“Indian Blood, Enslaved Body”: The Hidden Testimonies of America’s Misclassified Ancestors illegally made slaves
- Ishmael Bey
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
By Ishmael A. Bey — Urban Indian Heritage Society
Voices That Were Never Supposed to Speak
Between 1936 and 1938, more than two thousand formerly enslaved people sat down with government writers under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project. What few readers realize is that dozens of those voices did not describe African parentage at all; they said, clearly and without hesitation, that their mothers and fathers were Indian.
Yet when the interview headings were typed for the Library of Congress, every one of these people was categorized under “Negro,” “Colored,” or “Black.”
This single clerical habit concealed the most uncomfortable truth in American slavery: the enslavement of American Indians never stopped; it was merely renamed.
The Illegality That Was Ignored
From the earliest colonial statutes forward, Indian slavery was outlawed on paper. By 1752, most southern colonies had banned the sale or transport of Indians as slaves, and by the federal period, Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance (1787) and later federal treaties with the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations explicitly prohibited the practice. Yet throughout the nineteenth century, Indian people
especially those of darker complexion were still captured, sold, or inherited under the label of “negro property.”
The Civil War’s Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, but by then countless Indigenous lineages had already been rewritten out of existence through census misclassification and racial codes.
Rare audio of enslaved people connects history to the present
ABC News’ Alex Presha examines rare audio of formerly enslaved people to preserve their stories, and interviews one of their descendants, in partnership with the 10 Million Names project.
Fifteen Witnesses Who Remembered
Name (WPA Interview) | Stated Indian Parentage / Tribe | Verbatim Quote | Source (WPA Volume & Part) |
Omelia Thomas | Mother – Cherokee | “My mother was a Cherokee Indian. Her name was Alice Gamage.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 (1941) |
Josie Martin | Father – Creek ; Mother – Choctaw | “My father was a Creek Indian; he was dark. Mother was a Choctaw Indian; she was bright.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 |
A. J. Mitchell | Mother – “full Injun” | “My mother died when I was two years old. She was full Injun.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 |
Wylie Nealy | Father – Choctaw ; Mother – Cherokee | “My father was a free man always. He was a Choctaw Indian. Mother was part Cherokee Indian.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 |
Mamie Thompson | Mother – Cherokee mix ; Grandfather – full Indian | “My mother was a mix-breed … mixed with Cherokee Indian and Negro … Grandpa was a full blood Indian.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 |
Mattie Logan | Maternal Grandmother – Cherokee half-blood | “My mother was part Indian, for her mother was a half-blood Cherokee Indian from Virginia.” | Oklahoma Narratives |
Harriett Robinson | Mother – Cherokee slave | “My mammy was a Cherokee slave, and talked it good.” | Oklahoma Narratives, Vol. XIII |
William M. Adams | Father – “Black Creek Indian” | “He was a Black Creek Indian.” | Texas Narratives |
Unnamed Arkansas Interviewee | Father – Choctaw Indian | “My father was a free man always. He was a Choctaw Indian.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 |
Betty Robertson | Mother – Cherokee slave ; Husband – Cherokee born Negro | “My mammy was a Cherokee slave … My husband was a Cherokee born negro too.” | Oklahoma Narratives, Vol. XIII |
Wiley Nealy (reaffirmed) | Same family line | “He was a Choctaw Indian. Mother was part Cherokee.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 |
A. J. Mitchell (repeated) | Maternal Indian identity | “She was full Injun.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 |
Omelia Thomas (context line) | Cherokee maternal heritage | “Right after the War … My mother was a Cherokee Indian.” | Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 |
Kizia Love (ownership context) | Enslaved by Choctaw Indian Frank Colbert | “Frank Colbert, a full blood Choctaw Indian, was my owner.” | Oklahoma Narratives |
Mattie Logan (reaffirmed) | Cherokee maternal descent | “Her mother was a half-blood Cherokee Indian.” | Oklahoma Narratives |
Misclassification as Cultural Erasure
Every one of these people was officially recorded under the racial designator “Negro.” Their own words, however, identify Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, and mixed-tribal parentage clear evidence of continued Indian enslavement and of the bureaucratic laundering of Indigenous identity.
Census enumerators, probate clerks, and tax assessors were instructed to reduce every non-white category to “Black” or “Mulatto” after the Civil War.
This administrative violence transformed Native descendants into statistical Africans and conveniently hid the illegal trafficking of Indian labor behind a single racial column.
Why It Was Illegal
By the time these interviewees were born (1830s–1860s), slavery of American Indians had been outlawed in:
Federal Indian Trade and Intercourse Acts (1790–1834) prohibited enslavement or sale of Indians.
Treaty of Doak’s Stand (1820) and later Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830) guaranteed Choctaw and Chickasaw freedom from enslavement within their new territories.
Indian Territory statutes under U.S. oversight (after 1834) defined “negro slavery,” never Indian slavery, as the only legal form tolerated.
Thus, the only way to continue exploiting Native labor was to re-brand Indians as “Negroes.”
The color line became a cover story.
The Linguistic Proof
Notice the words the speakers themselves used:
“full Injun,” “Black Creek Indian,” “part Cherokee,” “Choctaw Indian.” None of these phrases come from government clerks they come from the people who lived it.
Each testimony is a genealogical artifact, a legal clue that the federal census, plantation inventories, and later Freedmen rolls were not racial truth but political camouflage.
The Human Cost of Paper Genocide
When Indigenous children of mixed ancestry were labeled “Colored,” they lost:
Tribal belonging and treaty protection.
Land allotment eligibility.
Legal identity as Native heirs.
Generations later, their descendants appear in records as African American even when the primary witnesses like Omelia Thomas or Josie Martin testified to entirely Indigenous bloodlines.
This is the textbook definition of paper genocide: erasure by ink instead of chains.
Toward Historical Correction
For scholars, genealogists, and Urban Indians reclaiming their lineage, these WPA narratives are legal evidence, not folklore. They reveal that enslavement of American Indians persisted in defiance of federal law and that bureaucratic race codes were deliberately wielded to hide the crime.
Each of these quotes deserves republication not as “slave stories,” but as Native depositions preserved against erasure.
Conclusion: Listening Backward
The Library of Congress filed these voices away under “Negro” so America would not have to confront its Indian slaves. Today, by reading them in their own words, we restore the record.
“My mother was a Cherokee Indian… My father was a Creek Indian.” — Josie Martin, Arkansas Narratives, Part 5
That sentence alone overturns three centuries of lies.
Josie Martin (Arkansas)
“My father was a Creek Indian; he was dark. Mother was a Choctaw Indian; she was bright.” Source: Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narrative Project. Arkansas Narratives. (Also reproduced in a teaching edition identifying the interviewee.) Project Gutenberg+2Shec+2
Betty Robertson (Oklahoma)
“My mammy was a Cherokee slave, and talked it good. My husband was a Cherokee born negro, too, and when he got mad he forgit all the English he knowed.” Source: Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narrative Project, Oklahoma Narratives (commonly cited as Vol. XIII, p. 266 in print sets). cblevins.github.io+2Genealogy Trails+2
Omelia Thomas (Arkansas)
“My father was African… My mother was a Cherokee Indian. Her name was Alice Gamage.” Source: Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narratives (Arkansas). (Project Gutenberg reproduction of WPA transcript.) Project Gutenberg+2大文庫+2
Unnamed former slave quoted in Arkansas set
“I was born in 1852… My father was a free man always. He was a Choctaw Indian.” Source: Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narratives, Arkansas volumes (WPA transcript). Project Gutenberg
William M. Adams (Texas)
“He was a Black Creek Indian.” (speaking of his father) Source: Slavery in Texas project (transcription of WPA Oklahoma/Texas–area interviews referencing Creek identity). slaveryintexas.org
Harriett Robinson (Oklahoma)
“My mammy was a Cherokee slave, and talked it good.” Source: RootsWeb/OKGenWeb transcription from WPA Oklahoma Narratives (corroborates #2). Freepages Rootsweb
Arkansas narrative (speaker identified in print sets as “Mattie [Logan/—]”, commonly cited)
“My mother was part Indian, for her mother was a half-blood Cherokee Indian from Virginia.” Source: Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narratives (Arkansas) (WPA transcript). Project Gutenberg
Oklahoma/Indian Territory context (multiple interviews in same corpus)
“My mammy was a Cherokee slave… My husband was a Cherokee born negro, too…” (alternate WPA typescript reproduction)
Source: Compiled WPA Oklahoma narratives PDF (scholarly classroom reproduction of the LOC text). cblevins.github.io
Omelia Thomas — Cherokee (mother)
Quote: “My mother was a Cherokee Indian. Her name was Alice Gamage. I was born in 1864… my father stole my mother one night.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 (WPA, 1941). (Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor; Little Rock, AR). Project Gutenberg
Josie Martin — Creek (father), Choctaw (mother)
Quote: “My father was a Creek Indian; he was dark. Mother was a Choctaw Indian; she was bright.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 (WPA, 1941). (Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson; Madison, AR). Project Gutenberg
A. J. Mitchell — “Full Injun” (mother)
Quote: “My mother died when I was two years old. She was full Injun. My father was black but his hair was straight.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 (WPA, 1941). (Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden; Pine Bluff, AR). Project Gutenberg
Wylie Nealy — Choctaw (father), part Cherokee (mother)
Quote: “My father was a free man always. He was a Choctaw Indian. Mother was part Cherokee Indian.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives, Part 5 (WPA, 1941). (Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson). Project Gutenberg
Mamie Thompson — Cherokee (mother’s ancestry), “full blood Indian” (grandfather)
Quote: “My mother was a mix-breed. She was mixed with Cherokee Indian and Negro. … Grandpa … was a full blood Indian.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 (WPA, 1941). (Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson; Brinkley, AR). Project Gutenberg
Mattie Logan — Cherokee (maternal line)
Quote: “My mother was part Indian, for her mother was a half-blood Cherokee Indian from Virginia.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Oklahoma (WPA, 1941). (Oklahoma Writers’ Project; West Tulsa, OK). Project Gutenberg
(Same item as #1 confirms identity context) Omelia Thomas — Cherokee (mother)
Quote (opening identifiers in the same interview): “Right After the War… My mother was a Cherokee Indian.”
Source: Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 (same interview as #1, provides continuity of the parental identifier across the interview). Project Gutenberg
Kizia(h) Love — contextual Indian ownership; included here only as corroborative context if you’re mapping Indian-country slavery settings around the parental claims above
Quote: “Frank Colbert, a full blood Choctaw Indian, was my owner.”
Source: Slave Narratives: Oklahoma (WPA, 1941). (Colbert, OK). (Note: this entry does not assert Indian parentage, but shows Choctaw ownership in the same corpus used for #6.) Project Gutenberg
(Additional Arkansas testimony with explicit “Indian” maternal identity) A. J. Mitchell — repeated for clarity due to the unequivocal “full Injun” maternal statement, useful for your blog’s quote cards.
Quote: “My mother … was full Injun.”
Source: Arkansas Narratives, Part 5. Project Gutenberg
(Composite family identification helpful for tribal mapping) Wylie Nealy — repeated to capture both sides for your data table
Quote: “He was a Choctaw Indian. Mother was part Cherokee Indian.”
Source: Arkansas Narratives, Part 5. Project Gutenberg
Tiya Miles (University of Michigan) has published “The Narrative of Nancy, a Cherokee Woman” in the recent issue of Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (H/T Legal History Blog). From the intro:
On November 24, 1801, Nancy, “by appearance an Indian woman,” gave testimony at Fort Southwest Point, a garrison in eastern Tennessee established in 1792 to defend white settlements against Indian attack.1 In a statement recorded under the title “The Narrative of Nancy, A Cherokee Woman,” Nancy claimed that she had been wrongfully held as a slave in Virginia since the year 1778. At the time of her testimony, Nancy was approximately thirty one years old and living with a white man named, incredibly, Captain John Smith. Smith had purchased Nancy from John Fulton, who had bought her from William Kennedy. Nancy described the crime of her capture in graphic detail in the narrative, testifying that
[S]he was taken when a child from her mother, that the white people afterwards boasted that they held their guns over her mother’s head to frighten her when they took her away: that sometime afterwards she was carried a great way on horseback to a place where there were a number of houses . . . that she had two masters before Mr. Fulton bought her, that she had brothers and sisters when she was taken away from her mother, that she never saw any waters larger than the Tennessee and Clinch Rivers.
Here is the full article — tiya-miles-the-narrative-of-nancy
