Christina Snyder

Ph.D. Candidate
cnsnyder@email.unc.edu

Major Field: U.S. History

Other Fields: Native American History

Co-Avisors: Michael Green and Theda Perdue

Research Interests: In my dissertation, "Captives of the Dark and Bloody Ground:
Identity, Race, and Power in the Contested American South," I use the lens of captivity
to explore how Native Southerners defined themselves and the other. Before they
encountered one another in the colonial era, the peoples of Africa, Europe, and North
America considered enslavement a legitimate fate for captured enemy peoples, though their
attitudes about the status and roles of captives differed. In the South during the
colonial and early national periods, violent conflict often erupted as Indian nations
labored to maintain their territorial integrity and political autonomy, Euro-Americans
desired to control Indian land and African labor, and Africans sought freedom. During
such episodes, Native groups took enemies (white, black, and Indian) as captives. Victors
then subjected their captives to a variety of fates: they ritually killed some to satisfy
the demands of clan vengeance; they adopted others to replace deceased family members;
they made chattel slaves out of the remainder. Throughout the colonial period, Native
Southerners largely determined a captive's fate based on his or her sex and age. By the
late eighteenth century, however, race became a captive's most salient characteristic,
and African American captives were overwhelmingly targeted in warfare and then sold or
held in transgenerational bondage. This study, in part, explores why that shift toward
racialization occurred, and how it reflected Native Southerners' ever-evolving sense of
identity. More broadly, "Captives of the Dark and Bloody Ground" addresses the
construction of race and racism in early America and contributes to a growing body of
scholarship on the diversity of enslavement in North America. This dissertation traces
the dynamic institution of captivity from the precolonial past, when Native chiefdoms
competed for regional power, through the conclusion of the Second Seminole War in 1842,
which marks the final captive-taking episode in the contested American South. It draws
upon a wide variety of English- and Spanish-language sources including legal documents,
personal and official correspondence, journals, ethnographies, and the archaeological
record.