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During slavery, not every Native tribe was friendly to Black slaves. It’s an inaccurate portrayal of the history of chattel slavery to promote the myth of the friendly Native American assisting runaway slaves. At least five Native American nations owned Black chattel slaves.
Many more individual Native people and Native tribes assisted with rounding up, hunting, and re-enslaving runaway slaves. In fact, for many tribes this was a core part of their treaty agreements with the United States government.
Perpetuating this myth of the “friendly Native” assisting runaway slaves when actual slaves may very well had been afraid of encountering a Native American while running away, knowing that that person would have had a high chance of kidnapping and selling them back into bondage,
is harmful not only to the memory of our ancestors but to the telling of true Black and Native history. It’s particularly harmful when there are thousands of Afro-Native people in this country whose ties to tribes are through enslavement of their ancestors by tribal citizens.
It’s about time that we have honest discussions about Indigenous peoples’ roles in maintaining slavery in this country through runaway slave hunting and their direct roles in enslaving people of African descent. These were not just individuals either.
Tribal treaties and constitutions included clauses about runaway slave catching and regulations on holding Black people in bondage. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole Nations all implemented Slave Codes in their formal laws and brought their slaves
in shackles across the Trail of Tears. For slaves, this was a Trail of Tears, Blood, and Violence. Slaves had some of the highest rates of illnesses and deaths while being removed on the Trail of Tears and dealt with abuse and violence at the hands of not only federal officials
but their Native American owners as well. This is something that is NEVER discussed. Most people will just put up a number for the amount of slaves on the Trail of Tears and call it a day. These people’s lives mattered. These were not “friendly Native allies.”
Earlier this year, we did a thread on the Chickasaw Nation’s propaganda about assisting “runaway slaves.” Which is completely untrue. https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1317212059147317256
Please sign our petition to Deb Haaland! We are still denied citizenship in the Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw Nations and Seminole Freedmen are currently living under a 3/5th compromise https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1330941790262861828
We are adding this to the thread. Please do not use the specific histories of Slaveowning and slave-patrolling tribes to undermine the sovereignty of Native nations. There are over 570 federally-recognized tribes today and most did not own slaves. https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1316138969273380864
And now we are being told to “go back to Africa” on this app. 
https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1336391202917273604
https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1336391202917273604
PSA: do not use anti-Native slurs either! You are only re-enforcing stereotypes that were used to justify genocide and forced assimilation policies. https://twitter.com/choctawfreedmen/status/1336443211867451393
