family
(descendants of East Indians who mixed with African Americans in Lancaster
County), the Newton family (descendants of a "free Mulatto" woman of Norfolk
County who left a will in 1743 by which she freed her "Mulatto" slave
husband Abraham Newton. This was one of the few manumissions approved by the
colonial Legislature [Executive Journals of the Council V:196, 215]), the
Price, Perkins and Hall families (descendants of white women by African
American men.
Although the concept of Indians being the ones with the lighter skin started
during Jim Crow in most places in the Southeast, Norfolk County started this
practice much earlier in 1833 after the "not Negro" law was passed by
issuing certificates of Indian descent to light-skinned free people of
color. Descendants of an Indian slave named Molly Cook (who had obviously
mixed with African slaves) won their freedom in 1819, and the clerk recorded
the fact that they were free because of descent from an Indian woman on
their certificates of freedom in 1819. But their children were too dark to
be included among those who received certificates of "Indian Descent" after
1833. Asa Price, with no proof of Indian ancestry, received a certificate of
"Indian Descent" when a white man testrified that Asa's father had married a
white woman [Register of Free Negroes & Mulattoes, 1809-1852, nos. 201-2,
342-4, 904, 1041-3, 1054; Court Minutes 23:180]. Lucy Bass ("a coloured
woman") married William Trumbell ("a coloured man") 8 February 1822 Norfolk
County bond, Willis Bass bondsman. Lucy received a certificate of "Indian
Descent" in 1833, but her husband did not. John Bass, "free man of colour,"
married Sally Price, "free woman of colour," 18 August 1812 Norfolk County
bond. He was called a "Molatto man, a free man of colour," in 1822 when he
was murdered by a white man.
The so-called Native communites that emerged after the Civil War in places
like Amherst County, Virginia, Robeson County, North Carolina, Kent and
Sussex counties, Delaware, Charles County, Maryland, etc., were identical to
the light-skinned "free Mulatto" and "free colored" communities that lived
there during the colonial and early national periods. It all started in
Robeson County, North Carolina, in 1885 when the Democrats invented the
Croatan Indian tribe in order to win the votes of the former free persons of
color in a county and state that were almost equally divided between
Republican and Democrat. As part of the agreement to call them Indians they
were forbidden to marry "Negroes." (I wonder why that was necessary?) They
had three sets of water fountains, seating areas, rest rooms, etc, during
Jim Crow. When the former free persons of color of adjoining Sampson County
applied to be called Indians in 1916, they gave as evidence the marriages of
many of their children to Robeson County families, their marriages to white
women, and the fact that they had forced off the tax list of 1912 those
Indians who "were known to contain negro blood."
Even distinguished Professor Malinda Lowery of UNC, a Lumbee, admits that it
is a tribe that was created to shield the community from Jim Crow but argues
that ethnic identity is a social fiction and therefore assent to becoming an
Indian is as valid as descent from known historic tribes [Lowery, Lumbee
Indians in the Jim Crow South (UNC Press, 2010)].
Paul
I traced the family history of nearly every family of African descent that
was free during the colonial period in the Southeast, and you can find among
them nearly every family that claims to be Indian. Most descend from over
1,000 mixed-race children born to white servant women by slaves.
http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/
Some photos of Indian families:
http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/photos_Indians.htm
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