Black Indians are Native American people of African American heritage, or person of African American descent with strong cultural ties to Native American communities.

Historically, certain Native American tribes have had close relations with African Americans, especially in regions where slavery was prevalent or where free people of color have historically resided. Members of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole) participated in holding enslaved African Americans in the Southeast and some enslaved or formerly enslaved people migrated with them to the West on the Trail of Tears in 1830 and later during the period of Indian Removal. Black ancestry is also common among some federally recognized tribes in the Northeast, including the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Narragansett Indian Tribe, the Shinnecock Indian Nation, and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head.

In controversial actions, since the late 20th century, the Cherokee Nation, Choctaw Nation, Muscogee Nation, and Seminole Nation of Oklahoma tightened their rules for membership and at times excluded Freedmen who did not have at least one ancestor listed as Native American by blood on the early 20th-century Dawes Rolls. This exclusion was later appealed in the courts, both because of the treaty conditions and in some cases because of possible inaccuracies in some of the Rolls. The Chickasaw Nation never extended citizenship to Chickasaw Freedmen.

Overview Until recently, historic relations between Native Americans and African Americans were relatively neglected in mainstream United States history studies. Over time, Africans had varying degrees of contact with Native Americans, although they did not live together in as great number as with Europeans. Enslaved Africans brought to the United States, as well as their descendants, have had a history of cultural exchange and intermarriage with Native Americans, as well as with other enslaved mixed-race persons who had some Native American and European ancestry.

Most such interaction took place in New England, where contact was established early,Daniel Mandell, "The Saga of Sarah Muckamugg: Indian and African American Intermarriage in Colonial New England," in Martha Hodes, ed. Sex, Love Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History(New York: New York University Press, 1999), 72-90Tiffany McKinney, "Race and Federal Recognition in Native New England," in Tiya Miles and Sharon Holland, eds. Crossing Waters, crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 57-79 and in the Southern United States, where the largest number of African-descended people were enslaved. In the 21st century, a significant number of African Americans have some Native American ancestry, but most have not grown up within those cultures and lack current social, cultural or linguistic ties to Native peoples.

Relationships among different Native Americans, Africans, and African Americans have been varied and complex. Native peoples often disagreed about the role of ethnic African people in their communities. Some tribes or bands were more accepting of ethnic Africans than others, and welcomed them as full members of their respective cultures and communities. Other Native Americans saw uses for slavery, and did not oppose it for others. Some Native Americans and people of African descent fought alongside one another in armed struggles of resistance against U.S. expansion into Native territories, as in the Seminole Wars in Florida.

After the American Civil War, some African Americans became (or continued as) members of the US Army. Many were assigned to fight against Native Americans in the wars in the Western frontier states. Their military units became known as the Buffalo Soldiers, a nickname given by Native Americans. Black Seminole men in particular were recruited from Indian Territory to work as Native American scouts for the Army.

In New England and the Northeastern United States, Black ancestry is common among some federally recognized tribes, including the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, the Narragansett Indian Tribe, the Shinnecock Indian Nation, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

Intermarriage between Black Americans and Native Americans was common in Massachusetts as early as the 17th century. A 1792 census of Wampanoag people at Gay Head showed that 28% of the tribe had African ancestry. While many Wampanoags with African ancestry tried to distinguish themselves from the Black population, this did not always succeed from the perspective of the white population. People of mixed Black and Wampanoag ancestry were generally accepted as Wampanoag by the tribe as long as they remained on Martha's Vinyard. Black Wampanoags who moved away from the community could have their Native identity questioned, including by Wampanoag people.

History

European colonization of the Americas

Records of contacts between Africans and Native Americans date to April 1502, when the first enslaved African arrived in Hispaniola. Some Africans escaped inland from the colony of Santo Domingo; those who survived and joined with the Native tribes became the first group of Black Indians.Katz, Black Indians, 28.Muslims in American History: A Forgotten Legacy by Dr. Jerald F. Dirks. Page 204. These first groups of Black Indians established a number of Maroon settlements in the Caribbean. In the lands which later became part of the United States, the first recorded example of an enslaved African escaping from European colonists and being absorbed by Native Americans dates to 1526. In June of that year, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón established a Spanish colony near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in present-day South Carolina. The Spanish settlement was named San Miguel de Guadalupe; its inhabitants included 100 enslaved Africans. In 1526 the first enslaved Africans fled the colony and took refuge in Shakori Indigenous communities.

In 1534 Pueblo peoples of the Southwest had contact with the Moroccan slave Esteban de Dorantes before any contact with the remainder of survivors of his Spanish expedition. As part of the Spanish Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, Esteban traveled from Florida in 1528 to what is now New Mexico in 1539, with a few other survivors. He is thought to have been killed by Zuni.Flint, Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint. "Dorantes, Esteban de". New Mexico Office of the State Historian. 10 Aug 2013. More than a century later, when the Pueblos united to rid their homelands of the Spanish colonists during the 1690 Pueblo Revolt, one of the organizers of the revolt, Domingo Naranjo ( – ) was a Santa Clara Pueblo man of African ancestry.

In 1622 Algonquian Native Americans attacked the colony of Jamestown in Virginia. They massacred all the Europeans but brought some of the few enslaved Africans as captives back to their own communities, gradually assimilating them. Interracial relationships continued to take place between Africans (and later African Americans) and members of Native American tribes in the coastal states. Although the colonists tried to enslave Native Americans in the early years, they abandoned the practise in the early 18th century. Several colonial advertisements for runaway slaves made direct reference to the connections which Africans had in Native American communities. "Reward notices in colonial newspapers now told of African slaves who 'ran off with his Indian wife' or 'had kin among the Indians' or is 'part-Indian and speaks their language good'."Black NDNs. Retrieved 10 Aug 2013.Katz, Black Indians, p. 103.

Several of the Thirteen Colonies passed laws prohibiting the transportation of enslaved people into the frontier of the Cherokee Nation's territory to restrict interactions between the two groups. European colonists told the Cherokee that the smallpox epidemic of 1739 in the Southeast was due to disease brought by enslaved African. Some tribes encouraged intermarriage with Africans, with the idea that stronger children would result from the unions.

Colonists in South Carolina felt so concerned about the possible threat posed by the mixed African and Native American population that they passed a law in 1725 prohibiting taking enslaved people to the frontier regions, and imposing a fine of 200 pounds if violated. In 1751, South Carolina passed a law against holding Africans in proximity to Native Americans, as the planters considered that detrimental to the security of the colony. Under Governor James Glen (in office 1743–1756), South Carolina promoted an official policy that aimed to create in Native Americans an "aversion" to African Americans in an attempt to thwart possible alliances between them.

In 1753, during the chaos of Pontiac's War, a resident of Detroit observed that the Native tribes revolting were killing any whites they came across but were "saving and caressing all the Negroes they take." The resident expressed fear that this practice could eventually lead to a uprising amongst the enslaved people. Similarly, Iroquois chief Thayendanegea, more commonly known as Joseph Brant, similarly welcomed runaway slaves and encouraged them to intermarry in the tribe. Native American adoptions system did not discriminate on the basis of color, and Indian villages would eventually serve as stations on the Underground Railroad.

Historian Carter G. Woodson believed that relations with Native American tribes could have provided an escape hatch from slavery: Native American villages welcomed fugitive slaves and, in the antebellum years, some served as stations on the Underground Railroad.

There were varieties of attitude: some Native Americans resented the presence of Africans.Red, White, and Black, p. 99. In one account, the "Catawaba tribe in 1752 showed great anger and bitter resentment when an African American came among them as a trader."

European and European-American colonists tried to divide Native Americans and African Americans against each other. Europeans considered both races inferior and tried to convince Native Americans that Africans worked against their best interests.Red, White, and Black, p. 105,

In the colonial period, Native Americans received rewards if they returned formerly enslaved people who had escaped. In the latter 19th century, African-American soldiers (buffalo soldiers) had assignments to fight with U.S. forces in Indian Wars in the West.

European enslavement

European colonists created a new demand market for captives of raids when they founded what would go on to become the Thirteen Colonies. Especially in the southern colonies, initially developed for resource exploitation rather than settlement, colonists purchased or captured Native Americans to be used as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, and, by the 18th century, rice and indigo.

To acquire trade goods, Native Americans began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies.Snyder (2010), "Indian Slave Trade" [Ch. 2], in Slavery, pp. 46-79. Traded goods, such as axes, bronze kettles, Caribbean rum, European jewelry, needles, and scissors, varied among the tribes, but the most prized were rifles. The English copied the Spanish and Portuguese: they saw the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans as a moral, legal, and socially acceptable institution; a common rationale for enslavement was the taking of captives after a "just war" and using slavery as an alternative to a death sentence.

The escape of Native American slaves was frequent, because they had a better understanding of the land, which African slaves did not. Consequently, the Natives who were captured and sold into slavery were often sent to the West Indies, or far away from their traditional homeland.