amazing... I vaguely remember reading about that or seeing an Indian with slaves in a movie. I never knew it was practiced by Indian hierarchy.
“I used to like history,” Smith told the crowd ruefully. “And sometimes, I still do. But not most of the time. Most of the time, history and I are frenemies at best.” In the case of the Trail of Tears and the enslavement of blacks by prominent members of all five so-called “Civilized Tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole), Smith went one step further, likening the ugly truth of history to a “mangy, snarling dog standing between you and a crowd-pleasing narrative.”
“Obviously,” Smith said, “the story should be,
needs to be, that the enslaved black people and soon-to-be-exiled red people would join forces and defeat their oppressor.” But such was not the case—far from it. “The Five Civilized Tribes were deeply committed to slavery, established their own racialized black codes, immediately reestablished slavery when they arrived in Indian territory, rebuilt their nations with slave labor, crushed slave rebellions, and enthusiastically sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.”
In other words, the truth is about as far a cry from a “crowd-pleasing narrative” as you could possibly get. “Do you want to hear that?” Smith asked the audience. “I don’t think so. Nobody does.” And yet, Smith is firm in his belief that it is a museum’s duty to embrace and elucidate ambiguity, not sweep it under the rug in the pursuit of some cleaner fiction.
Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smit...ears-narrative-180968339/#LvWDSwaWw9geA2VU.99
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Some people - self-righteous libs foremost among them- might want to reflect on the fact that about every group has a complicated history if you pull the curtains back. Might want to think about that a bit before dividing everyone into the good guys and the bad guys and then destroying the statues and heritage of many generations in the south....and as the cleansing program expands to the north...to rebrand or eradicate anything of European or southern heritage.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smit...s-complicate-trail-tears-narrative-180968339/
