Review of The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929 by David A. Chang

Authors

Jacob Sherman, Oklahoma State University

Date of this Version

Spring 2011

Document Type

Article

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 31:2 (Spring 2011).

Comments

Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

Power is often tied to who controls the economic capital, and whoever has it will delineate terms of membership within that society. Oklahoma's and the Great Plains' greatest capital is land. The Color of the Land effectively examines how Creek Nation lands defined membership along racial lines both inside and outside of the tribe. David Chang skillfully pieces together the fluctuation of racial complexities as lands transferred from communal to wealthy private ownership.

Chang notes that Creek lands were primarily communal based upon clan loyalties. Clans had no racial distinctions. Racial definitions developed as Creeks began owning slaves by the end of the 1700s, creating a split between those who embraced chattel slavery and those who did not. It weakened the confederacy to the point where Creeks could not fend off American settlement in the 1800s and were removed to the West.