Racial Slavery and the Evolution of Gendered Labor in 19th-Century Chickasaw Country

This paper explores the roles of African and African-American slaves in Chickasaw country in the decades leading up to removal and examines their importance in the slow transition of gendered labor for Chickasaw men and women. Chickasaw use of slaves as they transformed gendered economic roles in the early nineteenth century was vital as they instigated a new Southern economy built on cattle and cotton in northern Mississippi. As the deerskin trade declined and a Chickasaw policy of peaceful neutrality persisted in the early nineteenth century, previous masculine practices of hunters and warriors were necessarily reconsidered.

Prior to removal, the U.S. federal government instituted its so-called civilization plan, which encouraged Indians in the Southeast to embrace republican values, patriarchy, yeoman farming, and individual property rights. This plan incentivized the Chickasaws to emerge as creators of a cotton-based plantation society. For the Chickasaws, this phenomenon was forged not simply through the commodification of slave labor, but through the means that Chickasaws used slave labor a gradual implementation of civilization programs on terms dictated by the Chickasaws. Chickasaw men and women integrated slavery and gendered labor changes into their own cosmology and economy by altering American concepts of labor roles to fit within their own culture and worldview, challenging the concept of a top down acculturative process. Within Chickasaw country, slaves acted as a necessary third party to a non-contentious transformation in gendered labor roles during the antebellum period.