Patrick Neal Minges
All my Slaves, whether Negroes, Indians, Mustees, Or Molattoes.'Towards a Thick Description of `Slave Religion'
The time was in the late 1760's and the place was Charleston, S.C. A young
musician was on his way to a performance with his french horn tucked under his
arm. As he passed by a large meetinghouse, he heard much commotion on account of
a "crazy man was halloing there." He might have ignored the event but his
companion dared him to "blow the french horn among them" and disrupt the
meeting. Thinking they might have some fun, John Marrant and his companion
entered the meeting hall with the intent of mischief. As he lifted his horn to
his lips, the crazy man -- evangelist George Whitefield -- cast an eye upon him,
pointed his finger at John Marrant and uttered these words: "Prepare to Meet Thy
God, O Israel!" Marrant was struck dead for some thirty minutes and when he was
awakened, Reverend Whitefield declared "Jesus Christ has got thee at last."
After several days of ministrations by Reverend Whitefield, the Lord set John
Marrant's soul at liberty and he dedicated his life to the propagation of the
gospel.2
Marrant first witnessed to members of his family and when they rejected his
newfound evangelical spirit, he fled to the wilderness where he sought solace
among the beasts of the woods. Marrant was not afraid for God hade made the
beasts "friendly to me." When Marrant happened upon a Cherokee deer hunter, they
spent ten weeks together killing deer by day and preparing brush arbors by night
to provide sanctuary for themselves in the wilderness. Becoming fast friends by
the end of the hunting season, the Cherokee deer hunter and the African American
missionary returned to the hunter's village where they would continue their
cultural exchange. However, when he attempted to pass the outer guard at the
Cherokee village, the Cherokees were less than excited with Marrant and he was
detained and placed in prison.3 It was not that Marrant was a black man that
troubled the Cherokee, the peoples of the Southeastern United States had
relations with Africans that stretched back perhaps as far as a thousand years.4
It was just that ever since black people had started showing up with their
friends, the white people, that things had started going particularly bad for
the Indians of the Southeastern United States.5
It seems that as soon as Europeans showed up on the coasts of the United States,
they started reading from a formal document called the Requierimento that
declared themselves to be Christians and by nature superior to the uncivilized
heathens that they encountered.6 The indigenous people were then informed by the
Requierimento that if they accepted Christianity they would become the
Christian's slaves in exchange for the gift of salvation; if they did not accept
the gospel of Christianity, they would still become slaves but that their plight
would be much worse.7 Everywhere that explorers such as Ponce De Leon, Vazquez
De Ayllon, and Hernando De Soto went on their "explorations" throughout the
American Southeast, they carried with them bloodhounds, chains, and iron collars
for the acquisition and exportation of Indian slaves.8 A Cherokee from Oklahoma
remembered his father's tale of the Spanish slave trade, "At an early state the
Spanish engaged in the slave trade on this continent and in so doing kidnapped
hundreds of thousands of the Indians from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to work
their mines in the West Indies."9
No sooner had they set foot on shore near Charleston S.C. than the English set
about upon establishing the "peculiar institution" of Native American slavery.
Seeking the gold that had changed the face of the Spanish Empire but finding
none, the English settlers of the Carolinas quickly seized upon the most
abundant and available resource they could attain The indigenous peoples of the
Southeastern United States became, themselves, a commodity on the open market.10
Applying the same rhetoric that they had used in their genocidal campaign
against the "heathens" and "barbarians" of Scotland and Ireland,11 the
Carolinians cited Indian "savagery" and "depredations" as justification for
"Indian wars" to dispossess and enslave the Yamasee, the Tuscarora, the Westo
and eventually the Cherokee and the Creek.12
"The Indian slave trade in the Carolinas, with these southern ports as
their centers, rapidly took on all of the characteristics of the African
slave trade. "
Charleston and Savannah quickly became the centers of this North American
commercial slavery enterprise. In the latter half of seventeenth century, Native
American nations throughout the South were played against each other in an orgy
of slave dealing that decimated entire peoples.13 The Indian slave trade in the
Carolinas, with these southern ports as their centers, rapidly took on all of
the characteristics of the African slave trade. The Carolinians formed alliances
with coastal native groups, armed them, and encouraged them to make war on
weaker tribes deeper in the Carolina interior.14 By the late years of the
seventeenth century, caravans of Indian slaves were making their way from the
Carolina backcountry to forts on the coast just as caravans of African slaves
were doing on the African continent. Once in Charleston, the captives were
loaded on ships for the "middle passage" to the West Indies or other colonies
such as New Amsterdam or New England.15 Many of the Indian slaves were kept at
home and worked on the plantations of South Carolina; by 1708, the number of
Indian slaves in the Carolinas was nearly half that of African slaves. 16
Soon the Cherokee would become a major victim in the slave trade; as early as
1681, a permit was issued for the export of two "Seraquii slaves" from
Charleston.17 By 1693, the Cherokee had become objects of the slave trade to the
extent that a tribal delegation was sent to the Royal Governor of South Carolina
to protect the Cherokee from Congaree, Catawba, and Savannah slave-catchers.18
In 1705, the Cherokee accused the colonial governor of granting "commissions" to
slave-catchers to "set upon, assault, kill, destroy, and take captive" Cherokee
citizens to be "sold into slavery for his and their profit." 19 The Cherokee
slave trade was so serious that it had, by the early half of the eighteenth
century, eclipsed the trade for furs and skins, and had become the primary
source of commerce between the English and the people of South Carolina.20
In 1619, a Dutch man-of-war arrived on the Virginia coast carrying African
slaves for the American market; over a period of some one hundred years between
1650 and 1750, the face American slavery began to change from the "tawny" Indian
to the "blackamoor" African.21 The unsuitability of the Native American for the
labor-intensive agricultural practices, their susceptibility to European
diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape for Native Americans, and the
lucrative nature of the African slave trade led to a transition to an
African-based institution of slavery.22 In spite of a later tendency in the
Southern United States to differentiate the African slave from the Indian,
African slavery was in actuality imposed on top of a pre-existing system of
Indian slavery.23 In North America, the two never diverged as distinctive
institutions.24
During this period of transition, Africans and Native Americans shared the
common experience of enslavement.25 In addition to working together in the
fields, they lived together in communal living quarters, began to produce
collective recipes for food and herbal remedies, shared myths and legends, and
ultimately intermarried. Apart from their collective exploitation at the hands
of colonial slavery, Africans and Native Americans possessed similar worldviews
rooted in their historic relationship to the subtropical coastlands of the
middle Atlantic.26 Considering historic circumstances, environmental
associations, and sociocultural affiliations, the relationships among African
Americans and Native Americans was much more extensive and enduring than most
observers acknowledge. The intermarriage of Africans and Native Americans was
facilitated by the disproportionate numbers of African male slaves to females (3
to 1) and the decimation of Native American males by disease, enslavement, and
prolonged war against the colonists.27
During the intertribal wars encouraged by the English in order to produce
slaves, the largest majority of those enslaved were women and children, in
accordance with historic patterns of warfare among Native Americans.28
Therefore, the largest numbers of Native American slaves in the early Southeast
were women; there were as much as three to five times more Native women than men
enslaved.29 Slave owners often desired African men to work the fields paired
with Native American women to also work the fields as well as help around the
house. John Norris, a South Carolina planter estimated the costs of setting up a
plantation:
Imprimis; Fifteen good Negro Men at 45 lb each 675 lb.
Item: Fifteen Indian Women ...
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