Red Over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians (review)

278CIVIL WAR HISTORY nearly seventy miles north in All Saints Parish (p. 214), simply because the source was a letter written in Charleston. Similarly, she failed to recognize that a slave fiddler observed in Conwayboro, Horry County (not Norry County), S. C, was actually a visitor from a Georgetown County rice plantation somethirtymiles to the south—an area demographically , socially, and culturally quite different from Horry County. Among other things, such mislocations obscure the process of transmission of black music from one locale to another. More serious is the problem of her use of Caribbean sources. Under the influence of Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, Epstein searched the literature of the West Indies for descriptions of black music, dancing, and instruments. Unfortunately, she uses the material analogously, rather than comparatively. She assumes that mainland black music must have been like Caribbean black music, butbecause of the "slow growth rate of the black population" on the mainland, their music "made little impact on travelers and other witnesses" (p. xvi). It would seem to be at least as plausible that demographic differences between the mainland and the Caribbean influenced patterns of musical development as much as it did patterns of traveler's observation. Perhaps the most serious weakness of the book is Epstein's failure to draw upon the vast theoretical literature of fofkloristics, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and linguistics. As a result, her handling of such questions as "African survivals" and "acculturation" is simplistic, static, and less than satisfactory. These analytical reservations are not mere quibbles, for Epstein has attempted to write an analytical book. But they do obscure the nature and magnitude of her achievement. She is neither folklorist, anthropologist , nor ethnomusicologist. She is a music librarian, and itis as a librarian that she has performed the immense task of exhaustively documenting the record of ante-bellum black music. That is sufficient for one book; it is certainly more than any other scholar has done. If her analysis is not the last word on the subject, her documentation is now the necessary first step for all future analysis. Charles W. Joyner St. Andrews Presbyterian College Red Over Bhck: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians. By R. Halliburton, Jr. (Greenwood Press, 1977. Pp. x, 218. $15.95.) Professor Halliburton maintains that the institution of black slavery among the Cherokees has either been ignored by historians, or their picture of it has been distorted. Unlike the view of Cherokee slavery as a distinctly milder form, he argues that it was remarkably like that found among the whites. Indeed, he concludes with the statement that it was "a microcosm of slavery in the southern United States." BOOK REVIEWS279 In less than 150 pages the author discusses the growth of black slavery among the Cherokees and its abrupt end. He maintains that its image as a relatively mild institution was due to the prejudices of the authors of the reports on which such an assessment was based—authors who were missionaries and Indian Service officials of Southern origin. Halliburton argues that Cherokees were as racist, or more so, than the whites. Moreover, if they differed in their attitudes on the institution it was principally that they "never experienced the inner conflict between slave-owning and conscience, never felt the need to justify slavery morally." A growth in legislation confirming the inferior position of the black slave in Cherokee society, paralleling comparable legislation in the South in the thirty years before the Civil War, is clearly documented. Halliburton is much better on the life style of Cherokee planters than he is on the condition of their slaves. We are told how many windows are in the owner's mansions, and the oft-told story of the marriage of Cherokee youths to white girls of Cornwall, Connecticut, is again repeated. However, there is a distressing lack of evidence dealing with his real subject, Cherokee-black relations. Nor is his thesis quite as original as he suggests. William G. McLaughlin said essentially the same thing in an article in American Quarterly in October, 1974. True, McLaughlin did not provide some of the detail that Halliburton has, but the latter's practice of printing in their entirety legal instruments and personal...