African American women enslaved by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek Nations faced an arduous journey from Indian Territory to free citizen status in 1890. Following the Trail of Tears in the footsteps of their Indian slaveholders, they experienced the same hardships, death, and poverty of relocation. The trail from enslavement to freedom was harsh and often bitter, but Indian Territory freedwomen join their Indian and white sisters as pioneers in the American West.
