Date of Award
Fall 12-2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Dr. Andrea C. Mosterman
Second Advisor
Dr. Mary Niall Mitchell
Third Advisor
Dr. D. Ryan Gray
Fourth Advisor
Dr. Charles Chamberlain, III
Abstract
Contrary to nationalist teleologies, the enslavement of Native Americans was not a small and isolated practice in the territories that now comprise the United States. This thesis is a case study of its history in Louisiana from European contact through the Early American Period, utilizing French Superior Council and Spanish judicial records, Louisiana Supreme Court case files, statistical analysis of slave records, and the synthesis and reinterpretation of existing scholarship. This paper primarily argues that it was through anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity and with the utilization of socially constructed racial designations that “Indianness” was controlled and exploited, and that Native Americans and their mixed-race Black-Native descendants continued to be enslaved alongside the larger population Africans and African Americans in Louisiana. Lacking a decolonized lens and historiography inclusive of the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, the American story ignores the full impact of white settler colonialism and historical trauma.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Blackbird, Leila K., "Entwined Threads of Red and Black: The Hidden History of Indigenous Enslavement in Louisiana, 1699-1824" (2018). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2559.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2559
Included in
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Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.