Ancient Africans in recent America: in continental United States, there were Africans who came before slavery, before Columbus, and thousands of years before Christ. They were engaged in boat building, seafaring, trade and commerce. They still exist today, owning millions of acres of lands in the southern United States and the Mississippi Valley. But don't expect to read about them in the mainstream media, reports Paul Barton.

In many parts of the Americas today, there are still people of African Negritic racial background who continue to exist either blended into the larger African-American population or are part of separate, indigenous groups living on their own lands with their own unique culture and languages.

One such example is the Washitaw Nation (official name: Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah) who owned about one million acres of the former Louisiana Territory, but who now own only about 70,000 acres of their former territory. (The Louisiana Territory was almost half the size of present-day USA). The regaining of their lands from the US was a long legal process which concluded partially in 1991.

The Black Californians broke up as a nation during the late 1800s after many years of war with the Spanish invaders of the Southwest, with Mexico and with the US. They blended into the black population of California and their descendants still exist among the millions of black Californians of today. The Black Caribs or Garifunas of the Caribbean Islands and Central America also fought with the English and Spanish from the late 1500s up to 1797, when the British sued for peace. The Garifuna were expelled from their islands but they prospered in Central America where hundreds of thousands live today along the coasts.

And then there are also the Afro-Darienite, a significant group of pre-historic, pre-Columbian blacks who existed in South and Central America (Panama in particular). These blacks were the Africans that the Spanish first saw during their exploration of the narrow strip of land between Columbia and Central America and who were described as "slaves of our lord" since the Spaniards and Europeans had the intention of enslaving all blacks they found in the newly discovered lands.

These black people of pre-Columbian origins are not blacks who mixed with the Mongoloid Indian population as occurred during the time of slavery. They were blacks who were in some cases on their own lands before the southward migrations of the Mongoloid Native Americans. In many cases, these blacks had established civilisations in the Americas thousands of years ago.

In 1964, during the International Congress of American Anthropologists held in Barcelona, Spain, a French anthropologist pointed out that all that was missing to prove a definite presence of Negritic Blacks in the Americas before Columbus was Negroid skeletons to add to the already found Negroid featured terracottas. Later, in February 1975, skeletons of Negroid people dating to the 1200s were found at a pre-Columbian grave in the Virgin Islands.

Andrei Wierzinski, the Polish craniologist, also concluded (based on the study of skeletons found in Mexico), that a good portion of the skulls were that of Negritic Blacks. Based on the many finds for a Black African Negroid presence in Ancient Mexico, some of the most enthusiastic proponents of a pre-Columbian Black African presence in Mexico are Mexican professionals. They say that Africans must have established early important trading centres on the coasts along Vera Cuz, from which Middle America's first civilisation grew.

In retrospect, ancient Africans did visit the Americas from as early as about 100,000 BC where they stayed for tens of thousands of years. By 30,000 BC to about 15,000 BC, a massive migration from the Sahara towards the Indian Ocean and the Pacific in the East occurred.

Blacks also migrated westward across the Atlantic Ocean towards the Americas during that period until the very eve of Columbus' first journey to the Americas. Trade, commerce and exploration as well as the search for new lands when the Sahara began to dry up later in history, was the catalyst that drove the West Africans towards the Atlantic and into the Americas. The experience of the Washitaw Nation (or Ouchita Nation) of the southern United States is another piece of solid evidence for the fact of pre-Columbian African presence and settlement in the Americas and specifically in the United States.

According to an article carried in the magazine, The Freedom Press Newsletter, (Spring, 1996), reprinted from Earthways (the newsletter of the Sojourner Truth Farm School, August, 1995), the Washitaw were (and still are) a nation of Africans who existed in the southern US and Mississippi Valley region long before the 16th century Europeans arrived and even before there were "Native Americans" on the lands the Washitaw once occupied and still occupy today.

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According to the article, the Washitaw Nation governed three million acres of land in Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Mississippi. They were shipbuilders (similar to the Garifuna of the Caribbean, who are also of pre-Columbian West African Mandinka Muslim origins (according to Harold Lawrence in African Presence in Early America, edited by Ivan Van Sertima).

What is even more fascinating about this aspect of hidden history of blacks in America before Columbus is that the Washitaw Nation was known and recognised as a separate, independent black nation by the Spanish and French, who were in the Louisiana Territory and Texas areas.

The Washitaw Nation

According to the present leader of the Washitaw Nation, Empress Verdiacee Tiari Washitaw-Turner Goston El-Bey, "when Spain ceded the Louisiana Territory to France, they excluded the land belonging to the Washitaw Nation. France did not include it in the Louisiana Purchase by the US. This land is not part of the United States of America." That point was made in the newspaper, The Capitol Spotlight, in June 1992.

The US courts agreed in 1991 that the land was not part of the United States and that in fact the Washitaw (Ouchita) Nation was on the land long before European colonisation. Therefore, some of the ancient territory was returned to the Washitaw people.

This type of information is seldom seen in the majority press, yet the importance of that event clearly points to the incredible service small papers and magazines such as Ancient American or The Capitol Spotlight and The Freedom Press Newsletter have been giving, along with internet sites.

So, here we see an example in the continental United States where Africans who came before slavery, before Columbus and thousands of years before Christ (over 6,000 years before Christ, according to the Washitaw chroniclers), were engaged in boat building, seafaring, trade and commerce and who still exist today as a distinct black nation which has the evidence and proof of their ownership of millions of acres of lands in the southern United States and the Mississippi Valley.

The Washitaw Nation held an important convention in June 1992, in Monroe, Louisiana, and has held others since. Yet, the Washitaw are merely one nation of the descendants of pre-Columbian blacks from Africa and elsewhere as the very first people to exist in North America, long before the development of the Mongoloid, American Indians, or even the Caucasian races.

Among the other black nations who existed in the Americas before Columbus and long before Christ were the Jamassee (Yamassee), who had a large kingdom in the southeastern United States.

Their descendants were among the first blacks of pre-Columbian American origin who fell victim to kidnapping for the purpose of enslavement. Blacks of South America, the Caribbean and Central America were also attacked and enslaved based on a Pontifax passed during the mid-1400s by the Catholic Church hierarchy giving the Europeans the go-ahead to enslave all "Children of Ham" found in the newly discovered territories.

The Jamassee

The descendants of the Jamassee are the millions of blacks who live in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and northern Florida. They, of course, also have African slave ancestors, but these slaves are the relatives of the same Africans who sailed to America of their own free will, while Europe was in the Dark Ages, and long before Christ, for that matter.

In California, descendants of the fierce "Black Californians" who were a Negroid people of African racial origins were the original owners of California and the southwest (before the Spanish invasion).

Many African-Americans in California are of Black Californian ancestry and their great-grandparents were among the original Black Californians who were victims of Spanish Californian enslavement and Anglo-American settler attacks.

In Columbia's Choco Region, on the western side of that country, there are hundreds of thousands of blacks, whose ancestors have been in Columbia for thousands of years. In fact, scientists and some historians have found out that black slaves were being kidnapped and hunted down in Columbia and parts of South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and US, by the Spaniards and others long before they began to look for slaves in Africa.