Note [357 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
[357]
Dalcho,
An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina
, p. 287; Humphreys,
An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
, etc., edition of 1730, pp. 103–105.
As the result of the intermingling of negroes and Indians, which came about when the coast tribes dwindled and the small number of remaining members moved inland, associated and intermarried with the negroes until they finally lost their identity and were classed with that race, a considerable portion of the blood of the southern negroes is unquestionably Indian. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897–1898, p. 233. It was these mixed bloods, as well as the pure blood Indians, to which the statutes referred by the terms “Indian slaves” and “mustee,” or “mestee,” slaves. Occasional mention is made in the colonial newspapers of slaves of the mixed red and black races. American Weekly Mercury, October 24, 1734. The opinion has even been advanced that, in certain of the colonies, there never were any pure blood Indian slaves. Mr. W. B. Melius of Albany, New York, asserts; “I do not believe the pure Indian was sold as a slave (in New York), I believe the Indian who was the slave was not without mixture.” New York State Library Bulletin, History, No. 4, May, 1900. One instance of the mixture of the Indians and negroes in New York is found in a complaint made in 1717, that negro slaves ran away, and were secreted by the Minisink with whose women they intermarried. Ibid., No. 4, May, 1900.