Trail Sisters: Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850–1890 by Linda W. Reese (review)

Linda W. Reese’s Trail Sisters: Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850–1890, is an engaging and fascinating book that focuses on the long-overdue subject of the lived experiences of black and black Indian women among the Five Nations (Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, and Chickasaw) in Indian Territory during the antebellum and Reconstruction eras. Reese’s work builds upon the notable scholarship of Circe Strum, Tiya Miles, James F. Brooks, Fay Yarbrough, David A. Chang, Celia E. Naylor, and Claudio Saunt to explore the complexity of race in Indian Territory, where “all partners, Native Americans, European Americans, and African Americans, contribute to the conversation and . . . gender plays a significant role in unraveling this complex aspect of life” (7). Reese’s work is underscored by the testimony of freedwomen gleaned from the wpa Oklahoma Slave Narratives, testimony that explores “both the unraveling of kinship, bondage, shared culture, and labor that once bound African American enslaved women and their Indian masters and mistresses as well as the knitting together of new alliances” (7). By exploring the journey of black and black Indian women in Indian Territory from slavery to freedom, Reese aims to provide insight into the larger and “tangled question on the rights of the descendants of the Oklahoma freed people as citizens of the former Indian nations” (8).

Five chapters outline the primary themes of the book. Chapter 1, “Living in Slavery,” explores life for enslaved women among the Five Nations with a focus on the 1850s, the decade leading up to the Civil War. Reese explores the nuanced characteristics of slavery among the Five Nations from the harshness of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations to the leniency of the Creek and Seminole Nations. She also explores labor divisions among the female slave population, interracial intimacy between Indian slave masters and their black female slaves, slave-owning Indian woman, and the ever-changing dynamics in the wake of an imminent war over slavery.

Chapter 2, “Surviving the War,” explores the consequences of the Civil War in Indian Territory, highlighting its effect upon its most vulnerable population, slave women. According to Reese, “Slave women experienced increased violence, sales of their family members, and abandonment. . . . The rupture of family ties that included love, protection, and support bore heavily on enslaved mothers” (43–44). Enslaved women witnessed an immediate demise of their family units and suffered from want of basic necessities; they experienced violent attacks from within their respective Indian nations, from Plains Indians (enemies of the Five Nations), and from white Union and Confederate soldiers.

Chapter 3, “Reconstructing Families,” highlights the aftermath of the Civil War and the efforts of freedwomen to locate and rebuild their shattered families. Yet within freedwomen’s new state of freedom, their needs were not the priority of the federal government or the Indian nations that had once held these women captive. Much like their former female enslaved counterparts in the white South, freedwomen in post–Civil War Indian Territory “had no voice, no vote, and very little security in personal property ownership” (67). Despite such obstacles, freed-women proved resilient, adapting to their newfound freed status and the changing dynamics of Indian Territory that resulted from a burgeoning black and white immigration into the West.

Chapter 4, “Making a New Life,” explores the trials and triumphs of freedwomen as they transitioned from a life of chattel laborer to that of wage earner. While some freedwomen remained with their former slave-owning families, entering into employment contracts, others left to work as domestics for white families or hired themselves out as folk healers, funerary service providers, and teachers. Some joined their male companions as sharecroppers. Yet because of a lack of title, “freed-men are obliged to expand their labor upon farms . . . which once well improved are not infrequently taken from them” (106). Some freed-women married black southern immigrants and moved to all-black towns, contributing to the economy by working...