African Americans and Native Americans in the Cherokee and Creek Nations, 1830s-1920s by Katja May

Author:Katja May [May, Katja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138966208
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

Rufus Buck Gang

There was an outlaw "outfit" consisting of Creek blacks and Indians, the "Rufus Buck gang." Rufus Buck was rumored to be part-Euchee, part-black. Euchees are a tribe who joined the Creek confederacy before Removal and who have maintained their cultural, linguistic, and political (town) autonomy. Part-black Indians were frequently ethnically misidentified as "mulattoes" on account of their lighter skin color. This was the case with the following informants and the interviewer who were fullblood Creeks. Their misconception that Rufus Buck was "mulatto" (i.e. half-black, half-white) could be the result of carelessness they accorded his Indian heritage, which was not Muskogee, but probably Euchee, an ethnic minority among the Creeks. The Creek informants said that the leader of the gang was a

. .. mulatto named Rufus Buck. The other members were: Meome July, a full-blood Creek Indian; Louie Davis, Full-blood Creek [sic]; Sam Samson, full-blood Creek; and Lucky Davis, a negro ...23

Rufus Buck often accosted white settlers, merchants, and travellers in the Creek Nation. For that reason he assumed a Robin-Hood-like reputation among some of the Indians, as Alec Berryhill's recollection showed:

. . . From there they went west of Okmulgee and came to a grocery store, operated by a [white] man named Knobble. There they went in and were looting the store of food, clothing, and ammunition, when an Indian came to buy coffee. The gang waited on him; they got two gunny sacks and stuffed it with coffee, meat, canned goods, and anything they could think of, loaded his horse, and sent him home.24

Alec Berryhill, the Creek informant quoted above, was incidentally a descendant of one of the marshals who finally captured the Rufus Buck gang.

"Waiting on" the Indian customer and sending him off with two sacks full of merchandise for which he did not have to pay may have been part of an attempt by the gang members to appease the Indian population. There were other incidents, however, in which Indians, particularly Indian women, were victims of the gang's brutalities. They gang-raped and killed several Indian and African American women.

The gang was eventually captured and punished for its atrocities toward white victims only. Rufus Buck, Miami My, Louie Davis, Sam Samson, and Lucky Davis were taken to Fort Smith to Judge Isaac Parker, who sentenced them to death. They were hanged among a grand spectacle or circus atmosphere in 1896. Until the end Rufus Buck was unrepentant, defiant, and claimed not to speak any English. The combination of this behavior and the nature of the crimes led white people to hate them. They were loathed even more, because they were part-African American and had "violated" a white woman. What they had done to Indian and African American women was not even investigated at the trial.25

Gang activity and individual criminal behavior may have constituted politically motivated acts in both the Cherokee and Creek Nations. Concerted political actions protesting the threatened end of tribal rule took place in both Nations as well, but it was more widespread and, more importantly, more inclusive in the Creek Nation.

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