Spain in 1693, 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 rst legally sanctioned free black town in North
America.[3]
Not all the slaves escaping south found military service
in St. Augustine to their liking. More escaped slaves
sought refuge in wilderness areas in Northern Florida,
where their knowledge of tropical agricultureand resistance to tropical diseasesserved them well. Most of the
blacks who pioneered Florida were Gullah people who
escaped from the rice plantations of South Carolina (and
later Georgia). As Gullah, they had developed an AfroEnglish based Creole, along with cultural practices and
African leadership structure. The Gullah pioneers built
their own settlements based on rice and corn agriculture.
They became allies of Creek and other Indians escaping
into Florida from the Southeast at the same time.[2] In
Florida, they developed the Afro-Seminole Creole, which
they spoke with the growing Seminole tribe.
Today, Black Seminole descendants live primarily in rural communities within the reservation of the Seminole
Nation of Oklahoma; its two Freedmens bands are represented on the General Council of the Nation. Other
centers are in Florida, Texas, the Bahamas and Northern Mexico. Since the 1930s, the Seminole Freedmen
have struggled with cycles of exclusion from the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma.[1] In 1990, the tribe received the
majority of a $46 million judgment trust by the United
States, for seizure of lands in Florida in 1823, and the
Freedmen have worked to gain a share of it. In 2004 the
US Supreme Court ruled the Seminole Freedmen could
not bring suit without the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma,
which refused to join it on the claim issue. In 2000 the
Seminole Nation voted to restrict membership to those
who could prove descent from a Seminole Indian on the
Dawes Rolls of the early 20th century, which excluded
about 1200 Freedmen previously included as members.
Origins
In 1773, when the American naturalist William Bartram visited the area, the Seminole had their own tribal
name, derived from cimarron, the Spanish word for runaway. Cimarron was also the source of the English word
maroon, used to describe the runaway slave communities
of Florida, the Great Dismal Swamp maroons who had
developed on the border of Virginia and North Carolina,
and maroons on colonial islands of the Caribbean, and
other parts of the New World.[4]
3 AFRICAN-SEMINOLE RELATIONS
tribes. During the War of 1812, members of both communities sided with the British against the US in the hopes
of defeating American settlers; they strengthened their internal ties and earned the enmity of the wars American
General Andrew Jackson.[6][7]
Christianity developed during the plantation years. Certain cultural practices, such as "jumping the broom" to
celebrate marriage, hailed from the plantations; other
customs, such as some names used for black towns, reected African heritage.[9]
Spain had given land to some Muscogee (Creek) Native Americans. Over time the Creek were joined by
other remnant groups of Southeast American Indians,
such as the Miccosukee and the Apalachicola, and formed
communities. Their community evolved over the late
18th and early 19th centuries as waves of Creek left
present-day Georgia and Alabama under pressure from
white settlement and the Creek Wars.[8] By a process of
ethnogenesis, the Indians formed the Seminole.
Culture
The African Americans had more of a patriarchal system. But, under the Souths adoption of the principle of
partus sequitur ventrem, incorporated into slavery law in
the states, children of slave mothers were considered born
into slavery. Even if the mother had escaped, her children
were legally considered slaves and fugitives, like her. As a
result, the Black Seminole were always at risk from slave
raiders.
3 African-Seminole relations
By the early 19th century, maroons (free blacks and runaway slaves) and the Seminole 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.[2] In the
19th century, the Black Seminoles were called Seminole
Negroes" by their white American enemies and Estelusti
(Black People), by their Indian allies.
Abraham, a Black Seminole leader, from N. Orrs engraving in
The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War (1848)
by John T. Sprague.
3
other esculent vegetables. ... I saw, while riding along the borders of the ponds, ne rice
growing; and in the village large corn-cribs
were lled, while the houses were larger and
more comfortable than those of the Indians
themselves.[10]
Historians estimate that during the 1820s, 800 blacks
were living with the Seminoles.[11] The Black Seminole
settlements were highly militarized, unlike the communities of most of the slaves in the Deep South. The military
nature of the African-Seminole relationship led General
Edmund Pendleton Gaines, who visited several ourishing Black Seminole settlements in the 1800s, to describe
the African Americans as vassals and allies of the Seminole.
In terms of spirituality, the ethnic groups remained distinct. The Seminole followed the nativistic principles
of their Great Spirit. Blacks had a syncretic form of
Christianity brought with them from the plantations. In
general, the blacks never wholly adopted Seminole culture and beliefs, nor were they accepted into Seminole
society. They were not considered Indian.
Most of the blacks spoke Gullah, an Afro-English-based
creole language. This enabled them to communicate better with Anglo-Americans than the Creek or Mikasukispeaking Seminole. The Indians used the blacks as
translators to advance their trading with the British and
other tribes.[12] Together in Florida they developed AfroSeminole Creole, identied in 1978 as a distinct language
by the linguist Ian Hancock. Black Seminoles and Freedmen continued to speak Afro-Seminole Creole through
the 19th century in Oklahoma. Hancock found that in
1978, some Black Seminole and Seminole elders still
spoke it in Oklahoma and in Florida.[2]
5
left the state because of its conditions of racial segregation. As US citizens, they were exposed to the harsher
racial laws of Oklahoma.
Since 1954, the Freedmen have been included in the constitution of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. They have
two bands, each representing more than one town and
named for 19th-century band leaders: the Cesar Bruner
band covers towns south of Little River; the Dosar Barkus
covers the several towns located north of the river. Each
of the bands elects two representatives to the General
Council of the Seminole Nation.
5.3
Texas community
In 1870, the U.S. Army invited Black Seminoles to return from Mexico to serve as army scouts for the United
States. The Black Seminole Scouts (originally an African
American unit despite the name) played a lead role in the
Texas-Indian Wars of the 1870s, when they were based
at Fort Clark, Texas, the home of the Bualo Soldiers.
The scouts became famous for their tracking abilities and
feats of endurance. Four men were awarded the Medal of
Honor, three for an 1875 action against the Comanche.[2]
After the close of the Texas Indian Wars, the scouts remained stationed at Fort Clark in Brackettville, Texas.
The Army disbanded the unit in 1914. The veterans
and their families settled in and around Brackettville,
where scouts and family members were buried in its
cemetery. The town remains the spiritual center of the
Texas-based Black Seminoles.[29] In 1981, descendants
at Brackettville and the Little River community of Oklahoma met for the rst time in more than a century, in
Texas for a Juneteenth reunion and celebration.[30]
6
scendants of the time.[37] The settlement apportionment
was disputed in court cases between the Oklahoma and
Florida tribes, but nally awarded in 1990, with threequarters going to the Oklahoma people and one-quarter
to those in Florida.
However, the Black Seminole descendants asserted their
ancestors had also held and farmed land in Florida, and
suered property losses as a result of US actions. They
led suit in 1996 against the Department of Interior to
share in the benets of the judgment trust of the Seminole
Nation of Oklahoma, of which they were members.[36][38]
In another aspect of the dispute over citizenship, in the
summer of 2000 the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma voted
to restrict members, according to blood quantum, to those
who had one-eighth Seminole Indian ancestry,[30] basically those who could document descent from a Seminole
Indian ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls, the federal registry established in the early 20th century. At the time,
during rushed conditions, registrars had separate lists for
Seminole-Indians and Freedmen. They classied those
with visible African ancestry as Freedmen, regardless of
their proportion of Indian ancestry or whether they were
considered Indian members of the tribe at the time. This
excluded some Black Seminole from being listed on the
Seminole-Indian list who qualied by ancestry.[36]
The Dawes Rolls included in the Seminole-Indian list
many Intermarried Whites who lived on Indian lands, but
did not include blacks of the same status. The Seminole Freedmen believed the tribes 21st-century decision
to exclude them was racially based and has opposed it
on those grounds. The Department of Interior said that
it would not recognize a Seminole government that did
not have Seminole Freedmen participating as voters and
on the council, as they had ocially been members of
the nation since 1866. In October 2000, the Seminole
Nation led its own suit against the Interior Department,
contending it had the sovereign right to determine tribal
membership.[36]
stopped federal funding for a time for services and programs to the Seminole.
The individual Certicate of Degree of Indian Blood
(CDIB) is based on registration of ancestors in the Indian lists of the Dawes Rolls. Although the BIA could
not issue CDIBs to the Seminole Freedmen, in 2003 the
agency recognized them as members of the tribe and advised them of continuing benets for which they were
eligible.[41] Journalists theorized the decision could affect the similar case in which the Cherokee Nation of
Oklahoma excluded Cherokee Freedmen as members unless they could document a direct Indian ancestor on the
Dawes Rolls.[41]
7
A large sign at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park
commemorates the site where hundreds of Africa
Americans escaped to freedom in the Bahamas in
the early 1820s, as part of the National Underground
Railroad Network to Freedom Trail.[15]
A sign at the Manatee Mineral Spring marks the location where traces of Angola were uncovered [44]
Red Bays, Andros, the historic settlement of Black
Seminoles in the Bahamas, and Nacimiento, Mexico
are being recognized as related international sites on
the Network to Freedom Trail.[15]
10
See also
Afro-Seminole Creole
Black Indians in the United States
Black Seminole Scouts
Ian Hancock
List of topics related to Black and African people
One-Drop Rule
11
Notes
[10] McCall, George A. (1868). Letters from the Frontiers. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. p. 160. ISBN
9781429021586.
[11] http://slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_indians_
slavery.htm
[12] Seminole, Slavery in America.
[13] Miller Treaties and Other International Acts of the United
States 2: 344, Twyman, The Black Seminole Legacy and
Northern American Politics, pp. 7879.
[14] United States American State Papers: Foreign Aairs 4:
55961, Army Navy Chronicle 2: 1146, Mahon 6566.
[15] Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, Network to Freedom, National Park Service, 2010, accessed April 10,
2013.
[16] Excavators seeking freedom pioneers - St. Pete Times.
Sptimes.com. Retrieved 2010-05-16.
[17] Looking for Angola. Looking for Angola. Retrieved
2010-05-16.
[18] Uzi Baram. (2012) Cosmopolitan Meanings of Old Spanish Fields: Historical Archaeology of a Maroon Community in Southwest Florida Historical Archaeology
46(1):108-122
[19] Howard, Rosalyn. (2006) The 'Wild Indians of Andros
Island: Black Seminole Legacy in the Bahamas, Journal
of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 275298.
[20] Mahon 69134; Porter Black 2552.
[21] Brown, Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 304; Rivers,
Slavery in Florida, 203.
[22] Porter Black 97, 111123, United States Attorney
General Ocial Opinions 4: 72029, Giddings Exiles of
Florida 32728, Foreman The Five Civilized Tribes 257,
Littleeld Africans and Seminoles 12225.
[23] Foster 4243; Mulroy 58; Porter, Black, 13031.
[24] http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_indians_
slavery.htm
12
12
12.1
References
Primary sources
REFERENCES
Miller, David Hunter, ed. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America. 2 vols.
Washington: GPO, 1931.
United States. Attorney-General. Ocial Opinions
of the Attorneys General of the United States. Washington: United States, 18521870.
United States. Congress. American State Papers:
Foreign Relations. Vol 4. Washington: Gales and
Seaton, 18321860.
United States. Congress. American State Papers:
Military Aairs. 7 vols. Washington: Gales and
Seaton, 18321860.
9
Kashif, Annette. Africanisms Upon the Land:
A Study of African Inuenced Placenames of the
USA, In Places of Cultural Memory: African Reections on the American Landscape. Washington,
DC: National Park Service, 2001.
13 Further reading
Hancock, Ian F. A Provisional Comparison of the
English-based Atlantic Creoles, Sierra Leone Language Review, 8 (1969), 7=72.
Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Gullah and Barbadian: Origins and Relationships. American Speech, 55 (1) (1980), 17-35.
Howard, Rosalyn A. Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, Gainesville: University of Florida, 2002
Littleeld, Daniel C. Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity
and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina,
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1981/1991, University of Illinois Press.
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.
14 External links
Bird, J.B (2005). The Largest Slave Rebellion in
U.S. History, Rebellion: John Horse and the Black
Seminoles Website
Bill Hubbard, Story of Freedman Caesar Bruner,
c. 1958, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma website
Seminole and Black Seminole genealogical records,
Freepages GenWeb
Blood Feud, Wired Magazine, Vol. 13.09, August
2005, article on DNA, ethnicity, and Black Seminoles
Black Indians, ColorQWorld
10
15
15
15.1
15.2
Images
15.3
Content license
LGPL Contributors: