Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line by Laura J. Feller (review)

Reviewed by: Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line by Laura J. Feller Tiffany King (bio) Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line by Laura J. Feller University of Oklahoma Press, 2022 IN BEING INDIGENOUS IN JIM CROW VIRGINIA: Powhatan People and the Color Line, Laura Feller chronicles the relentless struggle of tidewater Virginia Indians from 1850 to 1950 to "maintain, assert, reclaim, create, and recreate" their Native identity in the face of Jim Crow statecraft that attempted to erase them (194). Feller homes in on the unique struggles of nonreservation Indians like the Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and Chickahominy. A long history of colonial laws in Virginia (1691, 1866, 1910, and 1924) narrowly defined whiteness through notions of "blood quantum" to protect the white population from intermarriage with Black and Native populations. Feller makes a unique contribution to historiographies of Virginia's path toward the codification of a white-Black binary through a careful study of the 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity. After the Civil War and prior to the 1924 Act, the migration of "colored" and nonwhite communities from rural to urban areas posed "potential threats to the proper racialized classification of Virginia's citizens" (55). The anxious architects of the 1924 law argued that "Native Virginians, because their appearance cloaked their Black blood, might more easily blend into the white population" and disrupt the white-Black color line (56). Feller focuses on the Act as a modern form of race craft designed to "ensure that no one in Virginia could escape Jim Crow by claiming to be Indian rather than Black (7)." The author mines a range of archival material, including Virginia census data, Canadian census data, Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics, U.S. Southern Claims Commission, Records of the Virginia Council on Indians, Virginia State Department of Education Indian Schools, University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives, Baptist Church records, tax records, newspapers, and family letters. Chapter 1 travels with the extended family and descendants of Lucy Pearman Scott and William Scott from Richmond, Virginia, to Canada and back to Virginia as they attempt to maintain their Indianness in the 1850s. The Scotts and their extended family asserted their Indianness by living in proximity to one another through Chickahominy endogamy or "paired-sibling marriage" (36) and the strategic use of alternative forms of racial documentation like the U.S. Southern Claims Commission. [End Page 132] Chapter 2 explores how the 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity consolidated and codified a white-Black binary. Engineers of the law asserted that there were no real Indians (Native people without Black ancestors) in Virginia. To enforce the law that established a white-Black racial order, an army of physicians, midwives, undertakers, local registrars, county clerks, and census enumerators interpreted and enforced the 1924 Act in ways that erased Indigenous presence. Chapter 3 attends to tidewater Natives' creation of institutions like separate Baptist churches and schools to construct and assert Indigenous identity while distinguishing themselves from African Americans. Tribes also creatively appropriated colonial institutions like universities and museums to gain public recognition. Chapter 4 explores tidewater Natives use of white anthropologists as resources. Some white anthropologists like Frank Speck became allies who corresponded with white educators, lawyers, and public officials to make the case that tidewater Natives possessed distinct cultural identities. Feller's fifth chapter is devoted to the kinds of obstacles that the 1930 and 1940 census, World War II draft, and federal laws like school desegregation posed to Virginia nations. In the epilogue, Feller recounts the recent efforts of several Virginia nations to gain recognition, such as the Pamunkey who gained federal recognition in 2016. Feller's analyses of archival material are deft and layered. The author is at their best when tracing the racial classifications of a person like John Howell across different archival documents. Feller follows the shifting classifications of John Howell from "mulatto" in the 1870 and 1880 census to Pamunkey in the U.S. Southern Claims Commission's files of 1870. The comparative archival reading practices are more compelling than Feller's attempts, in chapter 1, to interpret letters written by Lucy Pearman Scott as possible evidence...