UNITING WORLDS: COLUMBUS AS A CREATIVE FORCE

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Designated a federal holiday in 1968, Columbus Day was meant to celebrate the wedding of two worlds. More recently, however, it has come to represent the divisions between American peoples.

Native American groups, for example, protest the celebration of an event that led to the demise of many tribes. But scholars at the University of Arkansas argue that the discovery of the New World also resulted in some remarkable cultural alliances, particularly between America’s two most marginalized groups: the American Indians and the African slaves.

While slaves suffered brutal treatment at the hands of their masters, many Native American tribes teetered at the brink of extinction, victims of European-borne disease. The result was a peculiar interplay of flight and capture that bonded the two groups together.

Michael Hoffman, professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, said native tribes such as the Lumbee of North Carolina, the Mashpee of Cape Cod and the Narragansett in Rhode Island harbored escaped slaves, offering them freedom from both persecution and prejudice.

"When African Americans escaped slavery in the South, one of the areas where they could find relative freedom and egalitarian acceptance was in the Native American remnant communities scattered along the East Coast," he said. "They often ended up living with and marrying into these tribes."

Similar alliances were formed through tribal raids.

"As their populations dropped, one way Native Americans tried to replenish their numbers was through kidnaping," Elliott West, professor of history and author of "The Contested Plains," said. "Raiding neighbors and enemies for captives to integrate into their societies had been going on for a long time before the Europeans arrived, but it took on a new urgency afterwards."

Though captives were forced to perform labor and initially had limited freedom, they gradually assimilated to become full and equal members of the tribe.

"Unlike slavery among the Europeans, Native Americans did not have this sort of racial categorization where Africans must remain slaves forever because they were different and inferior," West said. "They were all potential members of the society."

One of the most extensive integrations occurred between African Americans and the Seminole tribe of northern Florida. Hoffman has been helping one of his students, Norman Whitfield - himself an African American with Seminole ancestry - study the ethnic legacy of this particular alliance.

Whitfield has found a lasting cultural and biological exchange between the two groups from the widespread use of cornmeal in African-American cuisine to common themes in folklore and dance. He has traced the alliance from its origin in Spanish Florida through relocations to Oklahoma, Mexico and, finally, Texas.

When the U.S. government demanded that the tribe relinquish slaves to their "rightful masters," the Seminoles resisted. "By that time some of the family alliances were so intertwined that the Seminoles felt blacks were part of their society," said Whitfield, who credits this tension with starting the Seminole Wars in 1835.

"You can see the problem," West said. "First of all, who’s African American? Who’s slave? This rich, complex mix of blood and heritage confused the issue. These people were family, part of their household, their neighbors. The government was insisting that they rip that society apart, and they said, 'No, we’re not going to do it.’"

The result was a series of the most bloody and expensive wars of American history, spanning 10 years in duration.

But there is another side. The alliance also resulted in a unique union of the American people.

"It developed a number of groups that people scratch their heads over because they’re not black or white or Indian," Hoffman said. "They’re cultural and biological mixtures of them all. It helps us think less simplistically when we see how complicated the world population became after Columbus. I think it’s been a real creative force."

West agrees. "If there’s a lesson here that’s really interesting, it’s that our relations among racial and ethnic groups - this mishmash of cultures - has been far more flexible and diverse than we give it credit for," he said. "Every one of these peoples considered themselves superior in some way. And yet, out of that common human trait, you find this wonderful kaleidoscopic mosaic of cultural interchange."