The Ben Ishmael Tribe

[Stephen Lee Canner]

I was going to wait to start this thread until I had actually seen a few of the main sources on the Ben Ishmael, primary and otherwise, but having found what appear to be reliable quotes from a couple of these books on the net I thought I'd go ahead and at least start it.

My first replies below give a little background on who the Ben Ishmael were. This to me is one of the most fascinating topics that's come out this recent discussion.

[Stephen Lee Canner]

This article seems to be the main (though secondary, as opposed to primary) source for most of the info I've been able to find on the Ben Ishmael Tribe on the net.

From "The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive 'Nation' of the Old Northwest" by Hugo P Leaming in The Ethnic Frontier: Essays in the History of Group Survival in Chicago and the Midwest, Peter Jones, Melvin Holli (eds.) (1977)

The Tribe of Ishmael, or Ishmaelites, was a tightly knit nomadic community of African, Native American, and "poor white" descent, estimated to number about 10,000. Fugitives from the South, they arrived in the central part of the Old Northwest at the beginning of the nineteenth century, preceding the other pioneers. After a century of fierce culture conflict with the majority society, the tribe was forcibly dispersed.

The earlier migrations of the tribe had been involuntary, but they now pursued a nomadic way of life as a central feature of their distinctive culture. Their annual migratory route was northwest from Indianapolis to the Kankakee River south of Lake Michigan, from there south through eastern Illinois to the vicinity of Champaign-Urbana and Decatur, and finally due east, back to Indianapolis. This triangular route is about 350 miles as the crow flies. Every spring many hundreds of small carts set off, filled with children and the elderly, drawn by donkeys or horses (usually scrawny in latter years), the Ishmaelite men and women walking alongside. In the late spring (until "Indian Removal" in the north in the 1830s) there was joyful reunion with the Native Americans of the Kankakee. During the summer the tribe moved south, and when fall came they turned again to winter quarters. The migration was repeated every year for nearly a century.

Already mentioned was James Whitcomb Riley's "Little Orphant Annie," who came to stay as a bound girl and terrorized her master's children with supernatural lore. That she was Ishmaelite is supported by her characterization as a "little gypsy" and "from a wild country settlement" in Riley's essay which amplifies the poem.

A much more significant use of the Tribe of Ishmael in literature is not a regional work but a classic of the national literature, James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Prairie. The tribe, identified by name, is the center of action and theme.

An Ishmaelite could be seen at one time as a childish but lascivious "Negro," a violent and savage "Indian," a shiftless and feeble-minded poor-white, and - most unspeakable - a mongrel product of the defilement of racial purity. This was a deadly mix that conjured up the nightmarish events of the war upon the Ishmaelites.

To the majority people the shantytowns became a scandal, the annual migration an invasion by the "Grasshopper Gypsies," as they called them, and both were a cause of trouble for the authorities and alarm for the citizenry.

It is appropriate - and not coincidental - that what came to take on world significance, a battery of genetic theories and eugenic proposals in the service of "scientific" racism, can be historically traced to the war on the Ishmaelites as one of its earliest sources.

In 1905 a bill was introduced in the Indiana Legislature, and in 1907 the first compulsory sterilization law in the world was enacted by the state of Indiana.

[Stephen Lee Canner]

Something closer to a primary source, this from Amos G Warner, American Charities (1908.) I have verified that this book existed as early as 1894 though, so provided this text also appears in the earlier version it would appear that this was written before the eugenics laws after which the Ben Ishmael apparently dispersed. This also adds some credence to the idea that Mike posted earlier that one of their primary "campsites" was in the Indianapolis area.

Members of this extensive group have had a pauper record in Indianapolis since 1840. They have been in the almshouse, the House of Refuge, the Woman's Reformatory, the penitentiaries, and have received continuous aid from the township. The Ishmaels are intermarried with 250 other families of similar habits and tendencies. In the family history are murders, a large number of illegitimacies, and out of the 1092 individuals whose cases have been investigated, 121 are known to have been prostitutes. The members of the family are generally diseased. The children often die young. They live by petty stealing, begging, ash-gathering. In summer they 'gypsy,' or travel in wagons east or west. We hear of them in Illinois about Decatur, and in Ohio about Columbus. In the fall they return. They have been known to live in hollow trees on the river-bottoms, or in empty houses. Strangely enough they are not intemperate. The individuals already traced are over 5000, interwoven by descent and marriage. They under-run society like devil-grass.

[Holly]

A review of "The Tribe of Ishamel, a Study in Social Degradation" by Rev. Oscar C. McCulloch (article from 1888, review from American Journal of Psychology, 1890):

"This study is an investigation, after the manner of Dugdale's "Jukes", of some of the pathological phases of pauperism. It extends over two hundred and fifty known families, thirty of which have been taken out as typical cases. The name, "The Tribe of Ishamel," is taken from the name of the central, the oldest, and the most widely ramified family. This family first appears in Indianapolis about 1840. The original family stem, of which we have scant records as far back as 1790, was then in Kentucky, having come from Maryland through Pennsylvania. Ben Ishmael had five sons and three daughters; some of the descendants are now living in Kentucky and are well-regarded citizens. One son John married a half-breed woman, and came into Indiana about 1840. He was diseased; he had seven children, of whom two were left in Kentucky; the remaining three sons married three sisters from a pauper family named Smith. These had children, of whom thirteen reared families, having sixty children, of whom thirty are now living in the fifth generation. This family has had a pauper record since 1840; having been in the Almshouse, House of Refuge, Woman's Reformatory, the penitentiaries, and has received continuous aid from the township. They are intermarried with the other members of this group, and with over two hundred other families. In the history of this family are murders and many illegitimate children and prostitutes; they are generally diseased; the children die young. They live by stealing, begging, ash-gathering, and "gypsying" in summer; they have been known to live in hollow trees on river bottoms and in empty houses; yet they are not intemperate to excess. A second typical case is that of the Owens family; there were originally four children of whom two have been traced, William and Brook. William had three children who reared pauper families, in which there is much prostitution, though little intemperance. Brook had a son John, who was a Presbyterian minister He [Brook?] reared a family of fourteen illegitimate children, ten of whom came to Indiana; their pauper record begins about 1850. OF the ten, three reared illegitimate families in the fourth generation; and of these, two daughters and a son have illegitimate children in the fifth generation. These are two tyical cases; any other one of the thirty could have been taken. We start at some unknown date with thirty families. Out of 62 of the first generation, we know certainly of only three; in the second gerneration we a the history of 84; in the third generation, of 283; in the fourth generation (1840-1860), of 644; in the fifth generation, (1860-1880), of 679; in the sixth generation, (1880-1890) of 57. Here is a total of 1750 persons; of these we know of 121 prostitutes and many criminals, including a number of murderers. The author shows by statistics the expense which such persons as these are to society, their physical unsoundness, their fostering by unwise charity, and points out as the things to be done: 1, Close up the official out-door relief; 2, Check private and indiscriminate benevolence or false charity; 3, Get hold of the children."

[Holly]

That last line makes me sick to my stomach.

[mike whybark]

Stephen, I owe you big time for doing this and getting this stuff going. It is exactly what I was hoping to do but time presses! I must needs get dinner on the table!

Keep on keepin' on with the googlefruits on this and other topics as you wish, I am deeply appreciative!

[Stephen Lee Canner]

From what I've found the McCulloch piece was actually issued as a pamphlet. And you earlier mentioned transmission, the language and facts here are so close to the Warner entry that it looks like Warner had a copy of McCulloch's pamphlet when he was writing his book. This points out the sometimes bottleneck nature of the transmission of information. Unfortunately, McCulloch seems to be one of our main sources of info that we now have on these people, and he's very far from an objective observer.

The last line is indeed chilling, and many of the mentions of the Ben Ishmael Tribe I've come across focus heavily on the eugenics laws. There are also many associations with what Hitler was doing not much later. Hard to believe that Indiana actually passed eugenics laws as recently as my own grandmother's lifetime. That's one aspect (along with the aforementioned Klan activity) that does not engender my Hoosier nostalgia.

[mike whybark]

And FUCK ME for not bookmarking it but out of one of my prior links I found an image archive which contained photos of eugenics propaganda PHOTO DISPLAYS, something one might see set up in a booth at a fair or something. The pics were part of an educational website about the whole eugenics thing.

Oh, thank heavens, the link was this post, which essentially recounts the essay I read oncet upon a time in Gone to Croatan. To the best of mmy recollectin' the recounting is fair and conveys the ideas I retain from the original piece.

Here is the link to the Eugenics Archive pics. Follow the pagination links at the top of the page, and the images are zoomable, so clicking gives you a larger rez version.

DO NOT 'view the images our new website,' it does a root redirect to a fucking flash-based monstrosity which hides the filenames and pathing and suchlike.

[mike whybark]

Devil-grass! I gotta get me summa dat!

[mike whybark]

Shantytowns! These are our people, people!

[mike whybark]

Oh, and let me also emphasize a couple of things about the materials I have seen on this topic in the past and my interpretation thereof.

First, the migratory aspect of the Ben Ishmaels and their early arrival in the area we now know as Indiana is why I referred to them as a 'Maroon colony.' This is pursuant to Wilson/Bey's TAZ stuff.

Second, and this is again derivative of Wilson/Bey's interest in 'Moorish Science,' there is an emergent body of scholarship exploring the role of Islam in American slave populations. There are multiple slave narratives which were executed in Arabic by literate Muslims, and there are apparently documented instances of imams being sent deliberately into slavery in South America in order to provide religious education to the kidnapped and exported Muslims of West Africa.

So the thesis is that as a hidden thread in American and African-American culture (viz. my FEZ!), Islam has as many contributory threads to American culture and African-American culture as spiritualities involving possession and so forth (the base of belief systems that become vodoun and santeria).

Wilson relates Moorish Science to the Ben Ishmaelites and Moorish Science to each of the twentieth-century American strands of Islam. In the piece Holly cites above, the Ishmaelites "are not intemperate to excess." Other accounts mention frequent prayer, aversion to eating pork, etc; the argument is that a folk Islam fought through, at least until the arrival of eugenics.

There is something about all this that is relating in my mind to the theme of social entrapment and circumscribed possibilities which I see in our state's music.

[Stephen Lee Canner]

In February PBS showed a doc that outlined a case study of a particular slave who did maintain his Muslim identity in secret and it later re-emerged once he gained his freedom: Prince Among Slaves

[mike whybark]

Fucking cool, must catch that.