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WHEN MY MOTHER told me she’d heard that our family had Cherokee Indian heritage, I groaned. I didn’t want to hear that. Everybody claims Cherokee. No one claims Lenape, Wampanoag, or Apache. It is always Cherokee, as if it’s a placeholder for any kind of indigenous ancestry, never mind the more than five hundred Native American tribes in existence today. The Cherokee is the third-largest tribe, after Navajo and Sioux,1 but Cherokee was the one most often claimed by people I knew growing up. According to Gregory P. Smithers, writing in Slate, the 2000 census found that over eight hundred thousand Americans claimed one Cherokee ancestor. About 70 percent of them claimed to be mixed-race Cherokees. On the one hand, Smithers argues that the claiming of Cherokee blood speaks to “the enduring legacy of American colonialism” as a way for people to absolve themselves of the crimes committed against the Cherokee people. But the benefactors of colonialism were white, not black, and the Cherokee also had a vested interest in white supremacy, for they too enslaved African Americans. Furthermore, Smithers argues that a claim to Cherokee ancestry reflects the tribe’s “wide-ranging migrations throughout North America.”2 So if the Cherokee and African Americans accompanied each other on the Trail of Tears and then dispersed throughout the country, maybe our kinship wasn’t as fictitious as I once thought.
The Cherokee tribe wasn’t the only one that my family claimed. My mother heard of a Cherokee kin on one side of her father’s family, but Pop-Pop and his older brother Curtis spoke of Seminoles in their father’s line. In fact, the relationship between my family and the Seminoles showed how strong the bond between black and indigenous people could be. When my great-grandfather was running from a lynch mob, a Seminole woman probably saved his life.
“He left and went on down to Okefenokee Swamp. When he came out on the other side, he saw a lil’ ol’ Indian woman, who was your great-great-grandfather’s sister,” my Uncle Curtis said. Okefenokee is over two hundred miles from Sumter County. Neither my grandfather nor my Uncle Curtis knows how he got there or where he stopped along the way.
“Which kind?” I asked, in reference to this sister’s tribal heritage.
“He never said, but through my research, the Seminoles were prevalent in that area.”
According to Uncle Curtis, my great-granddad couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her, but she remembered him and was delighted that he had come to visit. While he was living with his aunt, he helped her with her cornfields and most likely planted other crops, such as peanuts and soybeans. To my surprise, my Uncle Curtis was right. The last tribe to seek sanctuary in the Okefenokee Swamp were the Seminoles.3
“You know,” Uncle Curtis continued, “the Seminoles were one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” The Twelve Tribes of Israel were said to have descended from the twelve sons of Jacob, who was the father of the Israelites, God’s chosen people, according to the Old Testament.
Oh, brother, I thought. He’s about to get a little bit too woo-woo on me. Though I didn’t agree with him, there was a reason behind this claim. He and Pop-Pop believed it because the Seminoles were different from the other four of the Five Civilized Tribes, in that they did not enslave black people. In fact, they participated in slave revolts alongside African Americans. The Seminoles’ assistance in protecting enslaved blacks explained why people like my grandfather and his brother held them in great esteem, even granting them biblical status.
If this Seminole woman did in fact take in my great-grandfather, there was precedent for her hospitality. The Seminoles were the tribe best known for providing sanctuary to black people. They lived in what is now Georgia and Florida, where many of the Jerkinses reside to this day. In the seventeenth century, their land became Spanish territory. Before 1693, when slavery was outlawed there, the system was much different from the system developing to the north. Slavery in the Seminole tribe was not a lifelong sentence of unpaid labor. Slaves merely had to pay a percentage of their annual harvest to the tribe. This apparently seemed like a better deal to plantation slaves.4 Many Gullah slaves escaped from the rice plantations of coastal Georgia and South Carolina to Seminole communities in Florida. At that time, Florida was a wilderness frontier full of jungles and malaria-ridden swamps, thus the landscape made it easier for fugitives to get gone and stay gone. These fugitives created free communities as far back as the 1700s and often intermarried into the Seminoles until their communities merged. When the Indian Removal Act took effect, some fled to Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1824. Others moved right along with the rest of the Seminole Nation to Indian Territory, and the rest hid so that they could remain in the only territory that they knew.5
Ironically, the tribe that was friendliest to blacks then is anything but in the present day, and I was certain that this rupture indicated much violence and whitewashed history. Determined to discover more about the relationship between African Americans and Seminole Indians, via Marilyn Vann I contacted a Seminole freedman activist named LeEtta Osborne-Sampson. I was afraid to ask her about my possible Seminole links to Georgia and Florida, worrying that I’d offend her for trying to claim Indian like everyone else, but I realized that I’d never have an opportunity like this again.
I told LeEtta the story of my great-grandfather and asked, “Do you or anyone you know have ancestors who were originally from Georgia or Florida?”
“Yes, many of us. My grandfather owned land in Georgia.” I grinned. She was the perfect link.
Born in 1962 in Sasakwa on an Indian reservation, LeEtta recalled a time when blacks were entirely accepted in the Seminole Nation. Despite their different classifications on the Dawes Rolls, from her vantage point, there was no hostility between blacks and natives. Those who had one black and one indigenous parent were considered mixed-breed, and it wasn’t until LeEtta was twenty-four that she heard the term freedmen and learned all of its implications. The discrimination, she argues, happened when the US government began to provide the Seminole Nation with money. Seminole representatives would annually travel to Washington to give a tally of all the Seminole citizens, because the financial allocation correlated to the population. According to LeEtta, the Seminole Nation would include freedmen in its tally but would never allocate their share of the funds to them. On top of that, Seminole freedmen land was more likely to be repossessed. If you are listed as full-blooded or half-blooded on the Dawes Rolls, your land doesn’t get taxed, but LeEtta’s land is taxed because she is neither full-nor half-blooded. If she were rightfully registered as a Seminole citizen, she would not be getting taxed because she would have the same rights as those on the By Blood Roll. Remember: according to the Dawes Act, if you’re classified as a freedman, you’re all black; you have no native blood regardless of your actual ancestry.
LeEtta is one of four black council members out of twenty-eight and has held this position for seven years. She is considered a member of the tribe but with only one privilege: the right to vote. Seminoles with the freedmen card do not get help with housing, health care, job placement programs, or other benefits from the federal funding pool that the tribe receives. LeEtta can trace her line back to Minerva Moppins, listed on the Freedmen Rolls of Seminole Nation,6 and the “voting privileges only” citizenship card she carries, which she calls a token of apartheid, has been ruled illegal by a federal court. She emphasizes that she will not deal with tribal government anymore because of the discrimination. Her cousin passed away a few years ago because he could not afford the dialysis he would have received free of charge had he received medical benefits from the nation. Freedmen are often denied medical services outright or told that if they don’t have a CDIB, or Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood issued after Dawes Rolls verification, they cannot be seen. “A silent massacre,” is what LeEtta calls it. Extended families had to resort to begging the nation to put holes in the ground for their loved ones; otherwise they would receive no help for proper burials. Freedmen who work at the casinos on Indian reservations are in another world of danger. The wo
men are sexually harassed and the men are accused of sexual harassment. No one who has had these experiences wanted to take part in my fieldwork.
During one disagreement, a fellow member said maybe LeEtta needed to take a trip to the whipping tree that stands in front of the courthouse. There is an image of a lynched black man in the council house.
I said, “I was going to ask if someone could take me to the council house so I could take a picture of it.”
“I’ll take you right there.”
I was stunned. If LeEtta was threatened, what the hell might happen to me—an African American author and journalist with no clear ties to that place? Of course, I wanted to see the image, but I also did not want to see it. But I had to see the image in its setting to experience it as both a historical artifact and a present-day warning. I was not used to that kind of intimidation. Sure, I have read of nooses hanging on the doorknobs of offices belonging to black employees in companies all along the East Coast, but reading is not the same as seeing. I needed to see this threat of racial terrorism up close.
LeEtta has been told by council members to relent with her activism in order to not fan any flames. Still she does not budge, in spite of her fear for her life and the lives of her family: “As long as the river flow and the grass is green, we are one people. No matter what color my skin is or what creed I am, we are one people: Seminole. There’s enough blood in my [council house] seat that I drown every time I sit in it, because these people are ignoring us, because they don’t even look at us as human beings.”
LeEtta was in charge of organizing a freedmen’s protest outside the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Seminole County, about sixty-five miles southeast of Oklahoma City. She picked me up from my hotel on Northwestern Boulevard, and when I opened up the passenger-side door, I beheld a woman who was all of four foot nine, with a grin that was both friendly and mischievous. As she pulled out onto the expressway, she said, “You know, you’re pretty brave for coming out here by yourself. If I had a daughter like you . . .” Her voice trailed off, but her smile invited me to fill in pieces.
“If I were your daughter, what?”
“I would be scared,” she said. To be honest, I was scared. Still, I smiled and leaned my head against the window.
To make the time pass by more quickly, LeEtta told me more stories about her family. LeEtta comes from a line of medicine people. Her grandfather, Sam Osborne, and his mother, as well as LeEtta’s father-in-law, were people whom people called upon for guidance in their communities. They would place a black rag over a crystal ball, put that rag over your body, use it to detect what was ailing you, then provide the necessary herbs to ameliorate it. The land, as in the Lowcountry and Louisiana, was supernaturally powerful for those who remained on their ancestors’ soil and knew how to manipulate whatever sprang from it. Chickweed leaves could be made into tea in order to expel parasites. Three green tablets would be put into a gallon jug of water and consumed to quell any kind of pain.
Sam Osborne was the son of Lane Osborne, who had 260 acres of land, including 40 acres of homestead in Hazel County. Lane was born a free man yet was moved from the By Blood to the Freedmen Roll at the turn of the century. Twelve people sued Lane for his 40 acres, and the case was tied up in court for eight years, until his son, Sam, was suddenly murdered. No one was able to figure out who did it, and perhaps the lack of resolution compounded with grief, Lane gave up his 40 acres. Lane had seen such tragedies happen to other families. One freedman in particular disappeared after going to the mailbox. People went out searching for him and followed his tracks on the ground for hundreds of yards, but the tracks eventually disappeared. Decades later, tragedy struck again when the missing man’s daughter was found dismembered in her own home.
LeEtta’s father was very familiar with hoodoo. He was what she called a showboat. He would throw money on the floor for sport and always paraded around in a brand-new car. His ostentatiousness naturally generated a lot of envy among his neighbors. A root was tied to the gas pedal of one of his cars, and that hex led to his getting into many car accidents. I thought about Griffin Lotson’s story of the root in his car in Washington, DC. Maybe that’s why he backed away from the car, because the root was placed there to cause him to get into an accident. LeEtta’s grandfather Sam was also full of wisdom: Throw red and black pepper on the ground behind a departing visitor if you don’t want them to return. To get two people to stop arguing, throw table salt on the ground, but make sure they don’t see it. Don’t sweep a broom too much around someone’s foot unless you want that person to go to jail. If you want retribution of some kind, milk a snake of its venom and place it on a surface that the target will sit on or touch.
He taught LeEtta the lay of the land. If she were to ever get lost, she could find a weeping willow, dig deep into the earth, and find water. She might still be lost by day’s end, but at least she would be alive. I became jealous, sad even. For weeks, I traveled across land and water, unable to identify the names of flowers and trees except one or two kinds. I didn’t know the difference between high and low tide. I didn’t know how to slaughter a hog or skin an animal. I didn’t know when harvest was nearing. Those of us whose families moved away from the rural South have lost that familiarity with the land and awareness of the seasons.
LeEtta tells me about her tenure as a council member. “When I sat in that [council] seat, I was like, ‘This is not America. This Seminole Nation. There are no civil rights. Martin forgot a few people.’” She laughs. “I can’t just walk away. I got too many bones down there.”
To prepare for the protest, we pulled into a parking lot adjacent to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). LeEtta pulled out several posters that she’d made in advance:
CORRUPTION IN THE NATION OF SEMINOLE—GREED IN THE GOVERNMENT
WE ARE CONNECTED TO OUR ANCESTORS!
WE KNOW WHO WE ARE!
LET’S ROCK THE BOAT
WE ARE ALL ONE
SEMINOLE NATION, STOP DENYING FREEDMEN RIGHTS
IS IT A CRIME TO FIGHT FOR WHAT IS MINE?
DAWES ROLL OR BLOOD DEGREE? WHICH ONE?
STOP BIRTHRIGHT THEFT!
I HAVE A VOICE. I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FREE. I AM STRONG.
I AM A PROUD SEMINOLE FREEDMAN.
Two cars were already parked in the lot with us. Only a handful of freedmen were there. Pickup trucks slowed down as the drivers passed the lot; some with tinted windows rolled them down, but I could never make out the faces. One attendee said, “You’re lucky. If this were back in 2015, they would have yelled out ‘Nigger!’” I felt I’d stepped back in time. When it was time to cross the street to the parking lot of the BIA, I followed behind the others, who were much more determined and unafraid than I was. We set up camp right on the side. The elders sat in chairs next to the coolers full of water and soda. The youths and a few people around LeEtta’s age held up signs, encouraging drivers to honk for support.
LeEtta introduced me to the Seminole freedmen, or estelusti, which means “blacks” in the Muskogee Creek language. One of them is named Butch. He is LeEtta’s assistant, a relative and fellow council member. Butch and LeEtta have the same great-great-grandmother, Minerva Moppins, whose name is listed on the Freedmen Rolls of Seminole Nation, though Butch claims it’s a mistake because of photographic evidence: “She looks straight native,” he says. He grew up in Sasakwa, and the vast majority of his classmates were extended-family members, including the current principal chief of Seminole Nation, Leonard Harjo. In the Seminole Nation, there are fourteen bands, or kinship groups, two of which are freedmen bands, and they have been procreating with one another over the course of three to four hundred years. Butch recalls that he and Harjo attended the same church (Seminole Baptist), played at the same camp houses, and participated in Easter egg hunts and home gatherings together.
In 1990, Congress approved a judgment fund ensuring that money would be allotted to the Seminole Nation for essential services, such as burials, elder
care, and school clothing assistance, undergraduate scholarships, and household economic assistance. But the Seminole Nation Tribal Council sought a way to exclude freedmen from the money.7 According to Butch, it was the year before, 1989, when he started to learn how differently he was perceived from family: “I become a black—you know, N word and stuff like that. My citizenship card had my name, social security number, and it had Seminole Nation. It did not have Freedman on there—no blood quantum or ‘voting privileges,’ all of that. They knew that if they changed the cards, then that would stop us from getting benefits.” Once, his late wife, who was part Chickasaw and Seminole and registered By Blood, wondered why Butch was being denied health services. After looking up his name in the system, a representative told Butch’s wife that, although Butch was with the Seminole tribe, the Seminoles did not officially recognize him as a full citizen, like LeEtta. They can vote, but that’s it. They are not entitled to the other benefits and privileges that Seminoles By Blood have.
LeEtta also introduced me to another one of her associates, a man nicknamed Stopper. He is also kin to LeEtta and Butch through the Osborne name. Sam Osborne was Stopper’s great-uncle. Stopper’s father, Harper Osborne, like Sam, was a tribal medicine man who later became a preacher at Seminole Baptist Church. When Stopper grew up in Seminole County, the Seminole language was the primary language in his household—not English. Pork, chicken, rabbits, and squirrels were a part of the regular meals, including an indigenous recipe for porridge: hominy, salt and pepper, sugar, and milk. Throughout his life, Stopper has carried an irremovable belief that his life and the history of his people were teetering toward total annihilation.
Wandering in Strange Lands Page 17