Notice as you read the next story, NICK ADAMS goes with his father to the “Indian Camp,” which is part of the community, but a segregated part. Let us not assume anything about “segregated.” It is easy to assume the community would rather have the Indians living in a separated area. But it might be the Indians also want to be among their own.
Back in the 1800s when “white men” and “Indians” began trading goods, setting up trade centers or “Rendezvous” gatherings to trade guns, blankets, jewelry, clothes; to have rodeos, shooting contests, and barter even for horses and even for a wife, good interactions may have occurred, but TENSIONS were high, also. Native Americans did not generally trust these new “white skins.” And Americans of all races and colors did not trust Indians.
Indians and “outsiders” (from a Native-American perspective) began living closer together. Indian men started marrying “white” and “brown” women and other outsiders from France, Canada, Mexico, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean Islands, which included Africans and Europeans, even Asians . And “white”/”Brown”/”Dark-Complexed” men (even Chinese and other Asians) began marrying Indian women. “Mixed Marriages” were largely frowned up, but they were happening more and more. And many were not legally married; they were simply living as if married and having children, too. This is the historical facts of the times. Inter-racial and inter-cultural relationship were happening, more and more.
What would some (if not MANY) of the families do if one of their own actually MARRIED outside their faith or culture or color?
We know the answer was often (and sadly) getting KICKED OUT of the family in disgrace.
This was not just common among the diverse peoples who might be categorized as “European” or “South American” or Creole or Cajun ir Islanders or Asians — or whatever category we tend to use (especially in recent years).
But please note: Native Americans did the exact same thing.
Mr. Edd’s Family Roots:
According not only to my Grandma Mary Jane (my dad’s mom), but also according to 23 and Me AND ancestry, going back 5 generations (counting my own as 1 of them) in my own family roots, one of my paternal great-great grandfathers — Peter William Watson, Senior — married a Cherokee Indian. [No, I am NOT Senator Liz Warren, nor am I related to her. LOL]
My great-great grandma was banished from her Tribe in the western Arkansas region near Texas.
She was considered DEAD to her tribe. She took a new name: Christiana Amanda Connelly (she went by Amanda).
She and her husband Peter began a family, but before Peter William Watson, Jr. was born, Amanda’s husband DIED in the Civil War in 1861. Amanda raised her son with the help of the Watson family, and when Peter William Watson, Jr. grew up, he married a woman who was like him — like Desiree’s little baby, half one race and half another race. Sarah Ann and Peter had several children, one of them my paternal Grandma, Mary Jane Watson (yep, the same name from Spiderman, only my grandma had the name first).
REJECTED BY FAMILY:
What must it be like to be so REJECTED by your own family? Yet that is what happened in my family tree, only it was the Cherokee who preferred that their daughter NOT marry outside the family culture. It was unthinkable: How could she marry a “white man”? Would the Tribe have treated her any different if she had married a Brown man or a Dark-skinned man from the Islands or from New York?
.
