Media Post 7

On Ethnic Newswatch I found an article titled "Beneath the underdog: Race, religion and the trail of tears". When I first tried to use Ethnic Newswatch I couldnt find anything that I liked so when I went back on and found this article I was impressed. This article talks about the slavery of Native Americans. As slavery developed in the US it became based on the lessons learned in the enslavement of traditional peoples of the Americas. It became known as "Chattel Slavery" which is defined as a movable piece of property not including buildings, or a slave/bondsman. When The Spainards enslaved the Native Americans they believed that they were inferior to them "as children are to adults and women to men". Which is what I think that the Americans thought of both Indians and Native Americans. The article states that "many of the early explorations of the New World were quite simply slaving expeditions." The Indians were being kidnapped in large numbers and taken away to go work for others. The article also mentions something else that we have talked about in class, the same ideas were being applied to those "barbarians" and "heathens" of Scotland and Ireland. The Americans kept citing the Indian "savagery" and "depredations" as justification for the enslavement of them, stating also that the "hostilities" of the Indians sparked "Indian wars" which I believe was just a cover for American cruelity. The article brought to my attention that at that time in the late 1600's and early 1700's the slave trade was larger than that of the fir and skin trade and became the primary source of commerce between the English and the English in America. African Americans and Indians shared enslavement, they worked together in the fields, shared livins spaces, and shared recipes. The article talks about how Indians and African Americans began to take part in intermarriage and soon after this became illegal. The Indians also did not see race and when talks of attacks started it was said in the article that "nothing can be more alarming to the Carolinians then the idea of an attack from Indians and Negros". Not long after Indians and Native Americans were to be seperated and Native Americans were offered bounties to return runaway slaves. The government started to make a better investment in Indian agriculture in an attempt to convert them into good Christians. Jefferson believed that it was possible to induce the Cherokees to "enter on a regular life of agriculture and to familiarize them with practices and give them property and to lead them right away. On Indian plantations there were slaves but they were treated differently, one slave says that his owner let him have property and if there was no work to do, there was no work for him to do. He also said he was allowed to freely roam the plantation and they were allowed to establish their own housing. In return the African Americans became more than laborers for the Indians they were also technicians and their diplomats as well as religious leaders. David George was a noted slave in this article he was a founder of the Silver Bluff Baptist Church and was allowed to preach there until more than thirty people showed up and it was taken by the English. Some slaves were not allowed to call their Native American owner "master" some Native Americans preferred "brother". I think that the most important sentences in this whole article are "By learning to overcome that which seperated them as a people, they learned to conquer that whcih created estrangement within themselves. In so doing, they laid the foundation for a common history, one 'written in the hearts of our people'". This is so important because it is completely a true statement. The article ends with talking about the Trail of tears. Cherokees were put in the hands of the US military. They were removed from their homes violently and forced to walk in chains and because it was the dead of winter 4600 Native and African Americans died on the journey. One solider recalled "the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew". The trail was lined with gravestones for the children and elders who lost their lives on the journey. The very last sentence of this article "On the trail where we cried, there were also African tears. This we must never forget" is also an important sentence becasue both cultures have suffered horrendous fates while on the path of acceptance. I really, really liked this article because it talks more about the Indians and how they were very admirable people (which I knew) because in class we have never completely focused on Native Americans in depth like this article provides. One article it can compare to is "Columbus, the Indians and Human Progress" because this article also hits on the Indians as slaves and their struggle, but more specifically it references the Arawak Indians. Also Takakis "The Tempest in the Wilderness" this article is relevant because the main point of the article is that the English thrived from the Indians, Indian death meant life for the English. I think it is also important to remember that the Indians overcame the issue of difference and gave the African Americans rights on their plantations and did not treat them as though they were inferior. If the Indians could develop this type of relationship with the African Americans, why couldnt the English?