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Harry Island
African Creek Interpreter
& Husband of Maggie Cow Tom
Harry Island served as one of the official U.S.
Interpreters with the Muskogee Creek Nation. He was present during many
official hearings during the 1860s and 70s in the years following the
Civil War.
The "official" perspective given by historians
about Harry Island is that the is believed to have "tricked"
the Creeks, by including benefits for Freedmen in all negotiations. Yet,
Harry Island was himself a citizens of the nation, having lived,
practiced the customs and spoken the language of the land of his birth
during his entire life. It would seem most improbable that he
would have excluded his own people, who were a part of the same nation,
from benefits accorded to his nation. It is interesting now that 20th
and 21st century scholars would have expected him to have ostracized
several hundred African Creek Citizens, or for any to have expected him
to do so. The late Angie Debo, noted Oklahoma historian wrote
about Harry Island in The Road to Disappearance the book about
the Creek Nation, and she described Harry Island as a "shrewd Creek
Negro who served as interpreter and apparently looked after the interest
of his race."1
Harry Island was utilized most often by the nation,
because of his fluency in both English and Muskogee. He had other
African contemporaries who were also interpreters—Silas Jefferson,
Robert Johnson, and John Meyers. During the hearings for the Loyal Creek
Claims, Harry Island served as government interpreter for Louisa Tiger
and others, who were refugees from the War, from the Muskogee Nation.2
Ketch Barnett and Cow Tom joined Harry
Island as part of the official delegation of African Creeks making
claims. Island is said to have been among the strongest voices to
insure that the Freedmen were included among the Loyal Creeks. The
reason is that the nation initially wanted to exclude their African
citizens from receiving benefits extended to the nation. This
attitude was to later come into fruition as years later in violation of
the Treaty of 1866, the nations would become successful of exclusion
once again.
In March of 1867, payments began to the Creek citizens
who remained Loyal to the Union in the Civil War. Dunn, and Indian
agent prepared a roll of the Negro Creeks, entitled to receive payments.
Sam Checote tried to exclude the blacks, and immediately Harry Island
went to Washington to protest. He was accompanied on this trip by
Cow Tom and Ketch Barnett. Harry Island is remembered for his
skills as a negotiator, and is remembered with reverence by the Freedmen
and descendants of Freedmen. During his lifetime, he was able to secure
the placement of the African Creeks in the nation.
He is buried at Agency Cemetery. The inscription on his
granite stone slab reads: Harry ISLAND, died August 15, 1872, aged 60
yrs. The cemetery where he rests is now abandoned with no
access outside Muskogee. Harry Island and other African Creek
leaders are buried there, forgotten by the community where they lived
and served.3
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1 Debo, Angie,
The Road to Disappearance,
Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1979.
2 National Archives RG 75, Claims of the Loyal Creeks
3 Indian Pioneer Papers Volume 111 Cemeteries.
Microfiche # 6046979
Source:
African-NativeAmerican
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 15 December
2011
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