Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom

Previous histories have painted Native Americans as passive victims whose only interactions with U.S. citizens were negative and interactions with African Americans were nonexistent. In Ties That Bind, Tiya Miles challenged these traditional views by discussing the relationships between these two groups. Through the lives of the Shoeboots family, a mixed household, where Cherokee Shoe Boots was the patriarch who married first a white woman captive and then an African American slave named Doll.Miles used the Shoeboots family’s experiences to illustrate the larger interactions between Native Americans, whites, and African Americans in the nineteenth century. Her sources reflected this attempt to intersect race, gender, and legal status. Miles analyzed local newspapers, census records, and court documents to piece together a specific story of the Shoeboots family. She then researched primary and secondary to both fill in the gaps of the Shoeboot legacy and to discuss the larger world of the U.S. South and the interactions between the different races and genders. For instance, Miles put forth the novel, Beloved, to discuss the experience of female slaves as a mirror to what wife, mother, and slave Doll must have felt.Miles made a convincing claim that the traditional history of the interactions between Native Americans, whites, and African Americans should be challenged and even rethought. The intersections of these different races and genders through the lens of the Shoeboots family revealed that all groups were not isolated in this new, interconnected nation.

First, let me say how much I enjoyed this book. It is a work of tremendous research informed by a mature mind which deeply understands the roles of history and story in creating self-identity.I was alerted to its existence by Ilene Shepard Smiddy, author of DAUGHTER OF SHILOH, also a splendid narrative/adventure retelling a part of the Shoeboots story, but centering on Clarinda Allington and her children.Dr. Miles provides us with a helpful family tree in the front of the book, and inside there are maps that help orient the story. The historical asides and reflections using Toni Morrison's BELOVED are treasures. Inside too are several illustrations and pictures, including one of a Shoeboots descendant. The text is divided into logical chapters. The notes are easy to follow and delicious to read, and they are followed by a full bibliography and a comprehensive index.I would like to see the notes expanded to include the family of Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps a grandson of Shoeboots, or of one of the Shoeboots, and who entered the mainstream population in Kentucky as a free black.As Dr. Miles points out, there was more than one individual who was referred to as the Boot or Shoeboots (and other nicknames, in both English and Cherokee), and I suspect that this was a concept name involving the crow or the rooster--the hero of a Cherokee parable. It is fascinating to read about here, and her arguments are engaging. Highly recommended reading!

This book covers history that many Americans will never know. The book ties into the Trail of Tears, and focuses in the first half on the Shoe Boots family, and how Native Americans in their quest to become just like the Europeans viewed Africans both pre-whites and post-whites. In a desperate attempt to retain their land no only did the Natives walk away from much of their culture and their ways of life the adopted the Europeans ways and began looking at Africans not only as a different people but as property.If you are even remotely interested in this period of history, by all means read this book. Tiya did a very nice job tying in all aspects of what was taking place in Georgia before and after Andrew Jackson got involved.Reads well, not like a school text book.

This one of the few books on this subject. Anyone interested in genealogy of the southeastern native tribes must read this book. Recently African American/Cherokees decendents have lost a bid to be declared Cherokee so that they might receive government assistance. To understand the complex issues concerning this group, reading this book will give insight to their plea.For history buffs, this book details the status of women, slaves, Africans, Natives in a new and interesting way.

Miles fills in a void, a slice of life in a part of the country that history has largely forgotten: the lives of slaves and slaveholders in the Cherokee Nation. In her well-written narrative, Miles describes the complicated relationships among Cherokees, their slaves, free-men, and whites as the United States wends its way toward the Civil War.

Great book .

I lost the first copy and brought a second copy from this buyer. The book was in great condition.

I really enjoyed this family's history and I found several personal events or crisis that actually relate to other historic events.