Black Seminoles

The Black Seminoles were a group of African Americans, most of whom had escaped slavery, who lived near or among the Seminole Native Americans of Florida. These groups bonded over the perils they faced and their desire for freedom and lived largely in a state of trade and cooperation. A series of wars against the United States, spanning much of the 1800s, broke their communities and sent most surviving Black Seminoles into other parts of the country, including Oklahoma and Texas, as well as into Mexico.

Background

Native Americans lived in North America for thousands of years before large numbers of Europeans began arriving in 1492. Their arrival, along with thousands of enslaved Africans, brought enormous changes to the continent. In the coming centuries, deals and conflicts over land pushed many Indigenous groups from their ancestral land, forcing them to search for new places to live.

One such group included bands of Creek peoples who had formerly lived in Georgia and Alabama. These groups moved southward to avoid tensions with other groups, and eventually settled in what is now Florida. In the early 1700s, Spain claimed control of that region but allowed newcomers to settle there to increase the population and separate Florida from the British-controlled colonies to the north.

The Creek people who moved to Florida began farms, planted a variety of crops, including beans and maize, and hunted. Over time, other bands of Indigenous people, including members of the Yamassee, Hitchiti, and Apalachee, joined them. Collectively, they became known as the Seminole. This term may be translated as “runaways” or “separatists,” in reference to the people’s forced migrations and lost connections to larger, more-established groups.

Meanwhile, others migrated during this period as well. Thousands of enslaved people sought freedom by escaping to areas where slavery was unusual or illegal. Most of these escapees moved north, but some moved south into Spanish-controlled Florida. Groups of enslaved Africans from the British colony of South Carolina fled to Florida in the 1680s, where they attempted to restart their lives as free people.

King Charles II of Spain declared in 1693 that formerly enslaved residents in Florida would be officially freed and protected if they served in the Spanish armed forces, particularly around their largest settlement in St. Augustine. By 1738, Africans who joined the Spanish militia formed new settlements in Florida, which were the first free African settlements on the continent.

Historians have discovered that these so-called “maroon” settlements might have operated independently or cooperated with the Spanish. Either way, most residents of the settlements held onto their African ways of life and used dialects and communication skills from their original homeland. Some carried on the culture classified today as Gullah, which blends the words and ways of West Africa with adaptations from the American South.

Africans also began forming relationships with their neighbors, the various bands of Seminole people. Many of these groups felt an instant amity based on their migrations and search for freedom and peaceful lives. Over several generations, the Black and Seminole neighbors settled near one another, worked together, and traded goods.

Their communities formed a largely symbiotic relationship. The Black communities brought new agricultural skills and crops and often shared their harvests. Those members who had formerly been enslaved also had extensive knowledge of European-American society and could serve as cultural translators for their Indigenous neighbors. Meanwhile, the Seminole shared the bounty of their hunts and herds of animals and were sometimes able to protect Black escapees from being recaptured.

Exceptions to this trend existed, however. Historians have found that the practice of slavery was more widespread than is often realized. In some cases, Seminole chiefs enslaved Black people as well as members of different Native American groups. Their form of slavery more closely resembled a feudal system, in which the enslaved people had to present crops to their Seminole masters but otherwise were free to live as they chose.

The groups also intermarried, blurring their cultural distinctions and drawing them closer together. Over time, a hybrid culture developed that mixed Native American and African American traditions. They even formed a blended language, known to modern historians as Afro-Seminole Creole (ASC), which used elements of African and Indigenous ways of speaking. This culture would later be called the Black Seminoles. Although the term seemed to draw a distinction between the Black and Seminole elements, the two groups remained close allies and were in some cases nearly inseparable.

Overview

In 1740, the British governor of Georgia attacked Florida, beginning the process of wresting the region from Spanish control. During these attacks, Georgian soldiers destroyed many villages of the Black and Seminole people. Many Black residents of the area fled, not only from the fighting but also from the prospect of being recaptured and enslaved. Many of them joined Native American communities or sided more strongly with the Spanish, in many cases accepting the Catholic religion.

In 1763, the establishment of Florida as a British colony greatly changed the situation for the Black Seminoles. Governor James Grant promoted the establishment of plantations in the region’s tropical zones. Plantation owners brought in more enslaved people. Many of them escaped and joined nearby free Black communities, thus raising their population. At the same time, though, the increased practice of slavery in Florida greatly boosted the threat of re-enslavement.

The United States was formed after American colonies won their freedom from the British in the Revolutionary War. However, tensions between the new country and its former rulers contributed to the War of 1812, in which Americans again defeated British forces. Following the British departure, the Black and Seminole people of Florida gained access to abandoned British supplies, weapons, and fortifications. Plantation owners in the area and others worried that the Black and Indigenous individuals would militarize or form their own colony.

American authorities responded to this concern in 1817 when General Andrew Jackson moved to destroy the leftover fortifications in Florida, sparking a conflict known as the Seminole War. Despite resistance from the local inhabitants, US forces won in 1818, pushing the Black and Seminole groups farther south into Central Florida and claiming control over the northern regions of Florida as a US territory. The defeat further solidified the alliance between the local groups as well as the identity of the Black Seminoles.

Some Seminole protested the takeover of their land and even petitioned the government to be allowed to return. However, Jackson’s victories in the War of 1812 had propelled him into governing the Florida territory and then into the US presidency. He had no sympathy or patience for the claims of the Seminole or Black Seminoles and instituted a policy to remove them all from the area.

The Black Seminoles realized their freedom was at stake, and they and the Seminole both knew that their homes in Florida were in jeopardy. Thus bolstered, they put up a spirited fight in what became known as the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842. Seminole leader Osceola led Seminole and Black Seminoles forces in Florida through several striking early victories, only to be captured in 1837. Subsequently, US officials offered to let the communities move west to avoid continued warfare or the possibility of enslavement. Many members of the resistance forces acquiesced and moved to reservations in Oklahoma, but many others stayed in Florida, and the Second Seminole War lasted until 1842.

The United States declared Florida a state in 1845, leading to another evaluation of the land and its population, and another call for the Black and Seminole elements to be removed. A Third Seminole War occurred in the 1850s as US forces again swept through Florida, forcing the communities there farther south and into deeper seclusion. The communities also experienced several internal conflicts that split some bands of Black Seminoles and Seminole. In 1858, officials declared the war over because the Black and Seminole populations had been reduced sufficiently to no longer pose a threat to their initiatives.

While hundreds of Black and Seminole Floridians remained in that state, most eventually died or left. Their exodus spread the legacy of the Black Seminoles into other parts of the country, most notably Oklahoma, where at least two bands remain alongside the Seminole in the twenty-first century. Some Black Seminoles migrated to Mexico instead.

The Mexican government granted newly arrived Black Seminoles land for settlement on the condition that they patrol and protect the area from hostile Native Americans. As such, many young Black Seminoles gained extensive skills in scouting, which made them a valuable asset. In the 1870s, the US armed forces employed Black Seminoles as scouts in the western ranges of Texas. Some of them went on to join army units and later served in the Indian Wars of the late 1800s, in which four Black Seminoles won the US Medal of Honor.

Bibliography

Etienne-Gray, Tracé. “Black Seminole Indians.” Texas State Historical Association, 30 Sept. 2020, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/black-seminole-indians. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Gershon, Livia. “The History of the Black Seminoles.” JSTOR Daily, 29 Nov. 2020, daily.jstor.org/the-history-of-the-black-seminoles. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Holley, Joe. “Black Seminoles Made Their Mark on Texas History.” Houston Chronicle, 7 Feb. 2021, www.houstonchronicle.com/news/columnists/native-texan/article/Black-Seminoles-made-their-mark-on-Texas-history-15931772.php. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Lyden, Meleah. “A Living History: Reenactor Fills the Gap of Black Seminole Legacy in Florida.” WUFT/PBS, 20 Jan. 2022, www.wuft.org/news/2022/01/20/a-living-history-reenactor-fills-the-gap-of-black-seminole-legacy-in-florida. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Opala, Joseph A. “The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection.” Yale Macmillan Center, macmillan.yale.edu/glc/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Perkins, Andrea. “The Forgotten Rebellion of the Black Seminole Nation.” People’s World, 11 Feb. 2014, www.peoplesworld.org/article/the-forgotten-rebellion-of-the-black-seminole-nation. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Porter, Kenneth W. The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom-Seeking People. U of Florida P, 2013.

“Seminole History.” Florida Department of State, dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/seminole-history. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.