Paul,
Yes, he was the face of the administration, but he left an impression 
that still lingers today. It is the same with the militias, and KKK, 
who are the face of those who are in power. 

I understand the point you were making, and agree with your premise. 

Anita 



-- Paul Heinegg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Anita. You wrote, "Plecker identified Indians as, "issue", a 
derogatory 
term. He was not as benign a character as you make him out to be. He 
knew 
nothing about the racial makeup of Native Americans, except what he 
was 
told, and what was in the record. You almost make it seem like he was 
performing a public service. This is the same thing Hitler did with 
the Jews 
in Nazi Germany."
-----------

I am sorry if I gave the wrong impression in my posting. Plecker was 
a 
monster. But he had a boss who had a boss who had a boss who was the 
elected 
governor of Virginia and all were obviously pleased with what he was 
doing 
or they would have fired him. He did not pass the laws he enforced.

The Racial Integrity act and the Sterilization act were passed by the 
legislature and signed into law by the governor who presumably had 
the 
support of most Virginians. Eugenics was taught at a number of 
Virginia 
universities and UVA was one of the leaders on the subject in the 
country. 
The main target of the movement was not Indians but African 
Americans, Jews, 
mental patients and poor whites. Concentrating on Plecker's changing 
birth 
certificates obscures this.
See http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/02/virginia-
eugenics.htm
and http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay8text.html

The fact that "Indians" thought the term "issues" was derogatory 
means that 
they resented being categorized with African Americans who had been 
free 
before the Civil War and that they preferred the three caste system 
of 
white/ Indian and African American because it insulated them from 
some of 
the effects of Jim Crow. They were not responsible for instituting 
Jim Crow 
or the caste system, but I get the impression that many of their 
modern-day 
descendants are horrified that their "Indian" ancestors were treated 
like 
African Americans. We need to be mindful of the fact that millions of 
African Americans were treated like African Americans.

The history of most of the "Indian" families Plecker attacked are on 
my 
website. Like many tribes recognized by Virginia as Indians, most of 
the 
families bore the names of African Americans who had been free since 
colonial times and lived among the English, owning land, paying 
taxes, 
appearing in court, etc. One of these tribes, the Monacans, have no 
evidence 
of a single Indian ancestor. The Nansemond tribe does have one single 
Indian 
ancestor: the Nansemond Indian woman who married John Bass in 1638. 
Tribes 
like the Pamunkey, Mattaponi and Chickahominy have well documented 
ties with 
the free African Americans who lived in the communities surrounding 
them, 
but they vigorously deny this.

In 1843 the white neighbors of the Pamunkey and Mattaponi sent a 
petition to 
the legislature saying, "Now the Pamunkys form only a small remnant 
of the 
population, having so largely mingled with the negro race as to have 
obliterated all striking features of Indian extraction. Their land is 
now 
inhabited by two unincorporated bands of free mulattoes in the midst 
of a 
large slave holding community." The Pamunkey submitted a counter-
petition in 
which they claimed that they were generally of at least half Indian 
extraction. No Indian reservation in Virginia had a large enough 
population 
to have been self-sustaining, and they mixed so freely with the 
African 
American population, both free and slave, that it appears they did 
not share 
white Virginian's ideas on race--at least before the threats to force 
them 
to sell their reservations. Also, well before 1800 nearly all the 
Pamunkeys 
were related to each other, so they had little choice but to find 
marriage 
partners outside the reservation.

It is good that Virginians with some Indian ancestry are proud of it, 
but 
they should also be proud of their African American ancestry as well.

I have some photos of Virginia Indians taken by the Smithsonian about 
1900.
http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/photos_Indians.htm

Paul 
 

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