ChickenBones: A Journal
for African-American & Multiethnic Literary & Artistic Themes
www.nathanielturner.com
Cow Tom this season has raised fine crops of corn, cotton, and chickens, sufficient
to render comfortable a large family of children and grandchildren who lean on him for support.
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Brief Narrative Sketch of Cow Tom
Cow Tom is an intelligent negro of the Creek persuasion.
During the Florida war he was interpreter for General Jedsup, and was the body servant of Lieutenant Lane, when that unfortunate young officer committed suicide by falling on his sword, the point of the weapon entering the brain just above the eye. Cow Tom is the proprietor of a plantationunder a good state of fencing, he purchased the improvements since the war for $150.
He is entitled under the Creek law to all the land he can put under fence and cultivate, with the privilege of keeping off his neighbors at arms length, as settlements are not allowed nearer any occupant than each quarter of a mile. The reason for this custom, as adopted by the early Indian law givers, growing out of the tribal relation, obliging the Indians to scatter about and become independent proprietors.
Wild tribes of nomadic habits are accustomed to wandering about and huddling together for mutual safety and, defense.
Cow Tom this season has raised fine crops of corn, cotton, and chickens, sufficient to render comfortable a large family of children and grandchildren who lean on him for support. But owing to the distance from the mill, he pounds his corn in a mortar with a wooden pestle, and the yield of cotton, raised exclusively for home consumption, has to be ginned with the fingers, and carded by hand.
For breaking up the prairie he used the old-fashioned “bull plow,” such as was in use before the invention of the “wood patent.” By long service, the plow point, from constant filing, has become worn up to the mold-board. It should be stated that farmers nearer the States, especially among the Cherokees, Senecas, Quapaws, Peoria, and other advanced tribes, have introduced improved farming implements to a considerable extent.
The Neighborhood
Our fare at Cow Toms was relished with a keen appetite, and there were neat quilts on the beds, of home manufacture. There is a comfortable school house near by, where the children are taught to read. There is no physician nearer than Fort Gibson, distant thirty-three miles, and the inhabitants have a goodly prospect of dying a natural death.
Source: Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 5, No. 1, March 1927 APPENDIX37 / and http://digital.library.okstate.edu
Black Slaves, Red Masters Part 1 / Black Slaves, Red Masters Part 2
Black Slaves, Red Masters Part 3
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AALBC.com’s 25 Best Selling Books
Fiction
#1 – Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark #2 – Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree #3 – Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane #4 – Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper #5 – Stackin’ Paper 2 Genesis’ Payback by Joy King #6 – Thug Lovin’ (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark #7 – When I Get Where I’m Going by Cheryl Robinson #8 – Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby #9 – The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane
#10 – Covenant: A Thriller by Brandon Massey
#11 – Diary Of A Street Diva by Ashley and JaQuavis
#12 – Don’t Ever Tell by Brandon Massey
#13 – For colored girls who have considered suicide by Ntozake Shange
#14 – For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree
#15 – Homemade Loves by J. California Cooper
#16 – The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper
#17 – Player Haters by Carl Weber
#18 – Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare
#19 – Stackin’ Paper by Joy King
#20 – Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey
#21 – The Upper Room by Mary Monroe
#22 Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark
#23 – Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark
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Non-fiction
#1 – Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable #2 – Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans #3 – Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane #4 – Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper #5 – Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant #6 – Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey #7 – The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight #8 – The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing #9 – The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson
#10 – John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History by Ahati N. N. Toure
#11 – Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley
#12 –The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
#13 – The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell
#14 – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
#15 – Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can’t Commit by RM Johnson
#16 – Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins
#17 – Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
#18 – A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
#19 – John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
#20 – Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris
#21 – Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice
#22 – 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino #23 – Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul by Tom Lagana #24 – 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields
#25 – Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class by Lisa B. Thompson
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The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story
of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government
By Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer
American democracy is informed by the 18th centurys most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. Weve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and Hanauer view democracy not as a machine, but as a garden. A successful garden functions according to the inexorable tendencies of nature, but it also requires goals, regular tending, and an understanding of connected ecosystems. The latest ideas from science, social science, and economicsthe cutting-edge ideas of todaygenerate these simple but revolutionary ideas: (The economy is not an efficient machine. Its an effective garden that need tending. Freedom is responsibility. Government should be about the big what and the little how. True self interest is mutual interest.
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Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage
By William Loren Katz
Christmas Eve marks the anniversary of one of the least known battles for freedom and self-determination fought in North America. In 1837, in what had become the state of Florida less than a generation earlier, the freedom fighters were members of the Seminole Nation, an alliance of African slave runaways and Native American Seminoles.They faced the strongest power in the Americas, the combined armed forces of the United States Army, Navy and Marines, whose goal was to crush the bi-racial alliance and return its African-American members to slavery. . . . This battle took place during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), which involved U.S. Naval and Marine units, at times half of the Army, and cost 1,500 military deaths and U.S. taxpayers $30 million [pre-Civil War dollars]. After his decimated army limped back to Fort Gardner, Zachary Taylor won promotion by claiming, the Indians were driven in every direction.
Later, using his reputation as an Indian fighter, Taylor won election as the 12th President of the United States. The Seminole alliance at Lake Okeechobee delivered the Armys worst defeat in decades of Florida warfare. However truth about the battle and the three wars long remain buried, hidden or distorted. ConsortiumNews
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The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson / Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 — The Founding of Haiti
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update 13 May 2012
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