The Dark (Skinned) Side of Indian Casinos

[Kire]

Cherokees kept black slaves up to 1866. Then their slaves were made full citizens of the tribe. But now it’s time to divide Indian casino profits...

Blood Feud
These are boom times for the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma. But bad times for thousands of black Indians battling for tribal citizenship. Now the Freedmen are turning to genetic science for help.
By Brendan I. Koerner

Even by the pancake-flat standards of Middle America, Stick Ross Mountain is an unimpressive peak. It's more of a gentle hill, really, poking out from behind the Wal-Mart just west of Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

But to the Cherokee, the 900-foot crest was remarkable enough to be named for a revered 19th-century member of the tribal council. Stick Ross is thought to be the illegitimate grandson of Chief John Ross, who led the tribe along the Trail of Tears. Ross the younger was a respected Native American and a skilled diplomat who acted as a liaison between tribes and local townsfolk. "He knew sign language and spoke Cherokee and Seminole. He was a trapper and a farmer and a rancher," says Stick's great-grandson, Leslie Ross, a 56-year-old retired civil servant whose greatest joy is recounting the Stick trivia he learned from his family in Muskogee. "And he was sheriff at one time, too. He was pretty renowned in Tahlequah."

Stick may have died an exemplary citizen of the Cherokee Nation, but he was born into slavery.

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