-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [BRC-MUMIA] MANY TRAILS OF TEARS by Mumia Abu-Jamal Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 01:09:48 -0500 From: Joe Hine <WebMaster at LitmusBooks.com> Reply-To: brc-mumia at yahoogroups.com To: "'brc-mumia at yahoogroups.com'" <brc-mumia at yahoogroups.com>
Here is Mumia Abu-Jamal's next column.
I just heard that some people may have missed a column when I took over the distribution. I have posted the last 10 columns as Word Documents and Adobe PDFs at http://www.MumiaBook.com/mumia/column.asp
on a move, Joe Hine
MANY TRAILS OF TEARS By Mumia Abu-Jamal, M.A. #490 Column Written 1/15/2001 All Rights Reserved
An anthropologist comes up to an Indian, and asks him what did the Indians call America before the whites came, and the Indian replies, "Ours." - Vine Deloria, Native Activist
When the phrase "Trail of Tears" is used, many people think of the horrendous death march of the Cherokee peoples, from what is now called Georgia, to reservations in the Western territories. Thousands died during the forced march, from cold, from sickness, from heartbreak at the idea of leaving their ancestral lands, to satisfy the land greed of the white settlers.
There were however, many such trails of tears that have occurred across the land we now call America, most of which are ignored, and forgotten in the national amnesia that we call history.
Of course, even in that infamous Trail of Tears of the Cherokee dispossessed, there was a trail within a trail, as the Cherokee, one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, imitated white people in some ways, including the possession of black slaves. On that trail, along with Cherokee, were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of blacks held in captivity. There is uncertainty over how many because few people felt it important enough to keep count.
>From the tropical swamps and lowlands of what is now
called Florida another indigenous people, the
Seminoles, were forced along a deadly trail. Florida
was the setting of at least three spheres of global
conflict: the interests of Spain, the British, and the
Americans (the French were involved relatively
briefly). Caught in the middle, were Indian and
African peoples.
For Seminoles (who broke away from their Creek kin) Florida was home, as it was the home of the Timuquan, Muskhogean, and Apalachee people before them. It was here, in the early 1500s, that the Spanish sought the hidden Fountain of Youth. It was here that perhaps the oldest European city was begun, St. Augustine, around 1565. And it was here, that land greed spelled the beginning of the end for free Seminole life on their ancestral lands. For whether it was the Spanish, the French, the English, or the Americans, the expansion of white settlement means the contraction of red lands, and in several hundred years, their removal.
When Spanish authorities were in possession of the territory, their relative weakness in terms of population, army, and immigration, forced them to make the territory attractive to those who would defend her imperial interests. The Spanish Crown therefore ordered that any black person who escaped from slavery in the Anglo "north" (of Georgia or the Carolinas) would be free in Florida, if they swore to bear arms and defend it. Thousands did. The famous Stono Rebellion, where hundreds of black captives, armed with makeshift weapons, drumming, marched towards St. Augustine, gives some idea of Florida's appeal. It also gives some idea of why Georgia and the Carolinas (and the United States) wanted to take Florida from Spain: to extend slavery. This factor also gives some idea of why the Seminoles were always the object of U.S. derision and hostility. The Seminoles, themselves a breakaway branch of the Creek Confederacy (the name is said to mean runaway or break away), treated their African runaways as friends, and fought hard to resist American attempts to recapture and to reenslave blacks who became members of the Nation. Americans were critical of what U.S. General Thomas S. Jesup called "the influence of the Negroes" upon the Seminole council.
After at least three devastating wars, trickery, deceit, and cheating, the Seminoles were marched off to Oklahoma. There, they were given inferior lands, none of the promised equipment, clothing, blankets, or food was provided. They were overcharged, and left on land that was promised to the Creeks.
While some army records suggests over 4,000 Seminoles died during the deadly trek west, no figure accurately recorded those who died after arrival in Oklahoma. What mattered to the Americans was that they were gone.
They were further devastated by the Civil War, as they were once again, put in between the fights of others, and punished after the war, by still more land theft.
The history of the relationship between the settlers and the native peoples of the Americas is one of naked injustice, greed, violence and death.
It is but one feature of a rarely told, and little known, facet of American history. (c)MAJ 2001
****************************************************** This column may be reprinted and/or distributed by electronic means, but only for non-commercial use, and only with the inclusion of the following copyright information:
Text (c) copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Get Mumia's columns by email: http://www.MumiaBook.com ******************************************************
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the author of three books: 'Live from Death Row', 'Death Blossoms', and 'All Things Censored'. A new biography, 'On A Move: The Story of Mumia Abu-Jamal', is available at www.MumiaBook.com
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