Bombazelle’s Flight: Slavery, Gender, and Racial Identity in the Post-Removal United States South

Abstract

Recent studies have revised narratives about slavery and freedom in the aftermath of Indigenous Southerners’ dispossession in the United States during the nineteenth century. Black Indigenous peoples’ experiences, nonetheless, remain understudied. This article examines the life of Bombazelle, an enslaved woman who claimed Chickasaw descent to self-liberate in 1850s Mississippi. It reconstructs how Bombazelle secured brief freedom through her connections to or memories of an Indigenous past. Fragmented documentation demonstrates how Bombazelle constructed a multifaceted identity and possessed knowledge to navigate white spaces with agility and secure a fragile freedom. Bombazelle’s presence illuminates the intricate connections among Indigenous enslavers, white settler enslavers, and enslaved Black people in the U.S. South. This piece argues that people like Bombazelle held a ‘three-ness’, or a triple connection to Indigenousness, Blackness, and whiteness. Broadening the contours of Bombazelle’s life reveals how enslaved women’s experiences connected the African diaspora, an Indigenous Southern past, and white settler colonialism. In the aftermath of Removal, white settlers attempted to impose strict racial categories, but Bombazelle’s story reflected instability at the core of antebellum society, especially when individuals could claim Indigenous descent or remember the presence of Indigenous peoples.