TAKING THE FIRST STEP 

The first step to learning about your Black Red Roots is always to check your own personal resources to determine what is available to you before venturing out to other outside resources. What this statement means is that there is an enormous wealth of information within your own family.

From a common foe, Africans and Native Americans found the first link of friendship and earliest motivation for an alliance. They discovered they shared some vital life views. Both Africans and Native Americans found they shared a belief in cooperation, rather than competition and rivalry. Beyond individual human differences in personality, generally speaking, each race was proud, but neither was weighed down by prejudice. Skill, friendship and trust, not skin color or race was important.

That Native Americans and Africans merged by choice, invitation, and bonds of trust and friendship, cannot be understated. It explains why families who share this biracial inheritance have never forgotten these family ties.

Since 1502, Black Indians have been reported, documented, painted, and photographed coast to coast from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego. In the decades between the 1619 Jamestown settlement and the 'Great Treaty Signings' of the 1880's, Black Indian Societies were reported in more than 15 states from New York to South Carolina as well as the thirty Caribbean Islands 'blessed' by European colonization.

Excerpt from article by: By Nomad WinterhawkFor more information see: http://www.africanamericans.com/BlackIndians.htm

My grandma as many of yours kept hidden memories. Even though times had changed she still felt the need to protect her children by not revealing their Indian heritage. Her family survived the ‘Trail of Tears’ by hiding in the woods as their relatives and friends were corralled in animal pens before being forcibly marched across the United States from the Southeast to the West. Along the journey witnessing suffering and death from cold, disease, and heart break.