Thread by @ChoctawFreedmen

For generations, white and Native historians claimed that Native slave-owners from the Five Tribes were less violent than white slave owners. The story of Lucy, a Black enslaved woman owned by a Choctaw master who was BURNED ALIVE by her female Choctaw owner disproves this myth.

In 1858 an enslaved man named Prince confessed to the murder of his master Richard Harkins. He claimed he had killed him with an axe to his head—transforming a tool of his forced labor to a weapon to end the life of his abusive enslaver. After Prince murdered Harkins,

he used a rope to a tie a rock to Harkins’s body and drowned him in a river. When he confessed under probable torture he “named” his accomplices, including his Aunt Lucy who he claimed urged him to kill Harkins for some time and even taught him how to tie the rope around his dead

corpse in order to secure a rock for the drowning of his body. When the Prince’s Choctaw enslavers looked into the river to dig up Harkins’s body, they also found Prince’s body in the exact same spot and ruled his death a “suicide.” Lucy never confessed to the crime.

Lavinia Pitchlynn Harkins, Richard’s widow and Lucy’s slaveholder following his death, demanded that Lucy be put to death. Although she had never admitted to participating in the crime and maintained her innocence, she was to be executed, by being violently and torturously burned

alive in front of an audience of other Choctaws. Lavinia Pitchlynn’s family members described her as “a raving maniac,” “deranged,” and “half-crazy,” when discussing the public burning of Lucy.

Next to the corpse of her deceased nephew, Prince, Lucy was

“placed upon a log heap and burnt up” alive. She was burned alive in front of “many persons,” similar to the rampant lynchings that would take place against Black people in the Jim Crow period. Lucy may very well have been the first Black woman to ever be publicly

lynched—she was publicly burned alive—in Indian Territory or the United States at large. #FreedmenHistorySpotlightSaturday #ChoctawHistory #DebunkingChoctawPropaganda

If you would like to read more about this story, please consult "Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South." uncpress.org/book/978146962…

You can also consult this blogpost from @AYWalton, where she discusses the possibilities for how this event could have not only impacted Lucy, but her descendants as well. choctawfreedmenlegacy.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-bu… (it's also free!)

Also, a disclaimer, we have not been able to find any actual drawings/paintings of Lucy or her owners, so these drawings are of enslaved women elsewhere in the United States.

However, there is a letter available online about this heinous burning. If anyone is good with reading cursive, we would love assistance with transcribing it into typed form.

Here's the link with clearer images! digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/singleitem…

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