Seminole

Seminole portraits
Total population
est. 18,600 Seminole Nation of Oklahoma 15,572 enrolled Seminole Tribe of Florida Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida
Regions with significant populations
United States (Oklahoma, Florida)
Languages
English, Mikasuki, Creek
Religion
Protestantism, Catholicism, Green Corn Ceremony
Related ethnic groups
Miccosukee, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek)

The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily there and in Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creek from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in the early 18th century.^[1] The word Seminole is a corruption of cimarrón, a Spanish term for "runaway" or "wild one", historically used for certain Native American groups in Florida.^[2] The Seminole are closely related to the Miccosukee, who were recognized as a separate tribe in 1962.^[3]

After an initial period of colonization in Florida, during which they distanced themselves increasingly from other Creek groups, the Seminole established a thriving trade network during the British and second Spanish periods (roughly 1767–1821).^[4] The tribe expanded considerably during this time, and was further supplemented from the late 18th century with the appearance of the Black Seminoles – free blacks and escaped slaves who settled in communities near Seminole towns, where they paid tribute to the Native Americans in exchange for protection.^[5] However, tensions grew between the Seminole and the United States to the north, leading to a series of conflicts known as the Seminole Wars (1818–1858).^[5] Over the course of the wars most Seminoles were forced to relocate west of the Mississippi River in a process of Indian removal. Perhaps fewer than 200 Seminoles remained in Florida, but those who did fostered a resurgence in traditional customs and a culture of staunch independence.^[6]

Seminole culture is largely derived from Creek culture. Most Seminole speak the Mikasuki language, with some (such as those living on the Brighton Seminole Reservation) speaking Creek; English is also prevalent today. The most important ceremony is the Green Corn Dance, which is celebrated largely as it is among the Creeks; other notable Creek-derived traditions include use of the black drink and ritual smoking of tobacco. As the Seminole adapted to the Florida environment, they developed their own local traditions, such as the construction of open air thatched-roof houses known as chickees.^[7]

The Seminole who moved west of the Mississippi largely settled in what is now Oklahoma. Today most are enrolled with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, while others belong to unorganized groups. The Florida Seminoles reestablished limited relations with the U.S. government in the late 19th century, and eventually received 5,000 acres (20 km²) of reservation land in Florida. However, few Seminole had interest in moving to reservations until the 1940s, when many Seminole Christians relocated to them in order to establish their own churches. Reservation governments were founded, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida received federal recognition in 1957. However, the recognition caused conflict with a group living along the Tamiami Trail, who did not feel appropriately represented; they sought federal recognition as the Miccosukee Tribe, which they received in 1962.^[8]

History[link]

In the second half of the 18th century,^[9] the Lower Creeks, a tribe of Muscogee people, began to migrate into Florida to evade the dominance of the Upper Creeks, effectively displacing the Calusa and Mayaimi tribes with the aid of the Spanish who moved many of them to Cuba, where the tribes' populations were soon decimated by disease. The Seminole intermingled with the Choctaw and other few remaining indigenous people there, some recently arrived as refugees after the Yamasee War, such as the Yuchi, Yamasee and others. In a process of ethnogenesis, they formed a new culture which they called "Seminole", a derivative of the Mvskoke' (a Creek language) word simano-li, an adaptation of the Spanish cimarrón which means "wild" (in their case, "wild men"), or "runaway" [men].^[10] The Seminole were a heterogeneous tribe made up of mostly Lower Creeks from Georgia, Mikasuki-speaking Muscogees, escaped African-American slaves, and to a lesser extent, Native Americans from other tribes and even white Americans. The unified Seminole spoke two languages: Creek and Mikasuki (a modern dialect similar to Hitchiti), two different members of the Muscogean Native American languages family, a language group that includes Choctaw and Chickasaw.

During the colonial years, the Seminole were on good terms with both the Spanish and the British. In 1784, the treaty ending the American Revolutionary War transferred British rule of Florida to Spain. The Spanish Empire's decline enabled the Seminole to settle more deeply into Florida. They were led by a dynasty of chiefs founded in the 18th century by Cowkeeper. This dynasty lasted until 1842, when the US forced the majority of Seminole to move from Florida to the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) after the Second Seminole War.

There is also a village of Black Seminoles who have lived at Red Bays on Andros Island in the Bahamas since the 1820s.^[11]

Religion[link]

Seminole tribes generally follow Christianity, both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and their traditional Native religion, which is expressed through the stomp dance and the Green Corn Ceremony. Indigenous peoples have practiced Green Corn ceremonies for centuries. Contemporary southeastern Native American tribes, such as the Seminole and Muscogee Creek, still practice these ceremonies. A high degree of syncretism exists between Christianity and traditional Seminole religion, and Seminole Christian churches often sing hymns in the traditional languages.^[12]

In the 1950s, federal projects prompted the tribe's reorganization. They created organizations within tribal governance to promote modernization. As Christian pastors began preaching on reservations, Green Corn Ceremony attendance decreased. This created tension between religiously traditional Seminoles and those who began adopting Christianity. In the 1960s and 1970s, some tribal members on reservations, such as the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation, viewed organized Christianity as a threat to their traditions. Tribal reorganization appeared to be one factor in facilitating Christian conversion, but that also represented social changes of a new generation.

By the 1980s, Seminole communities were concerned about loss of language and tradition. Many tribal members began to revive the observance of traditional Green Corn Dance ceremonies, and some moved away from Christianity. By 2000 religious tension between Green Corn Dance attendees and Christians (particularly Baptists) decreased. Some Seminole families participate in both religions.^[13]

Seminole Wars[link]

Coeehajo, Chief, 1837, Smithsonian American Art Museum

After attacks by Spanish settlers on Native American towns, natives began raiding Georgia settlements, purportedly at the behest of the Spanish. In the early 19th century, the U.S. Army made increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish territory to recapture escaped slaves. General Andrew Jackson's 1817–1818 campaign against the Seminoles became known as the First Seminole War. Following the war, the United States effectively controlled East Florida.

In 1819 the United States and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty,^[14] which took effect in 1821. According to its terms, the United States acquired Florida and, in exchange, renounced all claims to Texas. Andrew Jackson was named military governor of Florida. As European-American settlement increased after the treaty, settlers pressured the Federal government to remove the Native Americans from Florida. Slaveholders resented that tribes harbored runaway black slaves, and more settlers wanted access to desirable lands held by Native Americans. Georgian slaveholders wanted the "maroons" and fugitive slaves living among the Seminoles, known today as Black Seminoles, returned to slavery.

In 1832, the United States government signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing with a few of the Seminole chiefs. They promised lands west of the Mississippi River if the chiefs agreed to leave Florida voluntarily with their peoples. The Seminoles who remained prepared for war. White settlers continued to press for removal.

In 1835, the U.S. Army arrived to enforce the treaty. Seminole leader Osceola led the vastly outnumbered resistance during the Second Seminole War. Drawing on a population of about 4,000 Seminole Indians and 800 allied Black Seminoles, he mustered at most 1,400 warriors (Andrew Jackson estimated they had only 900). They countered combined U.S. Army and militia forces that ranged from 6,000 troops at the outset to 9,000 at the peak of deployment in 1837. To survive, the Seminole allies employed guerrilla tactics with devastating effect against U.S. forces. Osceola was arrested when he came under a flag of truce to negotiations in 1837. He died in jail less than a year later. His body was buried without his head, which was preserved.

Other war chiefs, such as Halleck Tustenuggee and Jumper, and Black Seminoles Abraham and John Horse, continued the Seminole resistance against the army. After a full decade of fighting, the war ended in 1842. Scholars estimate the U.S. government spent about $40,000,000 on the war, at the time a huge sum. Many Native Americans were forcibly exiled to Creek lands west of the Mississippi; others retreated into the Everglades. In the end, the government gave up trying to subjugate the Seminoles and left the estimated fewer than 500 survivors in peace.^[15][16]

Contemporary[link]

During the Seminole Wars, the Seminole people began to break apart due to the conflict and differences in ideology. The Seminole population had also been growing significantly, though it was diminished by the wars.^[17] With the division of the Seminole tribe, some traditions such as powwow trails and ceremonies were maintained among them. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Seminole Tribe of Florida described below are fully independent nations that operate in their own spheres.^[18]

Oklahoma Seminole[link]

As a result of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) about 3,800 Seminole and maroons were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (the modern state of Oklahoma).^[19] During the American Civil War, the members and leaders split over their loyalties, with John Chupco refusing to sign a treaty with the Confederacy. From 1861-1866, he led as chief of the Seminole who supported the Union and fought in the Indian Brigade.

The split lasted until 1872. After the war, the United States government negotiated only with the loyal Seminole, requiring the tribe to make a new peace treaty to cover those who allied with the Confederacy, to emancipate their slaves, and to extend tribal citizenship to those freedmen who chose to stay in Seminole territory.

The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma now has about 16,000 enrolled members, who are divided into fourteen bands, similar to clans. Two are called "Freedmen Bands" (also "Black Seminoles") because they descended in part from escaped slaves who were freed after the Civil War. Band membership is matrilineal: children are members of their mother's band. The group is ruled by an elected council, with two members from each band. The capital is at Wewoka, Oklahoma. Recently tribal citizenship disputes have arisen related to the membership status of "Seminole Freedmen" in Oklahoma.^[19]

Florida Seminole[link]

Seminole family of Cypress Tiger at their camp near Kendall, Florida, 1916. Photo taken by botanist, John Kunkel Small

The remaining few hundred Seminoles survived in the Florida swamplands avoiding removal. They lived in the Everglades, to isolate themselves from European-Americans. Seminoles continued their distinctive life, such as "clan-based matrilocal residence in scattered thatched-roof chickee camps."^[19] Today, the 21st century descendants of the Seminole proudly note the Seminole were never officially conquered. That is one source of the nation's sovereign rights.^[20]

After the Third Seminole War, the Seminoles in Florida divided into two groups; those who were more traditional and those willing to adapt to the reservations. Those who accepted reservation lands and made adaptations were recognized as the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Those who preferred the more traditional lifestyle organized themselves as the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Other Seminoles not affiliated with either of the federally recognized groups are known as Traditional or Independent Seminoles.^[17]

Seminole Tribe of Florida[link]

Seminole patchwork shawl made by Susie Cypress from Big Cypress Indian Reservation, ca. 1980s

The Seminole worked to adapt, but they were highly affected by the rapidly changing American environment. Natural disasters magnified changes from the governmental drainage project of the Everglades. Residential, agricultural and business development changed the "natural, social, political, and economic environment" of the Seminole.^[18] In the 1930s, the Seminole slowly began to move onto federally designated reservation lands within the region. The US government had purchased lands and put them in trust for Seminole use.^[21] Initially, few Seminoles had any interest in moving to the reservation land or in establishing more formal relations with the government. Some feared that if they moved onto reservations, they would be forced to move to Oklahoma. Others accepted the move in hopes of stability, jobs promised by the Indian New Deal, or as new converts to Christianity.^[22]

Beginning in the 1940s, however, more Seminoles began to move to the reservations. A major catalyst for this was the conversion of many Seminole to Christianity, following missionary effort spearheaded by the CreekBaptist evangelist Stanley Smith. For the new converts, relocating to the reservations afforded them the opportunity to establish their own churches.^[23] Reservation Seminoles began forming tribal governments and forming ties with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.^[23] In 1957 the nation reorganized and established formal relations with the US government as the Seminole Tribe of Florida.^[18] The Seminole Tribe of Florida is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida. They control several reservations: Big Cypress, Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation, Dania, Florida State Reservation, and Tampa Reservation.^[24]

Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida[link]

The relocation to reservations and the federal recognition of the Seminole Tribe of Florida – a move largely supported by residents of the reservations – caused antipathy between the reservation Seminole and those who had chosen not to move. In particularly, a group known as the Trail Indians, who lived along the Tamiami Trail, felt disenfranchised by the situation. This was exacerbated in 1950 when some reservation Seminoles filed a land claim suit against the federal government that was not supported by the Trail Indians.^[8]

Following the recognition of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Trail Indians decided to organize their own separate tribal government. They sought recognition as the Miccosukee Tribe, as they spoke the Mikasuki (Miccosukee) language. They received full recognition in 1962, and received their own reservation land, collectively known as the Miccosukee Indian Reservation.^[8] The Miccosukee Tribe set up a 333-acre (1.35 km²) reservation on the northern border of Everglades National Park, about 45 miles (72 km) west of Miami.^[25]

Commerce[link]

In the United States 2000 Census, 12,431 people reported themselves as Seminole American Indian. An additional 15,000 people identified themselves as Seminoles in combination with some other tribal affiliation or race.^[26]

A Seminole spearing a garfish from a dugout, Florida, 1930

The Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida entered into agreements with the US government in 1957 and 1962, respectively, confirming their sovereignty over tribal lands and agreeing to compensation for seized territory. The Seminole have been engaged in stock raising since the mid-1930s, when they received cattle from western Native Americans. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) hoped that the cattle raising would teach Seminoles to become citizens using agricultural settlements. The BIA also hoped that this program would lead to Seminole self-sufficiency. Cattle owners realized that by using their cattle as equity, they could engage in "new capital-intensive pursuits", such as housing.^[27] Since then, the tribes have developed economies based chiefly on sales of duty-free tobacco, heritage and resort tourism, and gambling. On December 7, 2006, they purchased the Hard Rock Cafe chain of restaurants.^[28]

"The Tribe currently owns one of the largest cattle operations in Florida, and the 12th largest in the nation. On March 10, 2008, the Tribe launched its own brand of beef. Seminole Beef is currently served at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino restaurant in Hollywood, Florida, but the Tribe ultimately plans to market the beef to Indian casinos, restaurants, hotels, military bases, and supermarkets throughout the country."^[29]

Florida experienced a population boom in the early 20th century when the Flagler railroad to Miami was completed. The state became a growing destination for tourists and many resort towns were established.^[19] In the years that followed, many Seminoles worked in the cultural tourism trade. By the 1920s, many Seminoles were involved in service jobs. In addition, they were able to market their culture ^[30] by selling traditional craft products (made mostly by women) and by exhibitions of traditional skills, such as wrestling alligators (by men). Some of the crafts included woodcarving, basket weaving, beadworking, patchworking, and palmetto-doll making. These crafts are still practiced today.^[18]

Fewer Seminole rely on crafts for income because gaming has become so lucrative.^[18] The Miccosukee Tribe earns revenue by owning and operating a casino, resort, a golf club, several museum attractions, and the "Indian Village". At the "Indian Village", Miccosukee demonstrate traditional, pre-contact lifestyles to educate people about their culture.

"In 1979, the Seminoles opened the first casino on Indian land, ushering in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry operated by numerous tribes nationwide."^[31] This casino was the first tribally operated bingo hall in North America. Since its establishment, gaming has become an important source of revenue for tribal governments. Tribal gaming has provided secure employment, and the revenues have supported higher education, health insurance, services for the elderly, and personal income.^[32] In more recent years, income from the gaming industry has funded major economic projects such as sugarcane fields, citrus groves, cattle, ecotourism, and commercial agriculture.^[33] This has culminated in the purchase by the Seminole Tribe of Florida of Hard Rock Cafe, which previously they had licensed for several of their casinos.

The Seminole are reflected in numerous Florida place names:

• Seminole County;
• Osceola County;
• Seminole, a city in Pinellas County; and
• Seminole, a small community in Okaloosa County.

Florida State University connection[link]

The image and name of the Seminole Osceola serves as a symbol for Florida State University (FSU). Several high school athletic programs in the state use the nickname "Seminoles".

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibition against use of Native American logos, signs in stadiums, cheerleader and band uniforms, and mascots as presumed "hostile and abusive" was attempted against FSU and the Seminoles. It is considered on a case-by-case basis elsewhere. FSU was exempted after the threat of litigation by the administration at FSU because the university had an agreement with the 3,100-member Seminole Tribe of Florida of the relationship and details of the images used. During the dispute, the Oklahoma Seminole also endorsed use of the name and image.

The "war chant" cheer made by spectators at FSU football games includes the "tomahawk chop", a gesture invented by the fans. At first they pointed to the goal line, encouraging the team to score, but over time, the gesture imitated a tomahawk swinging down. Before acquiring different forms of weaponry beginning in the Colonial era, Seminole ancestors originally used spears with flint, bone or cane tips, war clubs studded with sharks' teeth, and bows and arrows.^[34]

See also[link]

Indigenous peoples of North America portal

• Seminole (clipper), 1865 clipper ship

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adams, Mikaëla M., “Savage Foes, Noble Warriors, and Frail Remnants: Florida Seminoles in the White Imagination, 1865–1934,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 87 (Winter 2009), 404–35.
• Cattelino, Jessica R. High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8223-4227-4
• Clark, C. Blue. "Native Christianity Since 1800." Sturtevant, William C., general editor and Raymond D. Fogelson, volume editor. Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast. Volume 14. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. ISBN 0-16-072300-0.
• Hawkins, Philip Colin. Creek Schism: Seminole Genesis Revisited. M.A. thesis, Department of History, University of South Florida, Tampa, 2009. LINK TO PDF
• Hawkins, Philip Colin. "The Textual Archaeology of Seminole Colonization." Florida Anthropologist 64 (June 2011), 107-113.
• Mahon, John K.; Brent R. Weisman (1996). "Florida's Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples". In Gannon, Michael (Ed.). The New History of Florida, pp. 183–206. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1415-8.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Seminole

• Seminole Nation of Oklahoma official website
• Seminole Tribe of Florida official site
• Seminole Clothing Patchwork
• The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida official site
• Hitchiti-Mikasuki Creation Story
• Annual Seminole Nation Days Celebration
• Aponke Resources for the study of Hitchiti and Mikasuki
• History of the Seminole People of Florida by Patricia R. Wickman, Ph.D.
• Seminole Portraits Hand colored lithographs of some of the major Seminole leaders of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842). From the State Library & Archives of Florida.
• Seminole Doll Making Seminole doll maker Mary B. Billie. Interview in Seminole and English with photos. From the State Library & Archives of Florida.
• Alligator Dance Audio of Seminole elder Billy Bowlegs III performing traditional dance and song in 1954. (Track 16 of CD.) From the State Library & Archives of Florida.
• Seminole history from the Florida Department of State
• John Horse and the Black Seminoles, First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery
• The Seminole Indians of Florida, by Clay MacCauley, 1884, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, from Project Gutenberg

The Black Seminoles is a term used by modern historians for the descendants of free blacks and some runaway slaves (maroons), mostly Gullahs who escaped from coastal South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations into the Spanish Florida wilderness beginning as early as the late 17th century. By the early 19th century, they had often formed communities near the Seminole Indians.^[1][2]

Together, the two groups formed 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 (Black People), by their Indian allies. Modern Black Seminoles are known as "Seminole Freedmen" in Oklahoma, "Black Indians" in the Bahamas, and Mascogos in Mexico. The Black Seminole Scouts served in the United States Army during the 19th century.

Origins[link]

The Spanish strategy for defending their claim of Florida at first was based on organizing the indigenous people into a mission system. The mission Native Americans were to serve as militia to protect the colony from English incursions from the north. But a combination of raids by South Carolina colonists and new European infectious diseases, to which they did not have immunity, decimated Florida's native population. After the local Native Americans had all but died out, Spanish authorities encouraged renegade Native Americans and runaway slaves from England's southern 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 King Charles II of 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 first legally sanctioned free black town in North America.^[3]

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 Gullah, they had preserved much of their African language in an Afro-English based Creole, along with cultural practices and African leadership structure. The Gullah pioneers built their own settlements based on rice and corn agriculture. They were allies to Indians escaping into Florida at the same time.

In 1763 the British took over rule in Florida, in an exchange of territory with the Spanish west of the Mississippi, of former French lands. The area was still considered a sanctuary for fugitive slaves, as it was lightly settled, and many sought refuge near growing American Indian settlements.

Florida had been a refuge for runaway slaves for at least 70 years by the time of the American Revolution. Communities of Black Seminoles were established on the outskirts of major Seminole towns.^[4] A new influx of freedom-seeking blacks reached Florida during the American Revolution (1775–83). Several thousand American slaves agreed to fight for the British in exchange for liberty and were called black Loyalists. Those who chose freedom and resettlement were evacuated by the British along with their own troops from southern cities such as Charleston, as well as New York, and transported to the Caribbean, New Brunswick and England. (Florida was under British control throughout the conflict.) During the Revolution, Seminole Indians also allied with the British, and Africans and Seminole came into increased contact with each other.

In addition, members of both communities sided with the British against the US during the War of 1812, solidifying ties and earning the enmity of the war's American General Andrew Jackson.^[5]

When Africans and the Seminole first started to interact, the Native Americans of various tribes were also recent migrants to Florida. Spain gave 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.^[6]

By the time the American naturalist William Bartram visited the area in 1773, the Seminole had their own tribal name, derived from cimarron, the Spanish word for runaway, which connoted the tribe's breakaway status from the Creek. Cimarron was also the source of the English word maroon, used to describe the runaway slave communities of Florida, the Great Dismal Swamp maroons in today's North Carolina and Virginia, the Caribbean, and other parts of the New World.^[7]

Culture[link]

Abraham, a Black Seminole leader, from N. Orr's engraving in The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War (1848) by John T. Sprague.

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

Initially living apart from the Native Americans, the maroons developed their own unique African-American culture. Black Seminoles inclined toward a syncretic form of Christianity developed during 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 black towns, reflected African heritage.^{[citation needed]}

As time progressed, the Seminole and Blacks had some intermarriage, but historians and anthropologists believe that generally the Black Seminoles had separate communities and were allied with the Seminole at war.^[2] The Seminole known as King Phillip married a Black Seminole and had a mixed-race child with her.^[8] The Southeast Indians generally had matrilineal systems, in which children belonged to the mother's clan, so while the children might integrate customs from both cultures, they were considered to belong to the mother's group more than the father's. The Seminole would have considered children of Black Seminoles to belong to the mother's people.

African-Seminole relations[link]

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.

Typically, many or most members of the Black Seminole communities were not identified as slaves of individual Native American chiefs. 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.

^[9]

An 1822 census estimated that 800 blacks were living with the Seminoles, constituting by far the largest maroon community in North American history. The Black Seminole settlements were overall 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 flourishing Black Seminole settlements in the 1820s, to describe the African Americans as "vassals and allies" of the Seminole.^{[citation needed]}

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 inherited from the plantations. In general, the blacks never wholly adopted Seminole culture and beliefs, nor were they accepted into Native American society. Though later generations of Seminole descended from white and Indian mixtures would not consider the black members of their society to be "Seminole", culturally the mixed Black Seminoles were all but entirely absorbed into the native population.^[8] The later refusal of the Seminole to accept Black Seminoles as part of the tribe, despite proven DNA links since the late 20th century, is likely due to their adopting the racial divisions of American Florida, once the region was absorbed into the Antebellum South.^{[citation needed]}

Most of the blacks spoke Gullah, an Afro-English-based creole language, so they often could communicate better with Anglo-Americans, if necessary, than the Seminole, many of whom spoke mostly Mikasuki and Creek, Muskogean languages. Together in Florida they developed Afro-Seminole Creole, identified as a distinct language in 1978 by the linguist Ian Hancock, who found that Black Seminole and Seminole elders still spoke it in some locations.^[2]

Blacks in the Seminole Wars[link]

From the time of the Revolution, the existence of armed black communities in Florida was a major concern for American slave owners. Slaveholders sought the 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.^[10] General Andrew Jackson wanted to disrupt Florida's maroon communities in 1816 and attacked the Negro Fort, which had become a Black Seminole stronghold after the British left Florida. Breaking up the maroon communities was one of Jackson's major objectives in the subsequent First Seminole War (1817–18).^[11]

The Second Seminole War (1835–42) marked the height of tension between the U.S. and the Black Seminoles and also the historical peak of the African-Seminole alliance. Under the policy of Indian removal, the US wanted to relocate to the western Indian Territory Florida's 4,000 Seminole people and a portion of their 800 Black Seminole allies. During the year before the war, prominent white citizens claimed at least 100 Black Seminoles as runaway slaves.

Fearing the attempt to re-enslave the 100, and anticipating attempts to re-enslave more members of their community, Black Seminoles opposed relocation. In councils before the war, they threw their support behind the most militant Seminole faction, led by Osceola. After war broke out, individual black leaders, such as John Caesar, Abraham, and John Horse played key roles.^[12] In addition to aiding the Indians in their fight, Black Seminoles recruited 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. Historians do not agree on whether these events should be considered a separate slave rebellion; generally they view the attacks on the sugar plantations as part of the Seminole War.^[13]

By 1838, U.S. General Thomas Sydney Jesup tried to divide the black and Seminole warriors by offering promises of freedom to the blacks if they surrendered and agreed to removal to Indian Territory. John Horse was among the black warriors who surrendered under this condition.^[14] Due to Seminole opposition, however, the Army did not fully follow through on its offer. The status of Black Seminoles and fugitive slaves was largely still unsettled after they reached Indian Territory. The issue was compounded by the government initially putting the Seminole and blacks under the authority of the Creek Nation, which was slaveholding.^[6] They tried to re-enslave some of the fugitive black slaves.

Black Seminoles in the West[link]

After 1838, more than 500 Black Seminoles walked with the Seminoles thousands of miles to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Because of harsh conditions, many of both peoples died along this trail from Florida to Oklahoma, also known as The Trail of Tears.

Despite U.S. Army promises of freedom, however, in the west the Black Seminoles were still threatened by slave raiders. These included pro-slavery members of the Creek tribe and some former Seminole allies, whose allegiance to the blacks diminished after defeat by the US in 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 them.^[15] This left hundreds of Seminoles and Black Seminoles unable to leave the settlement or to defend themselves against slavers.

Facing enslavement, a Black Seminole leader named John Horse and about 100 Black Seminoles staged a mass escape in 1849 to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished twenty years earlier. 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.^[16]

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 defend themselves.^[17]

Throughout the period, several hundred Black Seminoles remained in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Because most of the Seminole supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War, the US required a new peace treaty with them and the other of the Five Civilized Tribes. The US required the emancipation of slaves and extension to them of full citizenship rights in the tribes. In Oklahoma, Black Seminoles became known as Seminole Freedmen, although most had not been living as slaves before the war. 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 the capital of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.

In 1870, the U.S. Army invited Black Seminoles to return from Mexico to serve as army scouts for the United States. 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 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, and scouts and family members were buried in its cemetery. The town remains the spiritual center of the Texas-based Black Seminoles.^[18]

The black Seminole community in Nacimiento, Coahuila, inhabits lands adjacent to the Kickapoo tribe. Descendants of another Black Seminole community reside half a continent away on Andros Island in the Bahamas. Refugees from 19th-century Florida wars went there to the British-held islands to find sanctuary from American enslavement. By that time Great Britain had abolished slavery.^[19]

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 registered tribes, either the Seminole Tribe of Florida or the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida.

Seminole Freedmen exclusion controversy[link]

In the 1990s and early 2000s (decade), 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. Black Seminoles believed that due to their ancestral descent from the tribe, they should be included in services provided by a $56 million federal settlement, a judgment trust, awarded to the Seminole Nation because of land taken from them by the United States at their removal from Florida. As the judgment trust was based on the tribe as it existed in 1823, when Black Seminoles did not have citizenship rights, as decreed by American racial ideology, the Seminole Freedmen were excluded from the benefits. Many Black Seminoles held and farmed land in the area, and equally suffered property losses.

In another aspect of the dispute over citizenship, in 2000 the Seminole Nation voted to exclude as members any Seminole Freedmen who did not have an Indian ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls, the registry established in the early 20th century. At the time, registrars listed Black Seminoles as Freedmen, regardless of their proportion of Indian ancestry. This excluded some Black Seminoles from being listed on the Indian-Seminole list, although they qualified by ancestry. In addition, because the Dawes Rolls included many Intermarried Whites who lived on Indian lands, but did not include blacks, the Seminole Freedmen believed it was a racially based decision and opposed it. Although the Seminole Freedmen brought suit against the nation, they did not succeed in the courts.^[20]

The dispute developed after Seminole Indians voted to exclude any Seminole Freedmen of partial African descent 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, as the latter has status as a sovereign nation.^[21]

Later that year, the Bureau of Indian Affairs held that the exclusion of Black Seminoles constituted a violation of the Seminole Nation's 1866 treaty with the United States, as the treaty was made with a tribe that included black as well as white and brown members. The BIA rescinded all federal funding for services and programs, prompting the tribe to reverse its decision. In 2004 the Nation voted to include the Freedmen in the tribe for voting in all elections and sharing in allotments and settlements.^[22]

See also[link]

• List of topics related to Black and African people
• Cherokee Freedmen
• Zambo
• Cafuzo
• Garifuna
• Ian Hancock
• Afro-Seminole Creole
• Black Indians in the United States
• Cimarron people (Panama)
• Gullah
• Gullah language
• Maroon (people)
• Native Americans in the United States
• Native American tribe
• One-Drop Rule
• Edward Otho Cresap Ord, II, a white officer who led the Army Black Seminoles from 1882 to 1890.
• Black Seminole Scouts

Endnotes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, the First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery
• Story of Freedman Caesar Bruner
• Seminole and Black Seminole genealogical records
• Wired 13.09 Blood Feud: article from August 2005 Wired magazine on DNA, ethnicity, and Black Seminoles

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