My Mother's People : The Redbones of
Southwest Louisiana
I had an email the other day from someone who
asked me what names are generally considered Redbone names. That
question begins more arguments than it settles.
To get to it, you first have to define what a
Redbone is. Is it simply someone of mixed-race ancestry? Is
it a combination of mixed-race ancestry and identity with place? Is
is the remnants of a tribe of native Americans from the East Coast? Where
did the word Redbone come from?
Except for the several families in South
Carolina, there is no group that identifies itself as Redbone. The
ones in South Carolina chose to call themselves Redbones because
they considered the other names they were called, Issues or Old
Issues, to be derogatory.
There are several groups in Louisiana who are
called Redbones by others. They do not call
themselves that. There may be people who are considered part of those
groups who do call themselves Redbones, but there is no group
identity, just individuals who identify with the idea and have adopted the
name. I think that last thought bears repeating: there is no
group which identifies itself as Redbones.
The closest you can come to having an
identifiable group is the kinship among various family clans who have
shared the same geography for the past couple of hundred years. That
kinship is based on family lines and not upon identification based on color
or culture. These family clans have never called themselves
Redbones. Someone once asked me, if we didn’t call ourselves
Redbones, what did we call ourselves? I answered that we called
ourselves neighbors, friends, and cousins. Still, there is
something there; something tenuous, but always present: an underlying
acknowledgment of shared circumstance beyond family blood lines.
When used by the dominant culture, Redbone
meant someone who looked Indian, was mostly White, but who also probably
had some Black blood. The only people who were called
Redbones were generally being called that by others. Is
that alone enough to make someone a Redbone? I’m not so sure.
Calling someone a bastard doesn’t make them a bastard. So you can see
why it’s very difficult to determine who is and who isn’t a Redbone.
My family has been called Redbones at
least since 1892 when the Lake Charles Press screamed in a banner headline
“REDBONES RAMPANT!” It referred to a gunfight between
my great-granddad, a couple of his brothers and several cousins and
neighbors because a crew chief referred to them as
Redbones, a name to which they took exception. The story
was picked up by various newspapers around the country, prompting a letter
from McDonald Furman to Albert Rigmaiden, the Treasurer of Calcasieu
Parish, which inquired about the people known as Redbones.
Rigmaiden referred very specifically to a small
and isolated group of families in the area north and northwest of Lake
Charles. He listed the names:
Ashworth, Perkins, Drake, Hoozer, Buxton, Dial, Sweat, Johnson,
Esclavant,
and Goins Rigmaiden told Furman that he didn’t know where
the name came from. He speculated it was given to them by Blacks.
The families he identified as Redbones were, according to Rigmaiden,
originally from South Carolina.
There is no other record of any other group
being called Redbones before that or really even after that.
There are a couple of place names where the word Redbone is used,
but there is nothing in the record to link the word’s use to mixed-race
people.
The group Rigmaiden referred to as being from
South Carolina are the ones from whom I descend. He got most of the
names, but not all. Some researchers think it’s very important to
identify those original names as the genus of who are real Redbones.
Those names are Ashworth, Perkins, Dial/Doyle, Johnson, Maricle, Sweat,
Willis, Goins, Bass, Hoosier, Braneff, Stanley, Clark, Gibson, Buxton,
and Poole. Within a generation, the names
Strother, Myers, Drake and Bunch were added to names associated
with this group of mixed-race settlers from South Carolina. By the
end of the 19th century, the names Berwick, McLeod, Droddy, Ozan, Myers,
and Smith
were also added. Miller became a Redbone name in the
early 20th century when Nick Miller, originally from Bohemia, married
Elizabeth Hoosier and founded a large and extended family of Redbones
in the Starks area.
I may have missed a name or two, and others may
have a different opinion about which names came first. I don’t think
it matters too much. To be descended from one of those original names
does not make one a Redbone. To have a name not on the list,
does not mean that you’re not a Redbone.
Beginning in the 1990s, a popular movement
started among people who are descended from those mixed-race families to
rehabilitate the word Redbone
and to use it as a collective noun for telling our stories.
There has been little opposition from within the community of people who
share the characteristics of the groups usually thought of as Redbone.
The strongest opposition comes from people born before World War II.
In another few years, there won’t be anyone who remembers the word as a
racial slur.
We have a 200+ year history of struggle and
determination not to be marginalized as non-White. On one levels it
seems that to embrace the idea now of calling ourselves something that
means “Other” is to be finally defeated. What do you think?
-
Related Books
-
Redbones of Louisiana (Paperback) by Don C. Marler
-
The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present
by Fred B. Kniffen , Hiram F. Gregory , George A. Stokes
-
History
of Louisiana: Or of the Western Parts of Virginia and Carolina: Containing
by Le Page Du Pratz
-
-
Related Links
-
Redbone Heritage Foundation
- Redbone
-
My Mother's
People Blog
http://www.ashworths.blogspot.com/
-
|
