Annotated Bibliography
Katz, William Loren. Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. NY: Aladdin Paperbacks: 1997. Katz
provides his readers with untold facts of the history of Native Americans and African
Americans in the history of our so called great United states of America. He emphasizes
how the new settlers' greed and need to control or be in power did not allow them to see a
unique quality that both Natives and Africans possessed, as he states "Europeans might
have learned something from the dark people they selfishly used. Instead, they gathered
these peoples' precious gifts and offered promises in return. Africans and Indians
followed a tradition that rarely wrote matters down, but held to verbal promises. They
met Europeans who wrote many, many things down but failed to keep their promises or
treaties" (12). Katz also show other connections between Natives and Africans such the
value they placed on family and not wanting war but to live peaceably amongst one
another. Katz further references how the settlers enslaved both Natives and Africans and
demonstrates racial tactics used to try and keep them separate.
Krauthamer, Barbara. Black slave, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in
the Native American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Krauthamer goes into depth about the racial, gender and power issues in her book.
Krauthamer also touches on the fact that there were a lot of Indian slave masters who
owned African slaves in the south. Which is the reason the Indians began to think that the
settlers respected them. However, Krauthamer, points out that the settlers "firmly
embraced a racial hierarchy that degraded blackness and associated it exclusively with
enslavement" (32). So even though the Indians owned slaves they still would not be equal
to the settlers.
Palmie, Stephanie. Slave Cultures and Culture of Slaves. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1995. Palmie gives an account of why or how Native Americans became slave
owners and how some tribes were a little harsh in dealing with their African slaves. The
Indians would help the Africans escape which was seen as a threat to the settlers. Palmie
states "Slaveholding Indians no longer seemed dangerous to southern society, because
they were no longer seen as attractive to runaway slaves: this fact diminished the
likelihood that these tribes would be persecuted or extinguished" (165). Palmie tells the
story as if the Native Americans conformed to the ways of the settlers by becoming
owners of African slaves to protect themselves. So, the settlers would no longer try to
enslave or harm Indians because they were no longer seen as a threat.
Resendez, Andres. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Slavery in America.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. As Resendez researches for this book he
uncovers a vast number of the "other slaves". There is one question that Resendez really
wants to know, which is "how many Indian slaves had there been in the Americas since
the time of Columbus" (7)? He later discovers what that number is, which is in the
millions. Resendez also discusses other unique features of Indian slaves as he points out
"For instance, in stark contrast to the African slave trade which consisted primarily of
adult males the majority of Indian slaves where actually, women and children" (10). He
then goes on to point out other similarities and differences with the slave trade between
Native and African Americans.
Zellar, Gary. African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 2007. Zellar tells the history of the Estelvste (Africans) and the Creeks (Indians).
He explains how the Indians once owned some of the Estelvste. Zellar then points out
how African Creeks came into existence which was because of the mingling of the two
races. There was a shortage of Indian women, so the Indians sought the African women
as wives. They learned how to coexist with one another because they shared similar
beliefs as she states here "By the 1720s most of the slaves coming into South Carolina
(and after 1751 into Georgia) were coming directly from Africa, and those coming from
the forest regions of West and central Africa shared many cultural traits with southeastern
Indians"(11).