CANE RIVER, the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club Pick, introduced readers to a spellbinding author of historical fiction. Now, in CITIZENS CREEK, Lalita Tademy reveals the too-long-untold story of the American Indians who owned and interbred with their black slaves. The book is divided into two parts: the legend of Cow Tom and that of his favored granddaughter, Rose, who inherited her grandfather’s fierce tenacity. Tademy portrays a little-known part of early American history in spellbinding literary prose that will stay in your memory.

"Lalita Tademy reveals the too-long-untold story of the American Indians who owned and interbred with their black slaves."

Cow Tom was so called because, as one of several slaves named Tom owned by his master, a Creek Indian Chief, he showed a talent for healing cattle. Cow Tom was one of the many mixed-blood Indians who became slaves of the Indian tribes across the Deep South before the Civil War. He showed an early aptitude for the many tongues spoken by the Seminoles, Creek and white traders in southern Florida, and became a valued interpreter for the Chief. When the United States government signed a treaty with the indigenous tribes in 1835 to leave their homeland for reservations, he was sent to work with the military in the bloody Great Removal as the Seminoles resisted.

Cow Tom used his negotiating skills and multilingual talents to buy his freedom from his Creek Indian Chief master. He later became a successful rancher in Indian Territory and would become the first mixed-blood Indian chief in history and would testify before Congress in further treaty negotiations. 

CITIZENS CREEK is a story of striving to achieve the American Dream. It portrays the struggle for freedom of these former mixed-blood slaves, rarely profiled or recognized in history books. In Part Two, Rose Simmons, a woman of steely determination, raises 11 children while running a large cattle ranch virtually on her own. She will carry the secrets revealed at her grandfather’s deathbed to her grave, but his brilliance and bravery runs deep within her soul. You will both love and dislike this stubborn heroine as she bucks the coming tide of grafters and land grabbers as Oklahoma approaches statehood. 

Tademy spent three years writing this novel, which covers nearly a century of not only the struggles of American Indians, but also the racial divide between Indians and blacks. She explored documents that included information about the real Cow Tom and his successful great-grandson and son of Rose, Jake Simmons, who became a successful African American oil broker and politician of the early 1900s.