Did you know that Cherokee and Native American nations purchased enslaved Black people?

I did not know this mind-blowing fact. In the 18th and 19th century, Native American tribes enslaved black people. There is a good deal of history that I would call your attention to.

From Wikipedia Entry on Native American Slave Ownership

Holding humans in slavery was not a new concept to indigenous American peoples - in inter-Native

American conflict tribes often kept prisoners-of-war, and these captives often replaced slain tribe-

members. Intra-indigenous slavery also occurred in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska,

where it persisted until the late-19th century. Native-American versions of slavery prior to

European contact sometimes differed from racist European concepts of slavery in that Native

Americans did not originally distinguish between groups of people based on skin-color, but rather

traditions.

This came to me as news from an article in the New York Times discussing the change in the Cherokee Nation Constitution that granted equal rights to "Freedmen."

Excerpt from the Article:

The Cherokee and other Native American nations originally in the South had purchased enslaved

Black people as laborers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and had brought them along when they were

driven westward by white settlers.

Read the entire New York Times article written by Mark Walker here.