Black, White, and Indian

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Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family  
BlackWhiteandIndian.jpg
Author(s) Claudio Saunt
Publisher Harvard University Press
Publication date 2005-4-21
Pages 300
ISBN 9780195176315

“What do you define yourself as?” “Check the box that BEST describes your race.” It is impossible to escape race in America. Our society is filled with questions like those above. People act surprised when somebody is black, because they “never would have guessed.” Racial identity permeates our culture. We live in an age when news outlets report on a member of the Black Lives Matter movement having a white relative. Somehow, this makes him not fit for the movement. What is race anymore? Amerindians have asked similar questions since first contact with Europeans. Perhaps no other group of peoples have experienced the muddling of racial and ethnic boundaries then them. Claudio Saunt opens his monograph Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmasking of an American Family with a look at Dartmouth College’s national conference on black Indians. Tensions are high throughout. Expletives are thrown, arguments are had, and the conference is marked by more discontent than the healing some expected. Some Indians are quoted as asking “I want to be Afro-American, can I be?” showing the divide that exists, even among the same groups (Saunt 7). It all begs the question: Who is a Native American?

Black, White, and Indian is an attempt to answer this question. It is written in a narrative style, and generally flows well between chapters. In between, profiles cover different members of the Creek nation, representing both sides of the argument of the racial argument. While the profiles do split the narrative up, they do add supplementary info to Saunt’s argument. It is a generally readable book, lacking tangents and keeping on his thesis throughout.

Saunt’s case study for this book is the Grayson family. Tracing their history to a Creek settlement in the 1700s. The family, of Indian/Scottish origin, would grow to include former slaves and their mixed children, all of whom claim to be part of the Creek family. The family would be divided along racial lines, disown one another, and even fight on opposing sides during the Civil War. The division of the Graysons, Saunt says, reflects the greater division occurring among other Native American tribes. It can be said, based off Saunt’s book, that there is no real answer to the question above. If there is an answer, then it surely has changed, adapted over time to reflect policy, in an attempt by Indians to keep their heritage alive. Saunt begins his book with the marriage of Robert Grierson, the Scottish patriarch of the Grayson family, to a Creek woman named Sinnugee. Sinugee is already an enigma for Saunt to exemplify. She was not born into the Creek village of Hilabi where she lived; she was a refugee from Spanish Florida. The racial conflicts seen in the coming centuries were evident here. Robert had numerous slaves. Despite being married to a Creek, he whipped those that stole. This led to the Grayson homestead coming under attack during the Redstick revolt in 1813. The Redsticks were a group of revolutionary Creeks who used violence to resist the encroaching politics and culture of white settlers. Robert, despite his Creek wife, was a rancher, and a slaveowner. He married in, but was seen as an outsider. Even before the family was relocated to Indian Territory, Creeks were already trying to sort out.

The larger conflicts began in July. Katy, Robert’s young daughter, had 2 children, by what her grandson would call “a Negro” (Saunt 21). This came at the same time the Creeks were developing racial law codes. The timing of these codes, Saunt mentions, coincides with increased white incursion into Creek lands. These incursions normally resulted in the selling of Creek lands. A pattern emerges, showing an attempt at assimilation by Creeks, taking their dress, legal codes, and material goods. The pattern of assimilation is nothing new. The Cherokees created an alphabet, lived in American-style brick houses, and owned slaves. Katy’s situation is nothing new. There is a blurring effect; white, black, and Indian culture were in a constant state of flux.

So, were the out-of-wedlock Grayson children black, or Indian? Katy would chose to later own slaves. Her brothers Watt and Sandy became involved in shady land deals with the government. They chose to adapt to white culture. Her brother William would make an even more drastic decision. He not only began a relationship with an inherited slave, Judah, but eventually freed and married her. This came in 1834, as the Creeks’ land was sold from under their feet, and they were forced to relocate to what is now Oklahoma. William and his family moved independently, but suffered from his relationship with Judah. Katy stayed in Creek land in Alabama, remarried, and kept slaves. She lived as the whites in the area did. But, in 1837, she, too, left for Indian Territory. She, however, was forced out, escorted by the Army.

Katy could have asked William for help. They could have bought land nearby, united as ousted Creek Indians, and make their family whole again. But that is not what they did. Katy settled thirty miles away from William. They, like many other Creeks during the antebellum period, chose their whiteness as their distinguishing factor. They owned slaves. They began to call themselves “white Indians” (Saunt 67). Wash Grayson, Katy’s nephew, and whose autobiography served as the catalyst for Saunt’s book, commanded himself as a white man. During the Civil War, when many Native groups in Indian Territory were divided over who to fight for, Wash chose the Confederacy. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, passed laws banning abolitionists and strengthening bondage. Indians were forced to choose sides; black or white?

This question came to a head when the Dawes Commission came to the Indian Territory. Laws passed in the 1890s allowed for the allotment of the Indian Territory and the subsequent dismantling of the Five Tribes. Allotment, and access to the Creek heritage (and treasury) was based off two rolls; Creeks “by blood” and the “freedmen” (Saunt 154). This spelled disaster for the “black Indians” of the Creeks, including the sons of William and Judah Grayson. Record-keeping in the Creek Nation was unreliable, and the concept of blood-ties was misguided. It came down to, unfortunately, skin color and hearsay. Judah was a former slave; therefore, they were no longer Creek. Wash Grayson and the “by blood” members of the family did not acknowledge their existence. One side entered the realm of whiteness; the other fell under racist laws and subjugation.

Black, White, and Indian, first and foremost, is a book about choices and family. The Grayson children were bound by kinship, but chose to break off from each other based on an outside concept of race. Their story is not unique; not in the worldview, nor in Native American tribes. However, it is a case study for the struggles faced by many Indians, and African-Americans, who faced similar choices in the nineteenth century. These choices made by Katy, William, and Wash Grayson would have lasting effects on their lives and their children’s lives. More importantly, the book is about identity. Creeks were obsessed with figuring out who was a true member of the tribe. It is a question that was impossible to answer when Sinugee married Robert Grierson; the Creeks were a mishmash of freed slaves, white traders, refugees and captives from other ethnic groups. The question of true Creek-ness was made based of racial laws created after the fact in the 1830s; decisions made to ensure the survival of the Creeks. It was, it appers, all for naught, as their lands, and their name, was torn out from under them by the United States government. Their identity as black or white Indians did not matter; they were Indians first, and this put them last.

Who is a Native American? After reading this book, one might still not know the answer. To some, it is only the Indians from the Dawes census. To others, it is those labeled as “freedmen,” or the outcast “mixed” children. Perhaps it could be anybody. Some tribes of dubious origins allow anyone to be an Indian for a nominal fee. In western Georgia, where I live, people always claim to be a fraction Creek or Cherokee. Are these people Indians? Saunt argues that who is Indian depends on who is asking the questions.

I would submit that race is a construct. An ingrained construct, perhaps, but a created state of being nonetheless. I would also argue that it is fluid; the questions of race change over time. Who is considered black, white, or Indian is not the same today as it was in the days of Wash Grayson. Saunt’s book shows the transformation of the Creeks from a culture of inclusivity to an exclusive tribal nation. It was an attempt at to keep their tribe afloat at the hands of the United States government. The Grayson family was forced to choose sides. Some chose to assimilate into white culture. Some were forced into black culture. All of them part of a greater struggle for identity that would affect Native Americans for generations.