February 13, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



(' dog '), with a decided emphasis, and ' iste-lustee ' (' black- 

 man '). There was certainly no need to question him further 

 upon the subject.'" 



Amongst several of the Indian tribes now resident in the 

 Indian Territory, negro slavery existed; but many adoptions 

 have taken place, although the question does not even now 

 appear to be quite settled. Mr. George A. Reynolds states,^ 

 " When the war ended, they [Seminoles] were destitute, and 

 scattered from the Red River to Kansas. Again they sought 

 the protection of the government. They formed new 

 treaties ; they complied with all the conditions imposed upon 

 them ; they adopted their former slaves, and made them 

 citizens of their country, with equal rights in the soil and 

 annuities. Their negroes hold office and sit in their coun- 

 cils." Mr. L. N. Robinson," writing in August, 1869, calls 

 attention to the failure of the Choctaw and Chickasaw 

 nations to provide for the adoption (within the time speci- 

 fied) of " persons of African descent residing amongst them," 

 as required by a section of the treaty of 1866, and points out 

 that certain "difficulties in the Creek nation are to some ex- 

 tent attributable to the presence of the black element, and 

 the agitation of questions growing out of their presence and 

 participation in tribal affairs." He further remarks, "Under 

 the Cherokee treaty, the separation of families, parent and 

 child, husband and wife, is as complete, as cruel, and in- 

 human, as was ever the case woi-ked under the system of 

 slavery. The situation of the blacks within the Indian 

 tribes taken as a class is a reproach to our boasted civil- 

 ization and love of justice, which is inexcusable so long as 

 the plan of colonization remains untried." 



From the report for 1869,* we learn that " one peculiar 

 difference exists between negro and Indian in the Five 

 Nations [i.e., Cherokee, etc.]; i.e., intermarriage with Indian 

 gives a United States citizen, male or female, rights, but in- 

 termarriage with negro does not." Some interesting infor- 

 mation is contained in the report of Mr. Robert Owen to the 

 commissioner of Indian affairs in 1888,'* regarding the ab- 

 origines resident in the Indian territory. He says, " There 

 are many negroes, former slaves to Indians ; and among 

 the Creeks is some negro miscegenation, though much exag- 

 gerated in reports on that subject. There are numbers of 

 adopted citizens, — whites, other Indians, and negroes." In 

 the Cherokee nation it appears that the 2,400 negroes, along 

 with the other adopted citizens, have been denied the right 

 to participation in public annuities. Among the Choctaws, 

 negroes have been adopted and " given a pt'o rata of schools, 

 right of suffrage, and citizenship, as provided by treaty." 

 Similar is the condition of the negroes of the Creek nation. 

 Of the blacks among the Chickasaws, Mr. Owen says, 

 " They are still in the forlorn status, as stated in my last re- 

 port. The Chickasaws are firmly resolved never to receive 

 them. It is the palpable duty of the government to remove 

 them." 



In the Bermudas some miscegenation has taken place. 

 About 1616 we find it recorded that a vessel arrived there 

 which " brought with her also one Indian and a negro (the 

 first these islands ever had)." " After the utter defeat of the 

 Indians in the Pequot war, numbers of them were trans- 

 ported to the Bermudas from Massachusetts, and amalga- 



' Kirk Munroe, "A Forgotten Remnant" (Scribner^s Magazine, vol. vii. 

 1880, p. am). 



2 Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1869 (Washington, 1870), p. 417. 



3 Ibid., p. 399. 



* See p. 132; also Smithsonian Report, 1886, part ii. part v. p, 225. 

 ^ Fifty-seventh Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1888, p. 131. 

 •^ Sir J. H. Leproy, The History of the Bermudas or Summer Islands (ed. 

 for Hakluyt Society, 1882), p. 84. 



mation of these with the negroes has to a certain extent 

 occurred. Professor H. C. Bolton, in an interesting article 

 on the Bermudian negroes, in the Journal of American 

 FolkLore,^ makes the following statement : "The colored 

 population of Bermuda have, in general, attained a higher 

 stage of development, and made greater progress in civil- 

 ization, than their kindred in the southern United States. 

 This is probably due in part to close contact (not amalga- 

 mation) with their Anglo-Saxon masters on these isolated 

 islands, and in part to the admixture of Indian blood in 

 their ancestors. Between the years 1630 and 1660 many negro 

 and Indian slaves were brought into the British colony, — 

 the negroes from Africa and the West Indies, and a large 

 number of red-skins from Massachusetts, prisoners taken in 

 the Pequot and King Philip's wars. Many of the colored 

 people show in their physiognomy the influence of the Indian 

 type. Moreover, slavery was abolished in 1834, Bermuda 

 being the first colony to advocate immediate rather than 

 gradual emancipation; but the importation of negroes from 

 Africa had ceased long before, so the type resulting from 

 the mixed races continued to dominate. The faces of many 

 of the dark-skinned natives are really fine ; their lips being 

 thinner, noses sharper, cheek-bones less obtrusive, and their 

 facial angle larger, than those of most negroes in the South- 

 ern States." 



In Neill's " History of Minnesota,"" there is the follow- 

 ing interesting passage, the facts to which it relates belong- 

 ing to the year 1819 : "Three miles above the mouth of the 

 St. Louis River they came to an Ojebwa village of 14 lodges. 

 Among the residents were the children of an African by the 

 name of Bungo, the servant of a British ofiicer who once 

 commanded at Mackinaw. Their hair was curled and skin 

 glossy, and their features altogether African." 



A subject to which some attention has recently been de- 

 voted is the relation of the folk-lore of the negro to that of 

 the Indian. This has been discussed at considerable length 

 by Professor T. F. Crane, in his excellent review of " Uncle 

 Remus," ' and we need but to cite his conclusion : " We are 

 now prepared to consider briefly these stories, which are 

 substantially the same in Brazil and in the Southern States. 

 That the negroes of the United States obtained these stories 

 from the South American Indians is an hypothesis no one 

 would think of maintaining; but that the Indians heard 

 these stories from the African slaves in Brazil, and that the 

 latter, as well as those who were formerly slaves in the 

 United States, brought these stories with them from Africa, 

 is, we think, beyond a doubt, the explanation of the resem- 

 blances we have noted." Besides " Uncle Remus," Jones's,* 

 and Gordon's and Page's,' contributions to negro literature 

 may be studied to advantage. It is possible that a few of 

 the negro stories were borrowed by the blacks from the red 

 men. Such was the opinion of Major Powell." Mr. James 

 Mooney says of certain myths of the Cherokees,' " They re- 

 semble the ' Uncle Remus ' stories, which I yet hope to 

 prove are of Indian origin." 



In the present paper no attempt has been made to exhaust 

 the subject. South America and the West Indies have been 

 left untouched. To make the study of the. contact of the 



1 Vol. iii. p. 332. 



■ E. D. Neill, History of Minnesota (Philadelphia, 1858), p. 322. 



3 "Plantation Folk-Lore" (Popular Science Monthly, vol. sviii. 1881, pp. 

 324-333) ; see also C. F. Hartt, Amazonian Tortoise Myths (1875) ; Herbeht 

 Smith, Brazil, The Amazons, and The Coast : and the other literature cited by 

 Professor Crane. 



< Negro Myths o£ the Georgia Coast, 1888. 



« Befo' de War. Echoes in Negro Dialect, 1888. 



" J. C. Harris, Uncle Remus, Preface, p. 4. 



' Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. i. p. 106. 



