'The Indian Image in the Black Mind:' Representing Native Americans In
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'The Indian Image in The Black Mind:' Representing Native Americans in Antebellum African American Public Culture by Arika Easley-Houser A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History Written under the director of Mia Bay And approved by ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey MAY 2014 i ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION 'The Indian Image in The Black Mind:' Representing Native Americans in Free African American Public Culture in the Antebellum North by Arika Easley-Houser My dissertation considers how ideas about Native Americans were figured into free African American rhetoric in antebellum America. Scholarship about the 1830s has emphasized how white reformists from the North supported the gradual abolition of slavery by calling for blacks in America to emigrate to West Africa while opposing the policy of Indian Removal. Yet, scholars have not explored how African Americans linked Indian Removal with the abolitionist causes. While there has been an emergence of literature about the experiences of enslaved African Americans within the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Chocktaw and Creek), there is a dearth of historical research about how ideas about Native Americans were part of the underpinnings of free African American intellectual life. The "Indian Image" is not monolithic in the "Black mind." In fact, I argue that African American writers present three different perspectives about Native Americans that are distinct, and not necessarily complementary to each other, or to those ideas ii held by white Americans. First, some African Americans aligned themselves with Native Americans to critique white supremacy and bolster their struggles for abolition and citizenship. In some instances, this alliance was linked to either real or imagined shared ancestral relationships between African Americans and Native Americans. Secondly, some African Americans espoused uplift ideologies in order to position themselves above Native Americans along racial, class and gender hierarchies. Thirdly, some African Americans compared and contrasted between Native American and white slaveholding practices, and perceived Native American slaveholders as being more benevolent. This project builds upon scholarship about racial ideologies in the early American republic by demonstrating that African Americans explored diverse ideas about social constructions beyond anti-slavery rhetoric alone. It contributes to a growing subfield of African American and Native American comparative histories which is linked with the scholarship of racial construction by historians such as George Frederickson and Mia Bay. I document the historical binaries of Black/Indian which are inextricably linked to the White/Black and White/Indian binaries explored in these earlier works. Given the resources in African American early print culture, my methodological approach is interdisciplinary. I analyze a range of primary sources in order to examine the language, descriptions, narrative sketches, and rhetorical choices that African American writers used to describe contemporary and past experiences of Native Americans. My sources include articles in the African American press, letters, speeches, memoirs, church and political organizational records and narratives of former slaves. In addition, I draw on interdisciplinary insights from a number of academic fields, including iii African American and Native American histories, Literature, Racial Theory, and American Studies. My introduction chapter defines the methodological framework and intervention of my dissertation. Chapter 1 examines of the rhetoric that appears within the emerging print culture of the eighteenth-century to reveal the varied ways that writers of African descent invoked Native Americans. The "Indian image" changes over the eighteenth century: from violent/"savage" images of indigenous people in the mid- eighteenth century to viewing them as either allies or foes. African Americans invoked ideas their about Native Americans either symbolically or due to actual encounters in the later decades of the eighteenth century. Chapter 2 illuminates how Native Americans figured in the emergence of the black printing press and pamphlets for the purpose of bolstering the challenge against slavery, Indian Removal and African colonization in the first two decades of the nineteenth-century. I consider the mission of the Freedom's Journal, America's first black-edited newspaper, and the implicit ways that the editors juxtaposed news coverage about Native Americans and reports of violence and racial uplift. I also examine the symbolic ways in which David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which was first published in 1829, incorporated the symbolic use of Native Americans in order to illicit violent opposition to slavery. Chapter 3 examines the impact of federal policies, particularly the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the expansion of slavery. A tragedy for many members of the Five Civilized Tribes, the Act also causes widespread fear amongst free African iv Americans who were concerned about their own future in the new Republic. Two issues about Native Americans dominate African American writings in these years: the Seminole Wars in Florida and two Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the Cherokee Nation. This chapter also discusses how many African Americans who were ancestrally linked with Native Americans challenged nascent pseudo-scientific ideas about the constructions of race. Chapter 4 analyzes how black-edited newspapers from the 1850s in the North and in Canada included reports which revealed that there was more limited actual contact between Native Americans and African Americans than in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century. I also examine the various ways that some African Americans claimed "Indianness" as a form of social capital as evidenced through their writings in memoirs and newspaper reports about legal cases. Finally, my conclusion chapter ends with a debate that occurred amongst an organization of free black men in Brooklyn, New York in 1860 around the issue of comparing the historical injustices faced by African Americans and Native Americans. v ACKKNOWLEDGEMENTS As it seems to be the case with each of the author's of dissertations and books that I have ever read, it is also the same for me: many people have helped me to complete this project. As a part-time doctoral student at Rutgers, it has been a long and exciting journey. Over the years to help me pay for coursework, I have benefitted from grants from various sources to fund my doctoral studies, including from the Rutgers- New Brunswick Department of History Warren and Beatrice Susman Dissertation Completion fellowship, The Albert Greenfield Dissertation Fellowship from the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Social Science Research Council as a former Mellon-Mays Undergraduate fellow, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Emerging Scholars supported by the Provost Office and the Historical Studies Program and the Isiah Thomas Stipend from the American Antiquarian Society. Additionally, while jugging full- time work in student affairs and full-time teaching, I also benefitted from the tuition remission benefits from Montclair State University and Hudson County Community College. I must begin by extending individual thanks to the impeccable group of scholars who formed my dissertation committee. My advisor, Mia Bay, has long been inspirational to me, especially through her first publication, The White Image in the Black Mind. Her work was first introduced to me as a graduate student at Columbia University by my thesis advisor, Farah Jasmine Griffin. Dr. Bay has been a model historian (her humor shines through her writing), and I appreciate all of her time and patience guiding me through the years. Deborah Gray White provided great assistance vi to me at a critical juncture of developing my dissertation proposal. Camilla Townsend has been a steadfast supporter of my work over the years, and also has provided a lot of personal encouragement. Finally, Ann Fabian has inspired me and motivated me from our first meeting when I first described my project, and especially through providing expedient feedback in the last final stages of my dissertation prior to my defense. One scholar who became an "unofficial" part of my committee was Stephen Hall. After reading his work, I immediately knew that he would be a great resource. Not only did Stephen read my work and offered critical feedback, he provided encouragement about being a historian. He encouraged me about the importance of reading of my African American historical figures through the lens of understanding of Christian values. Also, Stephen inspired me because he studied under the tutelage of Benjamin Quarles during his college years at Morgan State University. I always kept Quarles' classic work Black Abolitionists close at hand near me while writing my dissertation. I am grateful to many wonderful librarians and archivists who have assisted me, including Tom Glynn, at Rutgers-New Brunswick, Emily Belcher of Princeton University, and Larry Weimer of the Brooklyn Historical Society. My research at the Library Company of Philadelphia was not only shaped