"From the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians bought, sold, and owned Africans and African Americans as slaves, a fact that persisted after the tribes' removal from the Deep South to Indian Territory. The tribes formulated racial and gender ideologies that justified this practice and marginalized free black people in the Indian nations well after the Civil War and slavery had ended. Through the end of the nineteenth century, ongoing conflicts among Choctaw, Chickasaw, and U.S. lawmakers left untold numbers of former slaves and their descendants in the two Indian nations without citizenship in either the Indian nations or the United States. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara Krauthamer rewrites the history of southern slavery, emancipation, race, and citizenship to reveal the centrality of Native American slaveholders and the black people they enslaved." -- Publisher's description.

Black slaves, Indian masters: race, gender, and power in the deep south -- Enslaved people, missionaries, and slaveholders: christianity, colonialism, and struggles over slavery -- Slave resistance, sectional crisis, and political factionalism in antebellum Indian territory -- The Treaty of 1866: emancipation and the conflicts over Black people's citizenship rights and Indian nations' sovereignty -- Freedmen's political organizing and the ongoing struggles over citizenship, sovereignty, and squatters -- A new home in the west: allotment, race, and citizenship.