Black - Indian History Information - Slavery (by tribe)

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Cherokee Slavery

Halliburton, R., Jr. Red Over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians. Greenwood Press, l977. This poorly written study emphasizes the post-removal period.

Perdue, Theda. Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1548-1866. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979. This is an excellent study of the ways the Cherokees adopted the institution of slavery and practiced it from the colonial period to the Civil War.

Chickasaw Slavery

*[No detailed history of slavery among the Chickasaws has been written.]

Choctaw Slavery

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr., and Mary Ann Littlefield. "The Beams Family: Free Blacks in Indian Territory." The Journal of Negro History 41 (January 1976): 17-35. This is a study of a remarkable family's struggle against slave hunters and their physical and legal efforts to survive.

*[No detailed history of slavery among the Choctaws has been written.]

Creek Slavery

Braund Holland, Kathryn E. "The Creek Indians, Blacks and Slavery," Journal of Southern History 57 (November 1991): 601-636.

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. Africans and Creeks. Westport, CT: Greeenwood Press, 1979. This work presents a history of black-Creek contact from the colonial period to the Civil War.

Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. The Negro on the American Frontier. New York: Arno Press, 1971. Although this work emphasizes the Seminoles, Porter deals with tribes indigenous to the Southeast and treats their history in the post-removal period.

Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the Muscogulge People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. This work details the role of people of African descent in the history of the Creeks and Seminoles primarily in the pre-removal period, with some emphasis, however, on the post-removal and post-Civil War periods.

Seminole Slavery

Klos, George E. "Black Seminoles in Territorial Florida." Southern Historian 10 (1989): 26-42. This adds little new information to previous studies.

Klos, George E. "Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835." Florida Historical Quarterly 68 (1989): 55-78. This adds little new information to previous studies.

Littlefield, Daniel F. Jr. Africans and Seminoles. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. This work explores slavery and other relationships between Seminoles and blacks from the late eighteenth century to the American Civil War. Reprinted at the end of this work are a number of lists of slaves with varying amounts of biographical information.

Opala, Joseph. "Seminole-African Relations on the Florida Frontier," [University of Oklahoma] Papers in Anthropology 22 (Spring 1981): 11-51. This work adds little new information to previous studies.

Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. The Negro on the American Frontier. New York: Arno Press, 1971. This is pioneering scholarship on the Seminole slaves and free blacks.

Watts, Jill. "'We Do Not Live for Ourselves Only'"; Seminole Black Perceptions and the Second Seminole War." UCLA Historical Journal 7 (1986): 5-28. This work is interesting for its attmept to look at events from the blacks' perspectives.