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Sam Checote
Creek Indian Chief In 1819 in Alabama, a boy was born to a
man and wife who were full blood Creek Indians. His name was Sam Checote and at
an early age he came under the influence of a pioneer of Methodism in Indian
Territory, "Uncle" John Harrell. Sam Checote preached, until forbidden
by the Creek Council under a law carrying a penalty of 50 lashes on the bare
back. Checote fled the territory and sent appeals to Chief McIntosh until the
law was revoked. In 1852 he joined the Indian Mission Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church South and preached until the time of the Civil War.
After the war, he was a preacher, circuit rider and presiding elder in the
Indian Mission. In 1872 he was elected Chief of the Creek Nation, where he
served 12 years. He was elected as a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference of
Methodism, held in London in 1881, but he could not attend due to illness. He
died in 1884, and was buried near Okmulgee. His people called him their Great
Chief, describing him as "gentle as a child, as courageous as a lion."
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Cow Tom was to have enemies among him however, since the Confederate
Creeks had returned. Under the direction of Sam Checote, Cow Tom,
Harry Island and others would have to be abreast of all goings on, as
these mixed blood Creeks were determined to remove all traces of black
people from their nation. Their belief was in a racial superiority, and
their influence was strong. Cow Tom, along with Ketch Barnett, and Harry
Island had to make a trip to Washington, unknown to their Creek brethren
to insure that their people would be treated fairly and included in
benefits extended to the citizens of the Nation.
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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.* *
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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update 5
October 2011
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