1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation

The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation involved a group of African-American slaves of the Cherokee who rebelled and tried to make it to Mexico. They killed two pursuers at one point, but were later captured without resistance. Five of them were later executed.

Background

In the 1830s and 1840s, the United States government forcibly removed the Five Civilized Tribes including the Cherokee from their homes in Southern United States to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. The tribes brought with them practices learned from white settlers, which included slavery. Mixed-blood Indians, the offspring of white traders and frontiersmen who married Indian women, were the principal slaveholders in the tribes, largely because their fathers had taught them the economics of slavery. Those mixed-blood Indians remained tribal members and became important middlemen between white settlers and Indian communities.

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