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"She Better Off Dead than Jest Livin' for the Whip"

Abstract / Excerpt

“...Yet even as our examination of slave resistance in the Americas has expanded in depth and breadth, certain sites have only been explored in a rather cursory manner. The interactions between Native Americans and African-Americans, for example, have been a relatively recent pivotal point of reference for scholars. Yet slave resistance has become one of the most controversial, and often denied, aspects of the discourse related to the enslavement of people of African descent by Native Americans in nineteenth-century Indian Territory (current-day northeastern Oklahoma).”

About the Author

Celia E. Naylor

"She Better Off Dead than Jest Livin' for the Whip"

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"She Better Off Dead than Jest Livin' for the Whip"

Celia E. Naylor

The Scholar & Feminist Online

Barnard Center for Research on Women

Slave Resistance, Native Nations, Cherokee

Article

5 pages

Link

Celia Naylor | S&F Online | Rewriting Dispersal: Africana Gender Studies

In the last half of the past century, scholars from an array of disciplines have complicated and interrogated our understanding(s) of slave resistance-of the resisters and the various manifestations of resistance itself.[ 1] We no longer categorize resistance as solely centered around acts of collective rebellion grounded in slave uprisings.

sfonline.barnard.edu

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Citation “I don’t think a lot of people know about the history of Native Americans enslaving African Americans, so this is worth a read just for that fascinating history. One connection Dr. Naylor makes evident is that between the categorization of the ‘five civilized tribes,’ and their adoption of Euro-American practices including chattel slavery--not only was slavery not seen as barbaric, enslaving others was actually viewed as a sign of being civilized. Naylor explores the small private and public acts of rebellion of the enslaved people of Cherokee Nation through close reading of narratives and runaway postings. She especially draws attention to the fallacy of benign enslavers, especially in the context of family separation, through the acts of resistance she charts, sometimes extreme. I think this could pair well with the article ‘Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,’ which discusses the settler-native-slave triad; or for any discussion of American history that seeks to move beyond simplistic representations of what it has meant to be Black or Native. Moreover, the close reading of primary documents gives a model for the power of critical attention for students of texts.” - Alexandra Watson, English & First-Year Foundation