Angela Walton-Raji has been researching African-Native American genealogy for nearly 20 years and is the author of the book Black Indian Genealogy Research: African-American Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes. She recently presented a series of genealogy workshops at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the exhibit IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas. Walton-Raji’s ancestors are Freedmen, African-Americans who were slaves of the Five Civilized Tribes – the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Nations – in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma in 1907. The Cherokee freed their slaves in 1863, and after the Civil War, the other tribes did the same. All but the Chickasaw eventually granted Freedmen full citizenship in their tribe. In preparation for Oklahoma statehood, the U.S. Congress created the Dawes Commission, which was charged with dissolving collective tribal land ownership and allotting land to individual tribal members.
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Africa is known as a tribal continent even though it is not always the determining factor in a nation’s life. Colonial powers took little notice of tribes when they drew their national boundary lines.
Thousands of Freedmen came before the commission to prove their tribal membership and their right to a share of land. I spoke with Walton-Raji about her research.
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What spurred you to start researching African-Native American history and genealogy?I was inspired to begin the research because it’s part of my family history. I’m originally from western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, right there on the border.
My great-grandmother Sallie Walton was born in Indian Territory, in the Choctaw Nation. She died in 1961 – I knew her very well. She was my babysitter until I went to kindergarten. Her Choctaw heritage was widely known in terms of family history. And growing up in a city such as Fort Smith, Arkansas if you’re on the north side of the city, you can look at the Cherokee Nation, and if you’re on the south of the city, the bordering community is the Choctaw Nation.I did have in my possession some family papers – a small land allotment record from Sallie that she had obtained from the Dawes Commission. I had been doing genealogy for many years but was curious, “Gee, is there more information out there to be found?” I really didn’t know what there was to find.
So when I moved to the Washington, D.C., area and had access to the National Archives I went and started looking and found family records, and I was just amazed.What did you find?I found a Choctaw Nation enrollment card for Samuel and Sallie Walton, my great-grandparents. And then my grandfather, Sam, Jr., was recorded there, my Uncle Houston’s name was there, my Aunt Louisa’s name.
I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize there was a document that reflected this!” On the reverse side of that same card, which was the next exposure on microfilm, was information about Sam and Sallie’s parents. Here was additional information about his mother, his father and her mother and her father – there were four new ancestors!
But beyond that, I also found an interview with my great-grandmother and great-grandfather about their life in the Choctaw Nation. I had known of Samuel Walton but did not realize he was originally born in Arkansas and had later been sold as a slave to someone in the Choctaw Nation. I also began to recognize surnames of people whom I had grown up around. I realized, here’s an entire record set reflecting people who had been slaves of Choctaw Indians, many of whom had Choctaw blood an entire record set of African-American people that had never been talked about.You’ve said the Freedmen have been “deleted” from American history in the past.
What do you mean?One hears, for example, about the forced migration of native people. One does not hear about the 1,200 slaves that were taken west with the Cherokee Nation. One does not read in history books that many people who were Choctaws – and the Choctaws were actually the first group that migrated, in the winter of 1830 and 1831 – sold personal property to be able to purchase slaves to take with them to Indian Territory. Pull up any history book or just Google “map reflecting slavery,” and you’ll always see the map of what is called “the South” and you see that empty spot that would be Oklahoma, and it looks as if there was no slavery taking place there. When the treaty of 1866 finally abolished slavery in Indian Territory, the fact is that a community thrived – a community of people who were not slaves of the United States, and they were Freedmen.What have you found in your research about how blended families – those with native, African and Anglo roots – historically identified themselves?
Obviously there were limitations on what box they could check on the census form, for example.And they weren’t allowed to check – it was somebody else checking the box. Angela Walton-Raji is the author of the book Black Indian Genealogy Research: African-American Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Trives.(Courtesy of Angela Walton-Raji)So how did people present themselves to the community?Self-identity is one thing and then a perceived identity is another. When you’re talking about perceived identity, that’s usually a census enumerator who was going around from house to house and was usually white and male. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, for example, an entire Indian village was captured in the census records but the enumerator didn’t get the names of everyone.
They would just write the name of a person such as “Baptiste” and say “his wife, his son, his daughter” without giving them a name. So more than likely that enumerator was not comfortable going into the Indian village and just did a count without interacting with the people themselves.
(Redirected from Tribes)
Men of the Shkreli tribe at the feast of Saint Nicholas at Bzheta in Shkreli territory, Albania, 1908
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of humansocial group. The predominant usage of the term is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflicting theoretical understandings of social and kinship structures, and also reflecting the problematic application of this concept to extremely diverse human societies. The concept is often contrasted by anthropologists with other social and kinship groups, being hierarchically larger than a lineage or clan, but smaller than a chiefdom, nation or state. These terms are equally disputed. In some cases tribes have legal recognition and some degree of political autonomy from national or federal government, but this legalistic usage of the term may conflict with anthropological definitions.
Etymology[edit]
The word tribe first occurred in English in 12th-century Middle English-literature, in reference to the twelve tribes of Israel. The Middle English word is derived from Old French tribu and, in turn, from Latin tribus (plural tribūs), in reference to a supposed tripartite division of the original Roman state along ethnic lines, into tribūs known as the Ramnes (or Ramnenses), Tities (or Titienses), and Luceres, corresponding, according to Marcus Terentius Varro, to the Latins, Sabines and Etruscans respectively. The Ramnes were named after Romulus, leader of the Latins, Tities after Titus Tatius, leader of the Sabines, and Luceres after Lucumo, leader of an Etruscan army that had assisted the Latins. In 242–240 BC, the Tribal Assembly (comitia tributa) in the Roman Republic included 35 tribes (four 'urban tribes' and 31 'rural tribes'). According to Livy, the three 'tribes' were squadrons of cavalry, rather than ethnic divisions.
The ultimate etymology of the term 'tribe' is uncertain, perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European roots tri- ('three') and bhew ('to be'). The classicist Gregory Nagy says,[1] citing the linguist Émile Benveniste,[2] that the Umbriantrifu (equivalent of the Latin tribus) is apparently derived from a combination of *tri- and *bhu-, where the second element is cognate with the Greek root phúō φύω “to bring forth” and the Greek phulē φυλή 'clan, race, people' (plural phylai φυλαί). The Greek polis ('state' or 'city') was, like the Roman state, often divided into phylai. In Europe during the late medieval era, the Bible was written mostly in New Latin and instead of tribus the word phyle was used, derived from the Greek phulē.
Classification[edit]
Considerate debate has accompanied efforts to define and characterize tribes. In the popular imagination, tribes reflect a primordial social structure from which all subsequent civilizations and states developed. AnthropologistElman Service presented[3] a system of classification for societies in all human cultures, based on the evolution of social inequality and the role of the state. This system of classification contains four categories:
Tribes are therefore considered to be a political unit formed from an organisation of families (including clans and lineages) based on social or ideological solidarity. Membership of a tribe may be understood simplistically as being an identity based on factors such as kinship ('clan'), ethnicity ('race'), language, dwelling place, political group, religious beliefs, oral tradition and/or cultural practices.
Archaeologists continue to explore the development of pre-state tribes. Current research suggests that tribal structures constituted one type of adaptation to situations providing plentiful yet unpredictable resources. Such structures proved flexible enough to coordinate production and distribution of food in times of scarcity, without limiting or constraining people during times of surplus.
The term 'tribe' was in common use in the field of anthropology until the late 1950s and 1960s. The continued use of the term has attracted controversy among anthropologists and other academics active in the social sciences, with scholars of anthropological and ethnohistorical research challenging the utility of the concept. In 1970, anthropologist J. Clyde Mitchell wrote:
Despite the membership boundaries for a tribe being conceptually simple, in reality they are often vague and subject to change over time. In his 1975 study, The Notion of the Tribe, anthropologistMorton H. Fried provided numerous examples of tribes that encompassed members who spoke different languages and practiced different rituals, or who shared languages and rituals with members of other tribes. Similarly, he provided examples of tribes in which people followed different political leaders, or followed the same leaders as members of other tribes. He concluded that tribes in general are characterized by fluid boundaries, heterogeneity and dynamism, and are not parochial.[5]
Part of the difficulty with the term is that it seeks to construct and apply a common conceptual framework across diverse cultures and peoples. Different anthropologists studying different peoples therefore draw conflicting conclusions about the nature, structure and practices of tribes. Writing on the Kurdish peoples, anthropologist Martin van Bruinessen argued, 'the terms of standard anthropological usage, 'tribe', 'clan' and 'lineage' appear to be a straitjacket that ill fits the social reality of Kurdistan'.[6]
There are further negative connotations of the term 'tribe' that have reduced its use. Writing in 2013, scholar Matthew Ortoleva noted that 'like the word Indian, [t]ribe is a word that has connotations of colonialism.'[7]Survival International says 'It is important to make the distinction between tribal and indigenous because tribal peoples have a special status acknowledged in international law as well as problems in addition to those faced by the wider category of indigenous peoples.'[8]
Present-day[edit]
A map of uncontacted tribes, around the start of the 21st century
Few tribes today remain isolated from the development of the modern state system. Tribes have lost their legitimacy to conduct traditional functions, such as tithing, delivering justice and defending territory, with these being replaced by states functions and institutions, such as taxation, law courts and the military. Most have suffered decline and loss of cultural identity. Some have adapted to the new political context and transformed their culture and practices in order to survive, whilst others have secured legal rights and protections.
Anthropologist Morton Fried proposed that most surviving tribes do not have their origin in pre-state tribes, but rather in pre-state bands. Such 'secondary' tribes, he suggested, developed as modern products of state expansion. Bands comprise small, mobile, and fluid social formations with weak leadership. They do not generate surpluses, pay no taxes, and support no standing army. Fried argued that secondary tribes develop in one of two ways. First, states could set them up as means to extend administrative and economic influence in their hinterland, where direct political control costs too much. States would encourage (or require) people on their frontiers to form more clearly bounded and centralized polities, because such polities could begin producing surpluses and taxes, and would have a leadership responsive to the needs of neighboring states (the so-called 'scheduled' tribes of the United States or of British India provide good examples of this). Second, bands could form 'secondary' tribes as a means to defend against state expansion. Members of bands would form more clearly bounded and centralized polities, because such polities could begin producing surpluses that could support a standing army that could fight against states, and they would have a leadership that could co-ordinate economic production and military activities.
In the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of India and Native American tribes of North America, tribes are considered polities, or sovereign nations, that have retained or been granted legal recognition and some degree of autonomy by a national or federal government.
See also[edit]Notes[edit]
References[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tribe&oldid=949757223'
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