Native American Slavery
The arrival of the Europeans in the 1500's began a change in the lives of the Indian people that continued through the next centuries. Sometimes the changes were good. The horses brought by the Spanish made bison hunting much easier and safer. But Vikings, Spanish, English and French explorers, colonists and missionaries spread diseases, made slaves of the people, forced relocations, claimed ownership of natural resources and land, and tried to stamp out the native cultures. Some of the Indian people survived, but not without making drastic changes in their life styles.
Once Europeans arrived as colonialists in North America, the nature of Indian slavery changed abruptly and dramatically. Indians found that British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, eagerly purchased or captured Indians to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. More and more, Indians began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies. And as the demand for labor in the West Indies became insatiable, whites began to actively enslave Indians for export to the so-called "sugar islands."
On New Year’s Day 1891, a burial party returned to Wounded Knee to find Lakota corpses frozen in gruesome positions beneath a newly-fallen snow.
The resulting Indian slave trade devastated the southeastern Indian populations and transformed Native American tribal relations throughout the region. The English at Charles Town, the Spanish in Florida, and the French in Louisiana sought trading partners and allies among the Indians, offering trading goods such as metal knives and axes, firearms and ammunition, intoxicants and beads, and cloth and hats in exchange for furs (deerskins) and Indian slaves captured from other tribes. Unscrupulous traders, frontier settlers, and government officials encouraged Indians to make war on other tribes to reap the profits from the slaves captured in such raids or to weaken the warring tribes.
The Dead Lay in the Snow
It is not known how many Indians were enslaved by the Europeans, but they certainly numbered in the tens of thousands. It is estimated that Carolina merchants operating out of Charles Town shipped an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Indian captives between 1670 and 1715 in a profitable slave trade with the Caribbean, Spanish Hispaniola, and northern colonies. Because of the higher transportation costs of bringing blacks from Africa, whites in the northern colonies sometimes preferred Indian slaves, especially Indian women and children, to blacks. Carolina actually exported as many or even more Indian slaves than it imported enslaved Africans prior to 1720. The usual exchange rate of captive Indians for enslaved Africans was two or three Indians to one African.
Until late in the 18th century, Indian slaves worked on English plantations along side African slaves and even, occasionally, white indentured servants. Women and children frequently were used as menial laborers or domestic servants. By 1720, most whites in the southeastern British colonies preferred enslaved Africans to Indians for obvious reasons. Indians could, for one thing, more easily run away into the wilderness. Also, Europeans always feared the possibility of a coalition of enslaved Africans and enslaved Indians, aided by free Indians on the frontier. What’s more, English settlers played the Indians off against one another in the various Indian wars or wars of empire fought between European colonial powers, using them as allies or as paid mercenaries. Additionally, Europeans commonly believed that Native American men, culturally conditioned to be hunters, considered fieldwork to be women’s work, and that Indian warriors would not adapt easily to agricultural labor in comparison to enslaved Africans. Most importantly, the demand for enslaved labor in the tobacco and rice plantations came to far exceed the potential supply of Indian captives, especially once European diseases began to decimate Indian populations and once the Indians began to more effectively resist European powers.
The Indian slave trade lasted only until around 1730, and it was characterized by a series of devastating wars among the tribes. Those Indians nearer the European settlements raided tribes farther in the interior in the quest for slaves to be sold, especially to the British. Before 1700, the Westos in Carolina dominated much of the Indian slave trade until the English, allied with the Savannah, who resented Westo control of the trade, wiped them out. The Westo tribal group was completely eliminated; its survivors were scattered or else sold into slavery in Antigua.
White Slaves
The White nations also engaged in a large amount of White slave traffic amongst themselves: from Egyptian times right through to Rome and even early America, White slaves were an accepted part of society.
It is a little known fact that a large trade in White slaves existed in England in the 16th and 17th Centuries : gangs of slave catchers operated against the lowest social classes in that country with the approval of the upper classes; very often seizing White children on the street (called "kid nabbing" - the origin of the word "kidnapping") for indenture to farmers in the new British colony in Virginia, America.
It is, however, because of the dominance of "darker" genes, that the importation of non-White slaves into White countries and settlements impacted so heavily upon the racial makeup of those settlements.
Above: White Slave Girls
It is this use of "cheap" foreign labor - either as slaves or as freemen - which has always provided the primary source of non-White populations in White countries, populations which have always grown to the point where they have played a significant role in altering the face of that society's culture and nature.
"In the 18th century in Britain and America, the Industrial Revolution spawned the factory system whose first laborers were miserably oppressed White children as young as six years of age. They were locked in the factories for sixteen hours a day and mangled by the primitive machinery. Hands and arms were regularly ripped to pieces. Little girls often had their hair caught in the machinery and were scalped from their foreheads to the back of their necks.
White Children wounded and crippled in the factories were turned out without compensation of any kind and left to die of their injuries. Children late to work or who fell asleep were beaten with iron bars. Lest we imagine these horrors were limited to only the early years of the Industrial Revolution, eight and ten year old White children throughout America were hard at work in miserable factories and mines as late as 1920."
The chronic overworking of Whites was rampant in Western societies. The fact that England had campaigned for an end to Black slavey whilst ignoring conditions at home that were equivalent to White slavery was a source of anger to many working class people and trade unionists.
In 1837, George Loveless, the leading figure of the Tolpuddle Martyrs (the six Dorset labourers who had been sent to the penal colony of New South Wales for their Trades Union activity), made a speech to his fellow labourers:
"England has for many years been lifting her voice against the abominable practice of negro slavery. Numbers of great men have talked, have laboured and have struggled until at length emancipation has been granted to the black slaves in the West Indies. When will they dream of advocating the cause of England's white slaves?"
The New World Slave Trade
The expansion of Whites into Africa, Asia and America created the background for the great slave traffic from Africa and Asia to Europe and America. From 1530 to the time of the abolition of the slave trade - as opposed to slavery - in 1870, at least 10 million Blacks were forcibly brought to the Americas: about 47 percent of them to the Caribbean islands and the Guianas; 38 percent to Brazil; and 6 percent to mainland Spanish America.
It must be said that the vast majority of the Black slaves purchased by White slave traders were sold into slavery by fellow Blacks: very few White slave traders had to actually go and find their own victims, there being more than enough local Black chiefs up and down the length of Africa willing to sell off their own and neighboring tribesmen.
Origins Of The Klu Klux Klan
The origin of the Ku Klux Klan was a carefully guarded secret for years, although there were many theories to explain its beginnings. One Popular notion held that the Ku Klux Klan was originally a secret order of Chinese opium smugglers. Another claimed it was begun by Confederate prisoners during the war. The most ridiculous theory attributed the name to some ancient Jewish document referring to the Hebrews enslaved by Egyptian pharaohs.
In fact the beginning of the Klan involved nothing so sinister, subversive or ancient as the theories supposed. It was the boredom of small-town life that led six young Confederate veterans to gather around a fireplace one December evening in 1865 and form a social club. The place was Pulaski, Tennessee, near the Alabama border.
When they reassembled a week later, the six young men were full of ideas for their new society. It would be secret, to heighten the amusement of the thing, and the titles for the various officers were to have names as preposterous-sounding as possible, partly for the fun of it and partly to avoid any military or political implications.
Thus, the head of the group was called the Grand Cyclops. His assistant was the Grand Magi; there was to be a Grand Turk to greet all candidates for admission, a Grand Scribe to act as secretary, Night Hawks for messengers and a Lictor to be the guard. The members, when the six young men found some to join, would be called Ghouls. But what name to call the society itself?
The founders were determined to come up with something unusual and mysterious. Being well-educated, they turned to Greek. After tossing around a number of ideas, Richard R. Reed suggested the word "kuklos," from which the English words "circle and "cycle" are derived. Another member, Captain John B. Kennedy, had an ear for alliteration and added the word "clam." After tinkering with the sound for a while, group settled on the "Ku Klux Klan." The selection of the name, chance though it was, had a great deal to do with the Klan's early success. Something about the sound aroused curiosity and gave the fledgling club an immediate air of mystery, as did the initials K.K.K., which were soon to take on such terrifying significance.
Soon after the founders named the Klan, they decided to a bit of showing off and so disguised themselves in sheets and galloped their horses through the quiet streets of little Pulaski. Their ride created such a stir that the men decided to adopt the sheets as the official regalia of the Ku Klux Klan, and they added to the effect by making grotesque masks and tall pointed hats. The founders also performed elaborate initiation ceremonies for new members.
Their ceremony was similar to the hazing popular in college fraternities and consisted of blindfolding the candidate, subject him to a series of silly oaths and rough handling, and finally bringing him before a "royal alter" where he was to be invested with "royal crown." The altar turned out to be a mirror and the crown two large donkey's ears. Ridiculous though it sounds today, that was the high point of the earliest activities of the Ku Klux Klan.
Had that been all there was to the Ku Klux Klan, it probably would have disappeared as quietly as it was born. But at some point in early 1866 the Club, enlarged with new members from nearby towns, began to have a chilling effect on local blacks. The intimidating night rides were soon the centerpiece of the hooded order: bands of white-sheeted ghouls paid late night visits to black homes, admonishing the terrified occupants to behave themselves and threatening more visits if they didn't. It didn't take long for the threats to be converted into violence against blacks who insisted on exercising their new rights and freedom. Before its six founders realized what had happened, the Ku Klux Klan had become something they may not have originally intended--something deadly serious.
So, you don't believe there ever were Negro (black, colored, afr-american) members of the Ku Klux Klan? Read on........
One of the last things today's biased media wants anyone to know is that there were Negro members of the Ku Klux Klan.
No one has ever written a book about them to my knowledge though such a book would be of great historical interest. In fact, very little documentation has survived. What little does survive speaks volumes and proves that Americans do not know their own history.
Negro Klan membership is the book, "The Ku Klux Spirit", by J.A. Rogers, noted Negro historian of the 1920's. The Ku Klux Spirit was first published in 1923, by Messenger Publishing Co. It was republished in 1980, by Black Classic Press. On page 34 of his book we find the amazing passage: "A fact not generally known is that there were thousands of Negro Klansmen. These were used as spies on other Negroes and on Northern Whites."
The Klan not only accepted and recruited Blacks in some areas, but a Klan leader made a motion that White men give employment and protection to Colored democrats. That in itself speaks volumes. Yes, volumes of ignored facts of Klan, Negro, and American history.
Photos of the other three are not presently available, their names are John B. Kennedy, Frank O. McCord, and Richard Reed.
Capt. Lester suggested forming the club. Capt. Kennedy mentioned kuklos as part of the new club's name. Maj. Crowe suggested changing it to "ku klux". Lester, then suggested adding "clan" to the name. John Kennedy repeated it and became the first man to speak the words "Ku Klux Klan". Crowe suggested using costumes to make the club more mysterious.
Capt. John C. Lester, born, 1834, Giles County, TN. Died Dec. 4, 1901, Hartsville, TN. Buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Pulaski, TN. Served in the 3rd Tenn. Infantry.
Maj. James R. Crowe, born Jan. 29, 1838, Pulaski, TN. Died July 14, 1911. Buried in Maplewood Cemetery. Served in the Marion Rifles, Co. G, 4th Alabama Infantry, later served with the 35th Tenn. Infantry.
Calvin E. Jones, son of Judge Thomas M. Jones, Born 1839. Died 1872, Pulaski, TN. Served as adjutant of the 32th Tenn. Infantry.
John B. Kennedy, born Nov. 6, 1841, Wales, Giles County, TN. Died Feb. 13, 1913, Lawrenceberg, TN. Buried in Monroe Cemetery, Lawrenceberg. Served in the 3rd Tenn infantry. His widow was present in Pluaski, TN. on May 21, 1917, when, amid much fan fare, the plaque, commemorating the law office where the KKK was founded, was placed on the outside wall of the building. Officiating at the ceremony was Mrs. Grace Neufield, former Tennessee state historian of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Frank O. McCord, born Jan. 14, 1839, Giles County, TN. Died Aug. 19, 1895, Fayetteville, TN. Buried Rosehill Cemetery, Fayetteville. Served as a private in the Confederate Army and later became editor of the Pulaski Citizen.
Richard Reed, little is known about him other then he was from Pulaski, TN. and served in the 3rd Tenn. Infantry.
The First Original Klan Robes
So throughout History, slavery has affected everyone. Why only the black man's is mentioned? I don't know, but I do know, his ancestor's weren't the only one's, all of our ancestor's in one way or another were enslaved as well and suffered just the same.
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