Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier”:

  A Misguided Song?

The “One Love" movie poster of a love story between Bob and Rita Marley, which, to me, is a tribute by Ziggy Marley to his mom and dad. 

However, there is no history of the suspected murder of Bob Marley here.

“Buffalo Soldier”: Why we can’t blame Bob!

The issues around Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier” song depends on how you view the men who joined white US Army soldiers after the American Civil War to hunt down and kill Native Americans in their own lands to expand American imperialism. Or idealizing those enslaved Africans who sided with their former masters as Bob Marley sang, “dreadlock Rasta, fighting for survival”. 

The facts: 

After the American Civil War, when the US Army on the Western Front, tried to enlist recently enslaved Africans in the South to help them in  expanding their stolen unseeded Native American territories in the West by attacking and killing hundreds of Native Americans to grab more territories from a large number of Western Indians, some Blacks called “Buffalo Soldiers” by Natives who compared their woolly hair to that of the buffalo, joined in the massacres of many tribal warriors and their families. In all fairness, some enlisted enemy tribal members, also joined in the efforts. This was no Eurocentric belief of equality, but the successful Divide and Conquer colonial tactics.

However, not so, for another large segment of the enslaved Africans. They chose not to turn on the Indigenous people who had helped hide them and guide them North through the woods to freedom on the Underground Railroad to the free North and to Canada. These, sometimes Native relatives, via marriage, chose to run to Mexico where they were welcomed and still live today. 

So, choose your heroes.

Bob, seemingly ignorant of American history, and only seeing some US soldiers of the 1800s wearing “dreads”, assumed that they were fighting the white American oppressors.

My homeboy, Bob Marley was a natural genius who was murdered for his revolutionary lyrics which scared the annoyed CIA and the Eurocentric “World Order” adherents. This is what some Jamaicans at the time of his untimely death believed. 

“Who dies from kicking a football and catching cancer of the toe?” My Jamaican friends said at Bob’s mysterious death. “Besides, they tried to kill him in his home before.”

As a dangerous and popular 1970s revolutionary as Bob Marley was through his lyrics, whose messages against murderous and stunting Colonial racism challenged, I, however, question only one of his songs, “Buffalo Soldier”.

The Song and it’s Lyrics

A cover for Bob Marley's song. But, who are these guys shooting at? Definitely not at "The Oppressor"!

I love  the melody! But, the lyrics? Not so much! 

To be honest, Bob Marley lived in America for a short time with relatives in Delaware, around the time of the Black Power Movement. So, he experienced American racism, first hand.

The Buffalo Soldier Lyrics

“Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock Rasta
There was a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
I mean it, when I analyze the stench
To me, it makes a lot of sense
How the dreadlock Rasta was the Buffalo Soldier
And he was taken from Africa, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock Rasta
Buffalo Soldier, in the heart of America
If you know your history
Then you would know where you coming from
Then you wouldn't have to ask me
Who the heck do I think I am
I'm just a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Said he was fighting on arrival
Fighting for survival
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier
Win the war for America
Said he, woe yoy yoy, woe yoy yoy yoy
Woe yoy yoy yo, yoy yoy yoy yo
Woe yoy yoy, woe yoy yoy yoy
Woe yoy yoy yo, yoy yoy yoy yo
Buffalo Soldier, troddin' through the land woah
Said he wanna ran, then you wanna hand
Troddin' through the land, yeah, yeah
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier
Win the war for America
Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock Rasta
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Driven from the mainland
To the heart of the Caribbean
Singing, woe yoy yoy, woe yoy yoy yoy
Woe yoy yoy yo, yoy yoy yoy yo
Woe yoy yoy, woe yoy yoy yoy
Woe yoy yoy yo, yoy yoy yoy yo
Troddin' through San Juan
In the arms of America
Troddin' through Jamaica, a Buffalo Soldier
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock Rasta
Woe yoy yoy, woe yoy yoy yoy
Woe yoy yoy yo, yoy yoy yoy yo
Woe yoy yoy, woe yoy yoy yoy
Woe yoy yoy yo, yoy yoy yoy yo.”

Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers?

A Buffalo Soldier with Apache scouts.

"They were ”fierce fighters" of “the all-Black 9th and 10th [US] Cavalry Regiments who were dubbed 'buffalo soldiers' by the Native Americans they encountered.”  Some Native enemies scoffed that they were proof that the woolly-haired soldiers was evidence that they were the result of copulation between a Negro and a buffalo. 

Rastafarian Bob Marley, however believed that Jah (Jehovah) made two animals with woolly hair, the sheep and the African. Jesus the Christ, a shepherd, was biblically called “the Lamb of God”. So, God’s chosen people (black Africans) also had wool as their hair. Like Sampson in the Bible, whose strength was in his uncut hair, so too the Rasta’s “dreadlocks” was their strength.

Who did the Buffalo Soldiers Fight Against?

“The Buffalo Soldiers, as African American soldiers, fought against many Native American tribes, including the warriors of the Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Lipan, Mescalero, and Warm Springs Apache. They also fought in major wars against other Indians, including the Cheyenne in Kansas after the Civil War. On the other hand, the Buffalo Soldiers also defended Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Creek farmers from raids by the Comanche or Kiowa.  And, 23 Buffalo Soldiers received the Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars, including the 9th U.S. Cavalry, which was awarded for their service at Fort Union. 

A Hot Mess

The history of Native Americans and enslaved Africans is a hot mess. Outsider Europeans arrived late to the game in a 1492 continent of age-old competition, old empires, and conflicts for territories. Over around 50,000 years, not all Indigenous people populated the Americas at the same time, and like the Navajo and Inuit to the north had come later. Like many humans there were conflicts, alliances and disagreements. Both Spanish and English took advantage of this familiar  human trait. Empires, paramountcy and alliances were formed for protection against all encroaching outsiders. (Incidentally, this phenomenon continues today, especially in Washington, DC where Maryland Piscataway and other outsider newcomers, are trying to capture territory from current Powhatan Paramountcy descendants who have been here for thousands of years, and claiming the unneeded Powhatan Territory (namely, that of the Dogue/Tauxinent, and Pamunkey).

There were ancient cooperative Amerindian unions, pyramids, cities like Tenochtitlan in Mexico built, with at least 200,000 to 400,000 inhabitants and one of the largest cities in the world. Also, Cahokia near St. Lewis. Some were major crossroads for trade in grain, salt, furs, copper, silver, gold, obsidian certs, pearls, emeralds, turquoise, exotic shells, and more. Others like the Pueblo of Chaco in the Southwest had around 4,000 to 6.000 people.

What of Bob’s Lyrics?

As a Jamaican who is married into and deeply involved in some Native American cultures, my sentiments are different from Bob’s knowledge of Amerindians. So, I don’t automatically support people with dreadlocks, by thinking that they have Rastafarian beliefs. Dreadlocked Buffalo Soldiers we’re just as oblivious of African resistant movements as the persons now wearing the popular commercialized hairdo. The Buffalo Soldiers essentially were fighting for white imperialistic expansion and against the Native Americans who owned the land.

Were the Buffalo Soldiers dreadlocked, honored heroes fighting for survival? Or were the Buffalo Soldiers co-conspirators used to exterminate Native Americans in the West?

Fighting on the Wrong Side?

Fom the beginning in our hemisphere. Indigenous People have often helped escaped Africans. Seminole society had blacks of every status – free born, slave, and fugitive. Some were more equal in this society than others. Bilingual blacks participated in council meetings and interpreted for Indian leaders at treaty negotiations. Osceola, a Seminole leader in Florida is a case in point.

Osceola

His mother was Muscogee, and his great-grandfather was a Scotsman, James McQueen. Osceola was married to a woman whose father was a Seminole chief and whose mother was a runaway African slave. After the Civil War when the US Army tried to get enslaved Africans to join the Army in killing Western Indians in exchange for their freedom, a large group of Black folks resisted. Instead, this group refused and had joined the people like Miccosukee or Seminole leader Osceola, then fled to Mexico where their descendants still live. In 1996, I met a contingent of Black Mexicans on the Mall at the Annual Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival in its African Diaspora section. 

They had said, “He’ll no!” to the racist US Army’s genocidal campaign to rid the West of Indigenous Peoples during America’s Manifest Destiny campaign.

The proud genocidal painting, by John Gast, promoted in 1872  and titled “Manifest Destiny”.