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Archiver > MSJEFFER > 2004-11 > 1101176129


From: "Bob Foster" <>
Subject: Re: [MSJEFFER-L] Early Fosters in SW Mississippi and Choctaw Connectio
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:15:32 -0500
References: <000001c4d0fb$dcc20cd0$82e9dc0c@PREFERRE09208D>


Perhaps things varied from locality to locality. I don't think one can make
blanket assertions and assume that they hold true everywhere. I know that by
the early 1700s in the deep south there were many laws on the books
concerning miscegenation. For a white man to openly move in with a black
woman, was, well, unthinkable. That is not say that many slave owners did
not take advantage of their position. The genetics of many contemporary
blacks is more like that of an Englishman than a Nigerian. Well before 1700
it was impossible for a white and a black to legally marry. I've read of
more than one account here in Virginia where interracial couples made off
for the western mountains and became members of tribes outside of colonial
boundaries.

I am in no position to refute the example you gave, (but I will look into
it) but even if true, it does not explain the situation of Hugh Foster. I've
read some of the petitions that the full blood Choctaws and mixed-bloods
presented to the authorities begging to allow them to stay in the East.
There are whole provisions of treaties dealing with this very topic. Why
else would Moses and Samuel Foster be given reservations that gave them
special dispensation to remain behind when their countrymen were being run
out? If Hugh Foster were a mixed-blood, it seems highly unlikely (to me at
least) that he'd be allowed to buy property at the same time that other
Choctaws were being shipped west. And what self-respecting white would allow
an Indian to have any say over how his estate would be handled? This was
only twenty years before the Civil War when the issue of race nearly wrecked
this country. In those days Indians couldn't testify on their own behalf in
courts of law. They couldn't own individual title to land. They only had the
rights the whites gave them and those were precious few. Indians didn't even
have the right to vote in this country until the 1920's (after women, I
might add).

I undertand your point, but it just doesn't add up in this case. Make no
mistake, I have Indian blood. I have family group photos that show ancestors
as dark and swarthy as any Plains Indian standing next to others with sandy
hair and freckles. I'd like nothing more than to be able say that I descend
from Moses and Otemansea. But, I have to go with the facts and these tell me
that the story is more complicated.



----- Original Message -----


> Stephen Prather (Prater) married Plowden (I would have to look up her
> first name)in Concordia Parish in 1809. She was a Houma Indian--Stephen
> Prather was a hero of the Mexican=American War because he ran the
> Mexicans out of LA--and he was able to do that because some of the
> braves of the Houma tribe stood by him and helped fight them off. Kate
> BTW The union was not recognized as white--whatever that means-=-It is
> just recorded in the Parish files.
>


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