Black Seminoles

Black Seminoles were a group of free blacks and runaway slaves (maroons) that joined forces with the Seminole Indians in Florida from approximately 1700 through the 1850s. The Black Seminoles were celebrated for their bravery and tenacity during the three Seminole Wars.

The Native Seminoles living in Florida were not one tribe but many. They spoke a variety of Muskogean languages and formed an alliance to prevent European settlers from expanding into their homelands.

The word they used to describe themselves, Seminole, derived from a Greek word meaning “separatist “or “runaway”. Because slavery had been abolished in 1693 in Spanish Florida, that territory became a safe haven for runaway slaves.

Most Black Seminoles lived separately from the Indians in their own villages, although the two groups intermarried to some extent and some black Seminoles adopted Indian customs.

Both groups wore similar dress, ate similar foods, lived in similar houses, worked the land communally and shared the harvest.

The Black Seminoles, however, practiced a religion that was a blend of African and Christian rituals to which traditional Seminole Indian dances were added and their language was an English Creole similar to Gullah and sometimes called Afro-Seminole Creole.

In 1830 the federal government enacted the Indian Removal Act, which stated the government’s intent to move the Seminoles from the southwest portion of the United States to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

That event led to renewed conflict. When slavery finally ended in the United States, Black Seminoles were tempted to leave Mexico. In 1870 the U.S. government offered them money and land to return to the U.S. and work as scouts for the army.

Many did return and serve as scouts, but the government never made good on its promise of land. Small communities of descendants of the Black Seminoles continue to live in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico.