Trail Sisters: Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850–1890

Epilogue

Epilogue In rural places far off the main roads of Oklahoma one can find the remains of the numerous communities that the freedwomen inhabited well into the twentieth century. They are mostly overgrown cemeteries and abandoned buildings. The staff of the Oklahoma History Center and the descendants of the freedmen have actively worked to reconstruct the history of African Americans in the state and to educate those who want to hear it. But the stories of the Indian Territory freedwomen have been largely forgotten. At one end of the former Indian Territory near Keystone Lake the shell of what was once a very fine house stands as testament to its owner, the Creek freedwoman Elizzie Redmond Davis. She was born sometime around 1865, the daughter of Mose Redmouth and Annie Martin, her parents enslaved by two different men. She had four children, and she died in 1909, not long after filing for a mortgage on the allotment she had received. There are rumors that she gave hospitality to outlaws and sold illegal liquor to Tulsans. The only evidence supporting this is a small room behind a double wall with a door that can be easily concealed. Her success in navigating the fortunes of Indian Territory is evident in the crumbling remains of her house, but little else about her life is known.1 At the other end of Indian Territory, a few miles south and west of Ada, Oklahoma, the Athens Cemetery survives. At one time a small community of Choctaw and Chickasaw freed people lived in the area. There Trail Sisters •142• was once a school and a church; now only the silent graves remain. Among the headstones are those of Ella Albert, a Chickasaw freedwoman , Nellie Barnett, a Creek freedwoman, and Betty Franklin, a Choctaw freedwoman, their status confirmed by the existence of their allotment card numbers. For a long time the cemetery was overgrown with weeds, tall grasses, bushes, and tree seedlings. Renewed interest from the descendants of the Athens pioneers and local residents have led to a revival of the burial ground and the creation of a photographic record of the headstones. If written narratives had survived, what would Elizzie, Ella, Nellie, and Betty tell us about their lives in Indian Territory? Would their life stories reflect the accounts told by others? We can only speculate that they would have had similar things to say, though their individual journeys would have been marked by differences.2 African American women and black Indian women accompanied the forced migration of the Five Tribes to Indian Territory in the early nineteenth century. Their lack of choice in removal had a double meaning. Except for the small group who had intermarried with members of the Five Tribes and had become acceptable to them, nearly all of them came as enslaved people. They were deported at the order of both the federal government and their masters. By the 1850s their labor had contributed to the building up this beautiful but undeveloped area into a showplace of homes, small farms, plantations, and prosperous communities. Slavery in Indian Territory had many variations depending on the history and culture of each of the tribal groups, the level of acculturation and psychological makeup of individual slaveholders, and the economic resources at hand. It could be as harsh and brutal as the worst examples in the southern states or exist as a more independent, tributary form of servitude. Even so, it was ownership of human beings as property. The right to keep enslaved women and men in Indian Territory came into question during the decade as conflict over the issue of slavery intensi fied in the rest of the United States. Religious denominations split over whether Christianity condones human bondage. Family membership divided over the inclusion of African Americans as kin. The constitutional governments of the Five Nations passed legislation to codify and restrict the freedom, movement, and identity of enslaved peoples. In each of these circumstances enslaved women lost position and recogni- Epilogue •143• tion in tribal societies that had functioned along matrilineal kinship lines. Members of the different tribal groups quarreled among themselves about how to proceed in their interactions with the federal government should there be what seemed an inevitable national schism. So too did enslaved families debate their options. In spite of intentional efforts by the Five Nations to remain outside of the conflict, Indian Territory...