Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom » (1st Edition)

Tiya Miles is Assistant Professor in the Program in American Culture, Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies Program at the University of Michigan.

"
In this lyrical narrative about Shoeboots, Doll, and their descendants, Tiya Miles explores the constant push and tug between family connections and racial divides. Building on meticulous and inspired historical detective work, Miles shows what it might have felt like to be a slave and reassesses the convoluted ideas about race that slavery generated and left as a legacy."—Nancy Shoemaker, author of A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America

"Ties That Bind is a haunting and innovative book. Tiya Miles refuses to avoid or cover over the most painful aspects of the shared stories of
Indians and African Americans.
Instead, Miles passionately defends the need to explore history, even when the facts provided by history are not those that contemporary people want to hear."—Peggy Pascoe, author of Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939

List of Illustrations Shoeboots Family Tree Preface Acknowledgments

Introduction PART ONE. BONE OF MY BONE: SLAVERY, RACE, AND NATION—EAST
1. Captivity
2. Slavery
3. Motherhood
4. Property
5. Christianity
6. Nationhood
7. Gold Rush

PART TWO. OF BLOOD AND BONE: FREEDOM, KINSHIP, AND CITIZENSHIP—WEST
8. Removal
9. Capture
10. Freedom Epilogue: Citizenship Coda: The Shoeboots Family Today

Appendix 1. Research Methods and Challenges Appendix 2. Definition and Use of Terms Appendix 3. Cherokee Names and Mistaken Identities Notes Selected Bibliography
Index