|
|
|
|
Blogs by Uriah J. Fields
THAT'S THE INDIAN IN ME
5/30/2007 7:47:02 AM
"What make you such a fighter?" I am asked from time to time. In my lineage, both my maternal and paternal foreparents were Indians. Usually I respond to this question by saying , "That's the Indian in Me."
My Grandfather who was born into slavery told me this story when I was in my early teens. He said that this story had been told to him by his mother Rosalyn, a fourth generation slave from their lineage to be born in America following the capture of her great-great-great grandparents, Baatsi and Ashanti who had been kidnapped in Africa around the time of the Revolutionary War and enslaved in America.
About two years after being in America Ashanti, now separated from her husband who she would never see again, gave birth to twins, Andrew and Isabella whose father was their slave master.
Shortly after the death of her mother Isabella and her Inidan Lover, a Muskogean Indian named Hitchitaw who was also a slave, joined sixteen other slaves from three plantations in Georgia and escaped to Spanish Flordia where Choctaws and Seminole were giving refuge to runaway slaves.
The episode that follows is one of many that occurred during the one and three-quarter centuries journey that began with the kidnapping of Baasti and Ashanti and ended with the death of Grandpa Benjamin. This episode is presented verbatim.
"Soon after their escape posters asking for help in capturing them were posted in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. One poster described Isabella as a young Negro woman who had scars on her back and a gash on the right side of her buttock occasioned by the whip and a Choctaw Indian who had the letter "S" branded on the left side of his face and lower left forearm. At the bottom of the poster was a warning: "The Indian may be violent!" A reward was offered to anyone returning these slaves to their slave masters.
A few weeks after they arrived in Flordia a posse numbering twenty white slave catchers from Georgia and Alabama came to Flordia with the intention of capturing runaway slaves and returning them to their slave masters or selling them to other slave owners. Isabella and the other runaway slaves with her resisted the slave cathchers as they put up a "hellava" fight. Isabella's Indian Lover Htchitaw overpowered one of the slave catchers, took his gun and killed him, one other slave catcher and a horse before he was killed..... A few months later Isabella's slave master leraned that she was pregnant. She had been impreganted by her Indian Lover, as she affectionately called him. ... Although Isabella called her daughter Betty in the presence of her slave owner and other white people she never called her by that name at other times. She named her daughter Dehgewanum, after her Indian Lover's mother. The name means "The two-Descending Voices." (There's more to this story.)
(To read this story in full click on "Short Stories" at the upper left of this page and then click on "That's the Indian in Me." There you will also learn how you can obtain your copy of my book, "Grandpa Benjamin" that contains this and many other stories about the life and times of Grandpa Benjamin, the man who had and continues to have the greatest impact on my life.)
Copyrght 2007 by Uriah J. Fields
Post a Comment new!
More Blogs by Uriah J. Fields
• Drones: Weapons of Indiscriminate Destruction - Friday, February 15, 2013
• FIELDS FAMILY REUNION PRAYER - Tuesday, January 08, 2013
• PRAISE FOR U. J. FIELDS - Thursday, January 03, 2013
• Christmas Day in the Workhouse - Tuesday, December 18, 2012
• OBAMA IS STILL THE ONE - Saturday, November 17, 2012
• WHY I SUPPORT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE - Sunday, May 20, 2012
• FREE AT LAST: PRESCRITIONS FOR BLACK EQUITY - Wednesday, May 09, 2012
• RODNEY KING RIOT - Monday, April 30, 2012
• An Acceptance of Graham's Apology - Thursday, March 22, 2012
• ENCOUNTER TWO FIRST BAPTIST CHURCHES INONE CITY - Monday, March 12, 2012
• Fields Accepts Rev. Franklin Graham's Apology - Monday, March 05, 2012
• VICTIM OF YOUR OWN SUCCESS - Thursday, February 09, 2012
• BLACK HISTORY MONTH: REMEMBER ME - Tuesday, February 07, 2012
• Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. - Friday, February 03, 2012
• Don't Bastardize "Lift Every Voice and Sing" - Monday, January 16, 2012
• THE E PLURIBUS UNUM DEDICATION OF THE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., MEMORIAL - Thursday, October 20, 2011
• MAKE PRESIDENT OBAMA DO THE RIGHT THING - Friday, October 14, 2011
• TWO KINDS OF ADVICE FOR PRESDENT OBAMA - Monday, September 26, 2011
• Congratulation Phil Griffin of MSNBC - Thursday, September 01, 2011
• SOCIAL SECURITY AND HEALTH CARE - Wednesday, August 31, 2011
• EQUANIMITY PRESIDENT OBAMA FOR HEALTH SAKE - Wednesday, August 10, 2011
• DECIMATING EFFECTS OF INCARCERATION ON BLACK AMERICA - Tuesday, July 19, 2011
• MUTUALITY WORLD COMMUNITY CHURCH - Sunday, May 29, 2011
• SLAVERY ALONE: THE REASON FOR THE CIVIL WAR - Wednesday, April 20, 2011
• POWER: A PARADIGM FOR SURVIVAL AND MEANING - Sunday, March 27, 2011
• MUTUALITY: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF BEING - Tuesday, March 08, 2011
• LOVE LOVES: A LOVE STORY - Wednesday, March 02, 2011
• KING'S WORD VINDICATES FIELDS - Wednesday, February 02, 2011
• BLACK HISTORY MONTH: REMEMBER ME - Saturday, January 29, 2011
• GRANDPA BENJAMIN - Monday, December 13, 2010
• Montgomery Bus Boycott:: I was There - Thursday, December 02, 2010
• Web Site of Uriah J. Fields - Wednesday, November 17, 2010
• MSNBC Reinstate Keith Olbermann - Friday, November 12, 2010
• NPR made the right decision - Monday, November 01, 2010
• NPR's Firing of Juan Willliams - Tuesday, October 26, 2010
• MUTUALITY WORLD COMMUNITY CHURCH - Sunday, September 26, 2010
• GRANDPA BENJAMIN - Sunday, September 05, 2010
• THE COSMIC SOURCE - Monday, August 09, 2010
• NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION ACT ADVANCES - Thursday, March 04, 2010
• Entitlements ought not be sacrificed - Tuesday, March 02, 2010
• ET CETERA OR GOD - Friday, February 19, 2010
• SENATE IS MORE POWERFUL YET LESS REPRESENTATIVE - Wednesday, February 17, 2010
• WITH MY TWO HANDS - Wednesday, February 10, 2010
• The Greatest Mountain in the World - Tuesday, February 09, 2010
• WITH MY TWO HANDS - Wednesday, February 03, 2010
• Haiti's Ambassador to the U.S. Speaks - Tuesday, January 26, 2010
• The Gratitude Attitude Dividend - Thursday, December 10, 2009
• MUTUALITY WARRIOR CORPS - Monday, November 30, 2009
• AMERICANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT - Monday, November 23, 2009
• AFRICAN AMERICANS' DRIFT TOWARD GENOCIDE - Saturday, November 14, 2009
• THE FIELDS SCHOOL: An African American School Without Failures - Monday, October 05, 2009
• JOE WILSON IS TO BE DENOUNCED - Saturday, September 12, 2009
• AMERICA IN 2009 AND AMERICA BY 2050 - Wednesday, June 24, 2009
• POETRY: A RESPONSE - Saturday, June 13, 2009
• BOLDEN RIGHT CHOICE FOR NASA ADMINISTRATOR - Wednesday, May 27, 2009
• "BRING 'EM ON!" - TERRORISTS TO U.S. PRISONS - Tuesday, May 26, 2009
• PRO-LIFE BEFORE AND BEYOND BIRTH - Sunday, May 17, 2009
• Pro-Life Before and Beyond Birth - Sunday, May 03, 2009
• COME ON WORLD'S NUMBER ONE JAILER - Tuesday, April 07, 2009
• JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN 1915-2009: HISTORIAN PAR EXCELLENCE AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST - Saturday, March 28, 2009
• AFRICAN AMERICANS IN JEOPARDY - Tuesday, February 24, 2009
• THE FIRST DAY OF THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT - Saturday, February 14, 2009
• Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Black Man of the Century - Tuesday, January 27, 2009
• EYEWITNESS TO THE INAUGURATION - Thursday, January 22, 2009
• URIAH FIELDS URGES THE OBAMAS TO JOIN A BLACK CHURCH - Friday, December 05, 2008
• Echoing Sentiments About Obama - Friday, November 21, 2008
• Uriah Fields Says Obama is more White than Black - Wednesday, August 20, 2008
• PRAYING TO NOBODY OR NO THING - Friday, August 01, 2008
• EXPERIENCE AS A QUALIFICATION - Saturday, July 26, 2008
• BOOK SIGNING for URIAH J. FIELDS - Tuesday, April 29, 2008
• BOOK SIGNING for URIAH J. Fields - Tuesday, April 29, 2008
• ABOUT NATURE AND GOD - Thursday, March 13, 2008
• THE ANSWER MY FRIEND IS BARACK OBAMA - Wednesday, February 13, 2008
• PATHOS PAINTING OF DR. M. L. KING, JR., DECRIED - Thursday, January 31, 2008
• IS BARACK OBAMA BLACK OR WHITE? - Friday, January 18, 2008
• uriahfields.com (my new Web Site) - Wednesday, January 16, 2008
• EQUANIMITY - Monday, January 07, 2008
• The Impact on Neo-Immigration on African Americans - Thursday, November 15, 2007
• THE SAINT TROUBADOUR - Monday, October 22, 2007
• A HOMEGOING CELEBRATION - Saturday, September 15, 2007
• POSITIVE THOUGHTS AND GOOD FEELINGS - Saturday, August 11, 2007
• WHY? 3,586 TAPS - Thursday, July 12, 2007
• CHOICEACTSEQENCE - Friday, June 22, 2007
• Apology for Slavary in Alabama - Sunday, June 03, 2007
• THAT'S THE INDIAN IN ME - Wednesday, May 30, 2007
• AFRICAN AMERICANS IN JEOPARDY - Saturday, May 12, 2007
• THE RODNEY KING RIOT - Wednesday, April 11, 2007
• African American Astronauts - Thursday, February 22, 2007
• SEXY CHAT - Tuesday, February 20, 2007
• Slavery Apology would Be Just - Tuesday, January 23, 2007
• Review of my Book on the Montgomery Bus Boycott - Sunday, December 17, 2006
• America: the World's Number One Jailer - Monday, December 11, 2006
• Montgomery's White Racists were Mad at Me and Bombed the Church I Pastored - Friday, November 24, 2006
• African Religion and Akhenaten - Wednesday, November 15, 2006
• Marriage Amendment is Like Race Laws - Tuesday, November 07, 2006
• Property Rights are Not Paramount - Friday, November 03, 2006
• YOU DID IT GOD - Saturday, August 26, 2006
• YOU KNOW! HELL NO! I DON'T KNOW! - Thursday, August 10, 2006
• Scrutinize Justice in UVa Dean's Case - Monday, July 31, 2006
• MUTUALITY WARROR CORPS - Saturday, June 24, 2006
• An Autographed Copy of my New Book for You - Wednesday, May 24, 2006
• Church is Commended for Apology - Saturday, May 20, 2006
• GRANDPA BENJAMIN by Uriah J. Fields - Tuesday, April 25, 2006
• TWO FULL-LENGTH ARTICLES BY URIAH J. FIELDS - Wednesday, April 12, 2006
• KATRINA AND RACE - Tuesday, September 06, 2005
|
|
Bookmarks