Black Seminoles

Black Seminoles

The Black Seminoles are descendants of free Africans and some runaway slaves who escaped from coastal South Carolina and Georgia into the Florida wilderness beginning as early as the late 1600s. They joined with the Native Americans inhabiting Florida at the same period. Together, the two groups formed the Seminole tribe, a multi-ethnic and bi-racial alliance. Today, Black Seminole descendants still live in Florida, rural communities in Oklahoma and Texas, and in the Bahamas and Northern Mexico. In the 19th century, the Florida "Black Seminoles" were called "Seminole Negroes" by their white American enemies and Estelusti, or "Black People", by their Indian allies. Modern Black Seminoles are known as "Seminole Freedmen" in Oklahoma, "Seminole Scouts" in Texas, "Black Indians" in the Bahamas, and "Mascogos" in Mexico.

Origins

The Spanish strategy for defending Florida was based, at first, on organizing the indigenous Indians into a mission system with the mission Indians serving as militia to protect the colony from English incursions from the north. But a combination of raids by South Carolina colonists and new European diseases to which they did not have immunity decimated Florida's native population. After the local Indians had all but died out, Spanish authorities encouraged renegade Indians and runaway slaves from England's North American colonies to move south. The Spanish were hoping that these traditional enemies of the English would prove effective in holding off English expansion.

As early as 1689, African slaves fled from the South Carolina Lowcountry to Spanish Florida seeking freedom. Under an edict from Philip V of Spain, the black fugitives received liberty in exchange for defending the Spanish settlers at St. Augustine. The Spanish organized the black volunteers into a militia; their settlement at Fort Mose, founded in 1738, was the first legally sanctioned free black town in North America.Landers "Black Society in Spanish Florida", p. 25, citing Royal Decree of Charles II. ]

Not all the slaves escaping south found military service in St. Augustine to their liking. It is likely that many more runaway slaves sought refuge in wilderness areas in Northern Florida where their knowledge of tropical agriculture—and resistance to tropical diseases—served them well. Most of the blacks who pioneered Florida were Gullah people who escaped from the rice plantations in South Carolina (and later Georgia). As Gullahs, they had preserved much of their African language and culture heritage and their African leadership structure. These Gullah pioneers built their own settlements based on rice and corn agriculture, and they proved to be effective allies to the Indians escaping into Florida at the same time.

A new influx of freedom-seeking blacks reached Florida during the American Revolution (1775–83), when several thousand American slaves agreed to fight for the British in exchange for liberty - the black Loyalists. (Florida was under British control throughout the conflict.) During the Revolution, Seminole Indians also allied with the British, and as a result, Africans and Seminoles came into increased contact with each other. Members of both communities sided again with the British against the US during the War of 1812, solidifying ties and earning the wrath of the war's American hero General Andrew Jackson.Wright "Creeks and Seminoles" 85–91, Mulroy "Freedom on the Border" 11. According to Black Seminole oral traditions, Florida was also home to black refugees who were never enslaved but escaped from early exploring parties or slave ships. See Bird [http://www.johnhorse.com/trail/01/b/01.1.htm "Were all Black Seminoles descendants of fugitive slaves?"] . ]

When Africans and Seminoles first started to interact, the Seminoles were themselves recent immigrants to Florida. Their community evolved over the late 18th century and early 19th century as waves of Creek Native Americans left present-day Georgia and Alabama. By the time the American naturalist William Bartram visited them in 1773, the Seminoles had their own tribal name, derived from "cimarron", the Spanish word for runaway, which connoted the tribe's breakaway status from the Creeks. "Cimarron" was also the source of the English word maroon, used to describe the runaway slave communities of Florida, the Caribbean, and other parts of the New World.Sturtevant "Creek into Seminole" 102–105; Wright, 106, Mahon "History of the Second Seminole War" 7; Simmons, "Notices of East Florida", 54–55. ]

Culture

The Black Seminole culture that took shape after 1800 was a dynamic mixture of African, Indian, Spanish, and slave traditions. In the tradition of the Indians, maroons wore Seminole clothing, strained "koonti", a native root, and made "sofkee", a paste created by mashing corn with a mortar and pestle.

Living apart from the Indians, however, the maroons developed their own unique African-American culture. Black Seminoles inclined toward a syncretic form of Christianity inherited from their lives on the plantations. Certain cultural practices, such as jumping the broom to celebrate marriage, hailed from the plantations; other customs, such as the names used for blacks' towns, clearly echoed Africa.

Language especially showed the Black Seminoles' distinct culture. Afro-Seminole Creole was strongly related to Gullah, the dialect of Sea Islanders along the Carolina and Georgia coast. Like Gullah, Afro-Seminole was a creole language that incorporated words from Spanish, English, and Muskogee, as well as Bantu and other African languages.Mulroy 20–22; Porter, "Black Seminoles" 6; Foster "Negro-Indian Relations in the Southeast" 51–59; Simmons 44; Hancock ,"The Texas Seminoles and Their Language". ]

African-Seminole relations

By the early 19th century, maroons (free blacks and runaway slaves) and Seminoles were in regular contact in Florida, where they evolved a system of relations unique among North American Native Americans and blacks. In exchange for paying an annual tribute of livestock and crops, black prisoners or slaves found sanctuary among the Seminole. Seminoles, in turn, acquired an important strategic ally in a sparsely populated region.

Typically, many or most members of the Black Seminole communities were not identified as slaves of individual Native American chiefs. If Seminole slavery was mentioned, however, it was used as a pretense to keep white slave catchers from claiming to own free Black Seminoles. The Black Seminoles were not slaves of the Seminole. Black Seminoles lived in their own independent communities, elected their own leaders and could amass wealth in cattle and crops. Most importantly, they bore arms for self-defense. Florida real estate records show that the Seminole and Black Seminole people owned large quantities of Florida land. In some cases, a portion of that Florida land is still owned by the Seminole and Black Seminole descendants in Florida.

Under the comparatively free conditions, the Black Seminoles flourished. U.S. Army Lieutenant George McCall recorded his impressions of a Black Seminole community in 1826:

We found these negroes in possession of large fields of the finest land, producing large crops of corn, beans, melons, pumpkins, and other esculent vegetables. [I] saw, while riding along the borders of the ponds, fine rice growing; and in the village large corn-cribs were filled, while the houses were larger and more comfortable than those of the Indians themselves.

, who visited several flourishing Black Seminole settlements in the 1820s, to describe the Africans as "vassals and allies" of the Seminole.

Seminole chiefs won prestige and wealth from their association with black warriors. In many cases Seminoles had children with the maroons and the Black Seminoles became members of the Seminole tribe. Slave-catching whites did not want to consider Black Seminoles to be members of the Seminole tribe because they wanted to seize them as slaves, even though the Black Seminoles were free citizens of Spanish Florida. Black headmen were occasionally admitted into Seminole bands through marriage or recognition of service.

Blacks in the Seminole Wars

From the time of the founding of the United States, the existence of armed black communities in Florida was a major concern for American slave owners. Slaveholders sought return of Florida's black fugitives under the Treaty of New York (1790), the first treaty ratified after the adoption of the United States Constitution.Miller "Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States" 2: 344, Twyman "The Black Seminole Legacy and Northern American Politics" 78–79. ] General Andrew Jackson targeted Florida's maroon communities in 1816 by orchestrating an attack on the Negro Fort, a Black Seminole stronghold. Breaking up the maroon communities was one of Jackson's major objectives in the subsequent First Seminole War (1817–18).United States "American State Papers: Foreign Affairs" 4: 559–61, "Army Navy Chronicle" 2: 114–6, Mahon 65–66. ]

people and a portion of their 800 Black Seminole allies—a portion, because during the year before the war, at least 100 Black Seminoles were being claimed by prominent white citizens as runaway slaves.

Fearing the direct attempt to enslave these 100, and anticipating attempts to enslave more members of the community, the Black Seminoles became staunch opponents of relocation. In councils before the war, they stoked efforts to resist removal and threw their support behind the most militant Seminole faction, led by Osceola. After war broke out, individual black leaders John Caesar, Abraham, and John Horse played key roles.Mahon 69–134; Porter "Black" 25–52. ] In addition to aiding the Indians in their fight, Black Seminoles conspired in the rebellion of at least 385 plantation slaves at the commencement of the war. The slaves joined Indians and maroons in the destruction of 21 sugar plantations from December 25, 1835, through the summer of 1836. Some scholars have described this as the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history.Bird [http://www.johnhorse.com/highlights/essays/largest.htm "The Largest Slave Rebellion in U.S. History",] Brown, "Race Relations in Territorial Florida", 304; Rivers, "Slavery in Florida", 203. ]

By 1838, U.S. General Thomas Sydney Jesup succeeded in separating the interests of the black and Seminole warriors by offering security and promises of freedom to the blacks. His act was the only emancipation of rebellious African Americans prior to the emancipation of the southern slaves by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.Bird [http://www.johnhorse.com/trail/02/d/27.htm "Jesup's Proclamation."] ]

Black Seminoles in the West

After 1838, more than 500 Black Seminoles with many Seminoles by their side were marched thousands of miles to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Many of the Black Seminoles and Seminoles died along this trail from Florida to Oklahoma, also known as "The Trail of Tears.

Despite U.S. Army promises of freedom, however, out west the Black Seminoles found themselves threatened by slave raiders. These included pro-slavery Creek tribe and even some former Seminole allies, whose allegiance to the maroons diminished after the war. Officers of the federal army may have tried to protect the Black Seminoles, but in 1848 the U.S. Attorney General bowed to pro-slavery lobbyists and ordered the army to disarm the maroons.Porter "Black" 97, 111–123, United States Attorney General "Official Opinions" 4: 720–29, Giddings "Exiles of Florida" 327–28, Foreman "The Five Civilized Tribes" 257, Littlefield "Africans and Seminoles" 122–25. ] This left hundreds of Seminoles and Black Seminoles unable to leave the settlement and unable to defend themselves from the coming onslaught of pro-slavery lobbyists.

Facing enslavement, a Black Seminole leader named John Horse and about 100 Black Seminoles staged a mass escape in 1849 from the Indian Prison to Mexico, where slavery had long since been outlawed. The black fugitives crossed to freedom in July 1850. They rode with a faction of traditionalist Seminoles under the Indian chief Coacochee, who led the expedition. The Mexican government welcomed the Seminole allies as border guards on the frontier.Foster 42–43; Mulroy 58; Porter, "Black", 130–31. ]

For the next 20 years, Black Seminoles served as militiamen and Indian fighters in Mexico, where they became known as "los mascogos". Slave raiders from Texas continued to threaten the community. Arms and reinforcements from the Mexican Army enabled the black warriors to ably defend themselves.Mulroy 56–73, Porter "Black" 124–147. ]

Throughout the period, several hundred Black Seminoles remained in the Oklahoma Indian Territory. With the end of slavery in the U.S., these maroons became known as Seminole Freedmen. They lived —as their descendants still do— in and around Wewoka, Oklahoma, the community founded by John Horse as a black settlement in 1849. Today it is home of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.

In 1870, the U.S. Army invited the escaped Black Seminoles to return from Mexico to the U.S. and serve as army scouts. The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts (originally a black unit despite the name) played a lead role in the Texas Indian Wars of the 1870s. The scouts became famous for their tracking abilities and feats of endurance. Four men were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. They served as advance scouts for the commanding white officers and the all-black units known as the Buffalo Soldiers, with whom they were closely associated. After the close of the Texas Indian Wars, the scouts remained stationed at Fort Clark in Brackettville, Texas, until the army disbanded them in 1914. Family members settled in and around Brackettville, which has a cemetery for the scouts and remains the spiritual center of the Texas-based Black Seminoles.Porter "Black" 175–216, Wallace "Ranald S. Mackenzie" 92–111. ]

The community in Nacimiento, Coahuila, persists on lands adjacent to the Kickapoo tribe. Yet another Black Seminole community resides half a continent away on Andros Island in the Bahamas. Here refugees from 19th-century Florida wars found a sanctuary from American enslavement.Goggin "The Seminole Negroes of Andros Island" 201–6, Mulroy 26. ]

Some of the descendants of the Black Seminoles who did not emigrate still live in Florida today. For the most part, these Black Seminoles are not members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

In 2003 and 2004, Seminole Freedmen in Oklahoma were in the national news because of a legal dispute with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma over membership and rights within the tribe. Freedmen were trying to gain access to services provided by a $56 million settlement awarded to the Seminole Nation. The dispute developed after Seminole Indians voted to exclude some Freedmen from inclusion in the settlement and membership in the tribe. In June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow the Seminole Freedmen to sue the federal government for inclusion in the settlement unless they could obtain the Seminole Nation's consent.Bakari [http://www.tbwt.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=70&Itemid=41 "Seminoles With African Ancestry",] [http://indianz.com/News/2004/003156.asp "Seminole Freedmen rebuffed by Supreme Court."] ]

ee also

* List of topics related to Black and African people
* Cherokee Freedmen
* Zambo
* Cafuzo
* Garifuna
* Ian Hancock
* Afro-Seminole Creole
* Black Indians
* Cimarron people (Panama)
* Gullah
* Gullah language
* Maroon (people)
* Native Americans in the United States
* Native American tribe
* One-Drop Rule

Endnotes

References


*Akil II, Bakari. [http://www.tbwt.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=70&Itemid=41 "Seminoles With African Ancestry: The Right To Heritage,"] "The Black World Today," December 27, 2003. Retrieved Aug. 29, 2005.
*"Army and Navy Chronicle". 13 vols. Washington: B. Homans, 1835–1842.
*Bird, J.B (2005). [http://www.johnhorse.com/highlights/essays/largest.htm "The Largest Slave Rebellion in U.S. History."] Retrieved Aug. 29, 2005.
*Bird, J.B. (2005). [http://www.johnhorse.com/trail/02/d/27.htm "Jesup's Proclamation."] Retrieved Aug. 29, 2005.
*Bird, J.B. (2005). [http://www.johnhorse.com/trail/01/b/01.1.htm "Were all Black Seminoles descendants of fugitive slaves?"] Retrieved Aug. 29, 2005.
*Brown, Canter. "Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 1821–1845." Florida Historical Quarterly 73.3 (January 1995): 287–307.
*Foreman, Grant. The Five Civilized Tribes. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934.
*Foster, Laurence. Negro-Indian Relations in the Southeast. PhD. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1935.
*Giddings, Joshua R. "The Exiles of Florida, or, crimes committed by our government against maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other slave states, seeking protection under Spanish laws". Columbus, Ohio: Follet, 1858.
*Goggin, John M. "The Seminole Negroes of Andros Island, Bahamas." Florida Historical Quarterly 24 (July 1946): 201-6.
*Hancock, Ian F. "The Texas Seminoles and Their Language". Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980.
*Indianz.com (2004). [http://indianz.com/News/2004/003156.asp "Seminole Freedmen rebuffed by Supreme Court,"] June 29, 2004. Retrieved Aug. 29, 2005.
*Landers, Jane. "Black Society in Spanish Florida". Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
*Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. "Africans and Seminoles". Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977.
*Mahon, John K. "History of the Second Seminole War, 1835–1842". 1967. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1985.
*McCall, George A. "Letters From the Frontiers". Philadelphia: Lippincot & Co., 1868.
*Miller, David Hunter, ed. "Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America". 2 vols. Washington: GPO, 1931.
*Mulroy, Kevin. "Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas". Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1993.
*Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. "The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom-Seeking People". Eds Thomas Senter and Alcione Amos. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1996.
*Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. "The Negro on the American Frontier". New York: Arno Press, 1971.
*Rivers, Larry Eugene. "Slavery in Florida". Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.
*Schneider, Pamela S. "It's Not Funny: Various Aspects of Black History" Charlotte PA: Lemieux Press Publishers, 2005.
*Simmons, William. "Notices of East Florida". 1822. Intro. George E. Buker. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1973.
*Sturtevant, William C. "Creek into Seminole." "North American Indians in Historical Perspective". Eds Eleanor B. Leacock and Nancy O. Lurie. New York: Random House, 1971.
*Twyman, Bruce Edward. "The Black Seminole Legacy and Northern American Politics, 1693–1845". Washington: Howard University Press, 1999.
*United States. Attorney-General. "Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the United States". Washington: United States, 1852–1870.
*United States. Congress. "American State Papers: Foreign Relations". Vol 4. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1832–1860.
*United States. Congress. "American State Papers: Military Affairs". 7 vols. Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1832–1860.
*Wallace, Ernest. "Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier". College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993.
*Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. "Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the Muscogulge People". Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

External links

* [http://www.johnhorse.com Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, the First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery]
* [http://www.seminolenation-indianterritory.org/caesar_bruner_freedman.htm Story of Freedman Caesar Bruner]
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~texlance/seminoles/index.htm Seminole and Black Seminole genealogical records]
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/seminoles.html?pg=3 Wired 13.09 Blood Feud] : article from August 2005 Wired magazine on DNA, ethnicity, and Black Seminoles

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