African Americans and Native Americans.

The author presents a broad range of scholarship on the history of relations between African Americans and Native Americans over five centuries of contact and offers an interdisciplinary perspective by bringing together works by historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, and a creative artist. The breadth and diversity of this history make it almost impossible to make any broad generalizations about the relations between African Americans and Indians, the author notes, emphasizing the variegated nature of the interactions. The author overviews the history of the ethnic relations, highlighting Africans in colonial America from the earliest Spanish exploration of the continents through the Spanish and English colonies, Native Americans in the Southern US and slavery, African Americans and Seminoles in Florida, and African Americans and Native Americans in the United States from the aftermath of the civil war to Oklahoma's statehood in 1907. Krauthamer reviews current issues in African American-Native American relations such as the question of how Indian identity is defined in official contexts and in people's daily lives and social relations, as well as representations of African Americans and Native Americans in art and literature. Important areas that await future research include the "Africanization" of Indian peoples in the colonial southeast; black women's experiences of slavery and freedom in Indian nations; and interactions between black soldiers and Indian peoples in the nineteenth-century southwest. Following the essay, a bibliography of recommended reading, a chronology of events from 1527 to 1898, and a glossary of historical persons, locations, legislation, and conflicts are presented.