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The black Seminole culture that took shape after 1800 was a dynamic mixture of African, Native American, Spanish, and slave traditions. Adopting certain practices of the Native Americans, maroons wore Seminole clothing and ate the same foodstuffs prepared the same way: they gathered the roots of a native plant called coontie, grinding, soaking, and straining them to make a starchy flour ...
After the forced relocation of the Seminoles and Black Seminoles from Florida to Indian Territory, a group led by Seminole sub-chief Wild Cat and Black Seminole chief John Horse moved to northern Mexico. [2] The group settled at El Nacimiento in 1852. [3] They worked for the Mexican government to protect against Indian raids.
The Black Seminole Scouts were disbanded twenty-one years later in 1914 and most were forced to leave the Fort Clark reservation with their families. Just twenty-seven Black Seminoles were allowed to remain at the fort but only until the elders of the group had departed. The official report of the disbandment reads as follows:
In 2000 the Seminole chief moved to formally exclude Black Seminoles unless they could prove descent from a Native American ancestor on the Dawes Rolls. 2,000 Black Seminoles were excluded from the nation. [55] Descendants of Freedmen and Black Seminoles are working to secure their rights.
After acquisition by the U.S. of Florida in 1821, many American slaves and Black Seminoles frequently escaped from Cape Florida to the British colony of the Bahamas, settling mostly on Andros Island. Contemporary accounts noted a group of 120 migrating in 1821, and a much larger group of 300 enslaved African Americans escaping in 1823.
John Horse, Black Seminole leader. John Horse (c. 1812–1882), [1] also known as Juan Caballo, Juan Cavallo, John Cowaya (with spelling variations) and Gopher John, [2] was a man of mixed African and Seminole ancestry who fought alongside the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War in Florida.
The term Freedmen refers to descendants of people of African American descent who were enslaved by the Five Civilized Tribes. [1] [2] (They often overlap with those who are descended from those enslaved African descendants who voluntarily joined the Seminole nation, including those who fled from the Seminole Nation, when it adopted the practice of slavery, to Mexico, today known as Mascogos.
The Blacks who stayed with or later joined the Seminoles became integrated into the tribes, learning the languages, adopting the dress, and inter-marrying. The blacks knew how to farm and served as interpreters between the Seminole and the whites. Some of the Black Seminoles, as they were called, became important tribal leaders. [23]