Prelude: The North American Southeast
Spaniards were the first Europeans to colonize the Americas and Florida in the 1500s.
The original colony of Spanish Florida also included parts of Georgia, the Carolinas, Mississippi, and Alabama.
By the 1600s, the Spaniards had expanded their empire across the Atlantic and around Africa, and Asia.
Having spread themselves out to thin, they now lacked the resources to protect all of Florida's territory.
Spain lost control of the Carolinas in 1633 and the Georgia Colony in 1670 to the English.
Slavery in European Colonies and Native Nations
Slavery was a common practice among the Native Nations throughout North and South America.
However, around 1500, the Spanish began the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to replace the depleting Native slave population, due to the introduction of new diseases and other factors, with the hardier and more experienced African slaves.
The transatlantic slave trade evolved from various forms of slavery, including indigenous African practices, which were often less dehumanizing and allowed for some rights. The Spanish transatlantic slave trade evolved to establish a system of chattel slavery. This is a system where enslaved individuals are treated as property with no rights, and their status as a slave was also inherited by their children. This form of slavery dehumanizes individuals, reducing them to commodities.
Evolution of Slavery Practices:
Before Spanish contact, many African and American societies practiced forms of slavery, similar to most ancient forms of slavery, that were often more flexible.
Enslaved individuals could sometimes gain rights or even freedom and their slave status was not necessarily hereditary.
With the rise of the Spanish transatlantic slave trade from the 1500s to the 1800s, slavery transformed into a more brutal and industrialized system.
European powers soon established a triangular trade route, forcibly transporting millions of Africans to the Americas for agricultural labor.
This marked a significant shift to chattel slavery, where enslaved individuals were treated as property.
This shift led to even more severe dehumanization and exploitation of enslaved individuals, fundamentally altering the nature of slavery.
Chattel slavery that flourished in Spanish colonies was continued by the British and French colonies.
Spanish African slaves in the Americas and islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from Spanish slavery and lived in independent settlements, were referred to as Cimarrónes meaning "wild" or "unruly" in Spanish and later "Maroons" by the English. Cuban philologist José Juan Arrom has traced the origins of the word further back than the Spanish cimarrón, as it was used first by the Taíno people to refer to feral cattle, as it was derived from the Arawakan root word simarabo meaning "fugitive". Only later did it refer to Indian slaves who escaped to the hills, and by the early 1530s to African slaves who did the same.
As early as 1512, African slaves escaped from Spanish captors in the New World.
Most of them were slaves who ran away directly after they got off the ships.
They refused to surrender their freedom and often tried to find ways to go back to Africa.
Some were slaves who had been working on plantations for a while
Those slaves were usually somewhat adjusted to the slave system but had been abused by the plantation owners – often with excessive brutality.
Others ran away when they were being sold suddenly to a new owner.
Some were skilled slaves with particularly strong opposition to the slave system.
They either joined Indigenous peoples or eked out a living on their own.
Those that banded together were called "Maroons".
The earliest Maroon communities of the Americas formed in what is now the Dominican Republic, following the first slave rebellion on 26 December 1522, on the sugar plantations of Admiral Diego Columbus.
Maroon settlements often created unique cultures, separate from greater society.
Communities sometimes developed Creole languages by mixing European or other local tongues with their own African languages.
Maroons would also function as trading partners with remote settlers or Natives.
Sometimes Maroons mixed with Indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as peoples like the Garifuna and the Mascogos.
Marronage ("running away") and the establishment of Maroon communities were a threat to Spanish, French, British, and other European plantation societies. Maroon communities faced great odds in surviving the attacks by hostile colonists, obtaining food for subsistence living, as well as reproducing and increasing their numbers. Only on some of the larger islands were organised Maroon communities able to thrive by growing crops and hunting. Here, they grew in number as more slaves escaped from plantations and joined their bands. Seeking to separate themselves from colonisers, the Maroons gained in power amid increasing hostilities. They raided and pillaged plantations and harassed planters until the planters began to fear a massive revolt of the black slaves. It was difficult for colonial authorities to eradicate Maroon communities, because they were often hidden in remote environments. Maroons also frequently utilized guerrilla warfare to defend their settlements. This created a constant state of conflict with authorities, where Maroons would sometimes be used as allies by enemies attacking a colony. In the early 1570s, Sir Francis Drake's raids on the Spanish in Panama were aided by "Symerons", a likely misspelling of cimarrónes.
Punishments for recaptured Maroons were severe, like removing the Achilles tendon, amputating a leg, castration, and even being roasted to death.
Maroon communities had to be inaccessible and located in inhospitable environments to be sustainable.
For example, Maroon communities were established in remote swamps in the southern United States.
Maroon communities turned the severity of their environments to their advantage to hide and defend their communities.
Disguised pathways, false trails, booby traps, underwater paths, and natural features were all used to conceal Maroon villages.
Maroons utilised exemplary guerrilla warfare skills to fight their European enemies. European troops used strict and established strategies while Maroons attacked and retracted quickly, used ambush tactics, and fought when and where they wanted to. Even though colonial governments were in a state of conflict with the Maroon communities, individuals in the colonial system traded goods and services with them. Maroons also traded with isolated white settlers and Native American communities. Maroon communities played groups off of one another. At the same time, Maroon communities were also used as pawns when colonial powers clashed. Secrecy and loyalty of members were crucial to the survival of Maroon communities. To ensure this loyalty, Maroon communities used severe methods to protect against desertion and spies. New members were brought to communities by way of detours so they could not find their way back and served probationary periods, often as slaves. Crimes such as desertion (leaving the community) and adultery were punishable by death.
There is much variety among Maroon cultural groups because of differences in history, geography, African nationality, and the culture of Indigenous people throughout the Western Hemisphere. Outside of the plantation system, Maroons were also freer to share, retain, and adapt various African, European, and Indigenous traditions and cultures, resulting in diverse Maroon identities.
Maroons sustained themselves by growing vegetables and hunting. Their survival depended upon their cultures and their military abilities, using guerrilla tactics and heavily fortified dwellings involving traps and diversions. They also originally raided plantations. During these attacks, the Maroons would burn crops, steal livestock and tools, kill slave masters, and invite other slaves to join their communities. Individual groups of Maroons often allied themselves with the local Indigenous tribes and occasionally assimilated into these populations.
The first legally documented slave owner in the British colonies was an African man named Anthony Johnson.
In 1621, Anthony Johnson, originally from Angola, was brought to the British colony of Virginia as an indentured servant.
This was a common practice at the time, where individuals worked for a specified number of years in exchange for their paid passage to America.
He worked on a tobacco plantation and, like some early British slaves, earned his freedom after several years.
By the mid-1650s, he had become a successful landowner and farmer.
He soon purchased his own slaves, including John Casor.
The Case of John Casor
John Casor was an African man, now known for being the first individual recorded as a chattel slave in the British colonies of North America.
John Casor arrived in Virginia in the early 1600s, likely as an indentured servant.
In 1654, after his term ended, Casor sought to claim his freedom.
However, Anthony Johnson argued that Casor was his property and should remain permanently enslaved.
The case was brought before the British courts in Virginia.
The court ruled in favor of Johnson, establishing an unprecidented legal ruling that recognized Casor as a slave for life.
This decision was significant as it highlighted the transition from indentured servitude to lifelong slavery for slaves in America.
It also marked the first judicial determination in the Colonies that a person could be held in servitude for life, without having committed a crime.
While there were indentured slaves or servants from many ethnicities, Casor's case is often cited as a pivotal moment in the development of racialized slavery in the United States.
This is considered ironic, since master and slave both belonged to the same "race".
Johnson's case set a precedent for the legal status of slavery in Virginia.
It soon led to the formal establishment of slave laws in 1661, which later codified the status of Africans as lifelong slaves.
Today Anthony Johnson of Angola, Africa is recognized as the first slave owner in what would become the United States.
His and John Casor's story reflects the transition from indentured servitude to a system of racialized slavery that would dominate the American South.
Under the European South's adoption of the principle of partus sequitur ventrem in the 1600s, and incorporated into slavery law in slave states, children of slave mothers were considered legally slaves. Later, under the U.S. Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, even if the mother escaped to a free state, she and her children were legally considered slaves and fugitives. As a result, the Maroons born to slave mothers were always at risk from kidnapping by slave raiders.
The Gullah Peoples
As early as 1686, free and enslaved African people, known as the Gullah culture, from the rice plantations of the British Carolinas, Georgia, and the Sea Islands, fled British plantations on the Underground Railroad, finding refuge and alliances in Spanish Florida.
Under a 1693 edict from King Charles II of Spain, the Gullah could receive liberty in exchange for defending the Spanish settlers at St. Augustine against the British.
The Spanish organized the Gullah volunteers into a militia.
Their settlement at Fort Mosé, founded later in 1738, was the first legally sanctioned free Negro town in North America.
1700s - The Formation of The Seminoles
[Creek and Later Seminole Territories]
By 1700, many of the Timucua had already died from exposure to Eurasian infectious diseases, to which they had no immunity, while others died from warfare with both the Spanish slavers and colonizers.
The British allied with tribes, including: the Creek, Catawba, and Yuchi, who killed and enslaved the Spanish allied Timucua.
The British had been more successful in establishing a permanent presence in North America than either the Spanish or the French.
They had greater self-sufficiency by reason of their larger numbers.
Another reason for the British success was because they brought in cheap manufactured goods such as utensils and tools, rum, and guns.
In exchange for these goods, the British took deer skins and slaves.
This trade eventually made the southeastern tribes dependent on the British for tools, cloth, and ammunition, as they lost their land to an encroaching agricultural economy.
The British traders in Charleston, South Carolina gave guns to the Northern tribes in order for them to launch their slave raids on the Timucua.
When the Creek and other British allied tribes from the Georgia area began to invade Florida, the population of the Timucua tribe had already been reduced to an estimated 1,000.
These incursions by British mercenary tribes, during the late 1600s and early 1700s, further reduced the few remaining Timucua.
The rival European nations used their native allies to fight their colonial wars.
All of the Florida Natives began to suffer from the invasion of the
tribes from the North.
These northern Natives were most likely portions of the Creek Confederacy, that later became known as the Seminoles.
This was accentuated after the break-up of the
Apalachee tribe,
in 1704, by the expedition under Moore.
Raids by the Native slavers destroyed the string of Spanish missions across northern Florida.
The majority of the remaining Timucua were then concentrated into missions along the Camino Real and and near St. Augustine
However, this did not secure immunity against further attacks by the English Indian allies.
The "savage" Native mercenaries of the British, destroyed the remaining Spanish mission system.
These raids by the Creek and other northern tribes were particularly successful against the Florida mission Indians, because they had lost any ability to defend theselves.
Hundreds of people were killed or carried off into slavery by the invading tribes.
The surviving remnant took refuge close to the walls of St. Augustine.
However, with the decline of the Spanish power in North America, and the imigration of the Creeks, the native Timucua and colonizing Spanish populations rapidly declined.
This opened the way for the creation of a new group of Native Americans who eventualy prevailed in Florida and came to be known as the Seminoles.
[Creek and Later Seminole Territories]
In the early 1700s, as the Indigenous tribes of Florida were being killed off by war and disease, tribes from the Georgia area began migrating south to the land of Florida.
In 1711, the Catholic Bishop in Havana had received word that British backed Natives from North Florida were destroying South Florida villages and selling the Natives as slaves.
He sent two ships, under Captain Luis Perdomo, to rescue their ally tribes of the Keys.
Captain Perdomo was only able to rescue 270 of the Natives, but said he would have brought back more than 2,000 had he had the vessels.
Of the 270 refugees, 200 died of European diseases in Cuba and 18 returned to Florida.
By 1728, the single town which seems to have contained most of the surviving Timucua had only 15 men and 20 women.
Soon, the tribe disappears entirely, though, it is probable that some had eventually moved and made their homes with other tribes.
Many of the few Timucua who managed to survive were enslaved by the invading tribes.
These native slaves and other remnants who did not flee with the Spanish, likely assimilated into this newly forming tribe in Florida.
By the early 1700s, much of La Florida was uninhabited apart from the Spanish colonial towns at St. Augustine and Pensacola.
A stream of mainly Muscogee Creek from the British Georgia Colony began moving into the territory, mainly in the Florida panhandle.
The new arrivals moved into virtually uninhabited Florida lands that had once been peopled by several indigenous cultures, such as the Apalachee, Timucua, Calusa and others.
Over time the Creek (Muscogee) were joined by other remnant groups of Southeast American Native Americans, such as the Miccosukee, Choctaw, and the Apalachicola, and formed communities.
Other Native American tribes, the Yuchis and Yamasees, merged with the Muscogee after the Yamasee War in South Carolina.
Spain had already given land to some Muscogee (Creek) Native Americans.
Their community evolved over the late 1700s and 1800s, as waves of Creek left present-day Georgia and Alabama after the Creek Wars.
These different groups merged together to form a new people, called the Seminoles, by a process known as ethnogenesis.
The Yuchi did not speak a Muskogean language (the Mikasuki language is Muskogean), but they did share the culture of the Muscogee people (called "Creeks" by the English).
They had already belonged to the Muscogee Creek Confederacy before moving to Florida.
More arrived in the second half of 1700s, as the Lower Creeks, part of the Muscogee people, such as Chief Billy Emathla fled from several of their towns into Florida to evade the dominance of the Upper Creeks and pressure from encroaching colonists from the Province of Carolina.
In 1818, chief Billy Emathla was identified as the chief of a Yuchi town of about 75 people associated with Mikasuki villages east of Tallahassee.
They spoke primarily Hitchiti, of which Mikasuki is a dialect.
This is the primary traditional language spoken today by the Miccosukee in Florida.
Joining them were several bands of Choctaw, many of whom were already living in western Florida.
Some Chickasaw had also left Georgia due to conflicts with colonists and their Native American allies.
As these various new arrivals established themselves in northern and peninsular Florida throughout the 1700s, they intermingled with each other and with the few remaining Indigenous people.
In a process knwon as ethnogenesis, they constructed a new culture which they called "Seminole".
The Seminole were a heterogeneous (made of different elements) tribe made up of mostly Lower Creeks from Georgia.
The invading groups were mainly composed of the tribes who lived north of Florida, including:
The Maskókî [Muscogee] people (erroneously called Creeks by the English),
the
Hitchiti, and
and Mikasuki speakers.
There were also some non-Creek peoples:
the Yamasee
and the Yuchi.
These groups, along with the remnants of the Florida tribes, began to merge to form what became the new Seminole Tribe.
These incoming tribal settlers joined with the few survivors of Florida's original communities (the Timucua, Tequesta, etc.) in the interior of south Florida. While some scholars have thought that the Calusa of Southwest Florida were also integrated into the Seminole tribes, there is no documentation to support that theory.
Also included amongst the Seminoles were some European settlers, free Negros, and runaway slaves who fled British and French Territories and came to the now mostly vacant and undefended Spanish Territory of Florida.
It is believed that the Seminoles were named by the Creeks, but the derivation of the word Seminole is uncertain:
William C. Sturtevant claims the ethnonym was borrowed by the Muskogee from the Spanish word Cimarrón, which could also mean wild or unruly.
It is supposedly also the source of the English word "maroon".
This word was used to describe the runaway slave communities of Florida, the Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina, the colonial islands of the Caribbean, and other parts of the New World.
It was used to distinguish them from the Christianized natives who had lived in the mission villages of Spanish Florida.
Some of the Hitchiti or Mikasukee speakers who had settled in Florida, are said to have identified themselves to the British as "cimallon" (Muskogean languages have no "r" sound, replacing it with "l") in order to distinguish themselves from the primarily Muskogee speakers of the Upper Towns of the Muscogee (or Creek) Confederacy.
One theory proposes that the British wrote the name as "Semallone", and later switched to "Seminole".
But linguist Leo Spitzer, writing in the journal Language, says, "If there is a connection between Eng. maroon, Fr. marron, and Sp. cimarron, Spain (or Spanish America) probably gave the word directly to England (or English America)."
The name is a possibly a corruption of the Creek ishti semoli, which means 'wild men', an epithet applied to the people living in the untamed lands of Florida by the Creeks.
However, another, more likely, belief is that the Natives who constituted the nucleus of this Florida group refered to themselves as yat'siminoli meaning "frontiersman", "runaway", "separatist", or "free people," because for centuries their ancestors had resisted the attempts of the Spaniards to conquer and convert them, as well as the attempts of the British to take their lands and use them as military allies.
In 1773, when the American naturalist William Bartram visited the area of Florida, he referred to the Seminole as a distinct people.
He believed their name was derived from the Mvskoke' (a Creek language) word "simanó-li", which according to John Reed Swanton, "is applied by the Creeks to people who remove from populous towns and live by themselves."
After 1763, when they took over Florida from the Spanish, the British called all natives living in Florida "Seminoles", "Creeks", or "Seminole-Creeks".
In St. Augustine, not all Gullah found exchanging enslavement for military enlistment to be a good trade, so they sought refuge in wilderness areas in northern Florida, where their knowledge of agriculture, along with their resistance to diseases served them well.
The Gullah pioneers built their own settlements along Florida rivers, based on rice and corn agriculture.
They became allies of Creek and other native tribes who were also migrating into Florida from the Southeast at the same time.
The Seminoles referred to the Negro slaves, mostlyt the Gullah, who came to Florida and settled near their villages, as "Seminole Maroons" or in some cases "Seminole Freedmen".
However, these same people were later refered to by Europeans as "Black Seminoles", since the term "Black" (derived from a word meaning "burnt" and often associated with impurity or evil) had been an English perjurative or slur for the Negro (a term derived from a Latin word simply meaning "dark colored") peoples.
Over time, they became more commonly known as the Black Seminoles.
They were often segregated from or enslaved by the Native peoples, but some merged with and married into the tribes.
While these Black Seminoles were mostly blood descendants of free Negros, and escaped slaves that fled French and British Territories, but were usually considered to be part of the larger Seminole tribe, especially during battles against their common European enemies.
Relations between Seminoles Marrons and the Seminole tribes were complex, as they often faced exclusion from full tribal membership, even though some of them also had Seminole lineage.
Some view them as a distinct ethnic group, but specific percentages of African ancestry within the Seminole population are not clearly documented.
Historically, the Seminole Maroons lived mostly in distinct bands near the Seminoles. However, some were still held as slaves, particularly by Seminole leaders.
Seminoles continued to practice slavery in Florida.
However, it was based on less harsh slavery practices, not on the chattel slavery model that was by then then common in their previous Creek Culture and the American south.
Slaves fleeing from their Colonial masters to Florida, often traded one master for another, as many became slaves of Seminoles.
It is claimed that the Seminole slaves had more freedom than did slaves held by African and Europeans slave owners in the British and French Territories, as well as those of other Native American tribes.
However, it was less severe and more like Medieval feudal dependency and taxation, since Maroons among the Seminole generally lived in their own communities.
Unlike others, Seminole slaves had the right to bear arms.
This is likely due to the need of additional military might against their shared enemies.
General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, who visited several flourishing Seminole Marron settlements in the 1800s, described the Maroons as "vassals and allies" of the Seminole.
Nero, Garçon, Cyrus, and Prince were Seminole Marron warriors and chiefs who sat in counsel with the Seminoles.
The Maroons and Seminole led military operations together against the Georgia militia and U.S. forces.
Abraham, a Maroon, whose Seminole name was Souanaffe Tustenukke, was the “hoponaya,” or English translator for the Seminole council.
Maroons were forced to pay an annual tribute of livestock and crops, as well as participate in hunting parties and military service. Seminoles, in turn, acquired an important strategic labor and military force in a sparsely populated region. Maroon villages could elect their own leaders and retain some of there wealth in cattle and crops. 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.
Seminole Culture
Seminole culture is largely derived from that of the Creek, which was the dominant tribe composing this new blending culture.
Due to the arrival of other cultures, including people from several tribal nations, Negros (mostly Gullah), and even some Europeans, the Seminoles became increasingly independent of other Creek groups and established their own identity.
As the Seminoles adapted to Florida environs, they also began to developed local traditions, such as the construction of open-air, thatched-roof houses known as chickees.
Historically the Seminoles spoke Mikasuki and Creek, both Muskogean languages.
Initially living apart from the Native Americans, the Maroons developed their own unique African-American culture, based in the Gullah culture of the Lowcountry. The Black Seminole culture that took shape after 1800 was a blending of African, Native American, Spanish, and slave traditions. They adopted certain practices of the Native Americans, such as wearing Seminole clothing and moccasins, but retained a form of Christianity, as they were banned from participating in the Seminole religious rites.
The Muskogean language group includes: Creek, Choctaw, Mikasuki, and Chickasaw, among others.
The unified Seminole spoke two Muskogean languages: Muscogee (Creek) and Mikasuki (a dialect of Hitchiti).
Creek, being the dominant, became the language for political and social discourse, so Mikasuki speakers had to learn it to participate in high-level negotiations.
Since the 1970s, most members of the Seminole Tribe are bilingual, speaking the Mikasuki language (also spoken by the Miccosukee Tribe) and English.
However, some Florida Seminole communities, notably those on the Brighton Reservation, still speak the Florida Seminole Creek dialect of the Mvskoke language.
Today, English is the predominant language among both Oklahoma and Florida Seminoles, particularly the younger generations.
Muscogee is still spoken by some of the Oklahoma Seminoles.
The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is working to revive the use of Creek among its people, as it had been the dominant language of politics and social discourse.
The youngest native Muscogee speaker was born in 1960.
The nomenclature of Florida, and particularly Lake County, has been enriched by the various tribes of early Americans who populated the state.
While the many languages have many similarities, most of the native place names in today's Florida come from the Creek and Hitchiti languages.
The oldest name recorded is that of Apopka, a derivation of A-ha-pop-ka and Ahapopka meaning "potato-eating place".
In 1823, a Seminole village near the head of the Oklawaha River was called Ahapopoka.
A large lake, in modern Lake and Orange counties, was shown on earlier maps as Lake Ahapopka, but was later changed to Apopka.
Astatula is a combination of the Creek "isti," meaning "people", and the Timucuan "atula," meaning arrow. Thus Isti-atula could mean something like "arrow people".
The town of Astatula is at the southeastern end of Lake Harris, which was originally called Lake Astatula.
Lake Miomi, in Sumter County, is believed to be a corruption of the Seminole wyoma, which means "bitter water" or "whiskey".
Pilocklakaha, later known as Palatlakaha, is the name of an over ten-mile long stream that originates from Lake Louisa and flows through the Clermont and Groveland "Chain-of-Lakes" and leading into the southwest side of Lake Harris.
The name contains the Creek words oopilwa, meaning "swamp or hammock", laco, meaning "big" and lakaha, meaning "speckled or spotty".
Thus this derivation of "oopilwa-laco-lakaha" would aptly mean "big speckled swamp".
Palatlakaha was also the name of a forgotten Seminole village in the west-central part of Sumter County.
Yalaha is the Creek word for "orange".
Today a lake in Sumter County and a town north of Mascotte bear the name of Okahumpka. Okahumpka was an important place to the tribes. The name is believed to be a combination of the Hitchiti oki meaning "water", and the Creek hamken meaning "one". Okahumpka could be easily translaed as: "single lake". Alternate spellings were: Okahumky and Okahumkee. It was also the name of a tribal town of importance in Sumter (now Lake) County. Chief Mico-an-opa (Micanopy) lived there during the Seminole Wars.
A magnificent spring on the northern edge of Okahumpka holds a unique place in Florida history. The spring is quite remarkable and the grounds surrounding it hold great historical significance. According to the St. Johns River Water Management District, Bugg Spring is a second magnitude spring that is 170-175 feet deep. Clear and cold, the water has been a focal point of life in the area for many years. The waters from the spring flow north into both Lake Denham and Lake Harris. The archaeologist Clarence B. Moore investigated, and thus destroyed, the Native American mounds at Bugg Spring, which showed evidence that Native Americans had used the spring for thousands of years. Although the exact site is debated, the spring is one of the sites of the Seminole Indian town of Okahumpka. This important town was the scene of much planning during the days leading up to the Second Seminole War and warriors from here, along with those from Tuscanooga, took part in Dade's Battle in nearby Bushnell, Florida. It also played an important role for the early settlers and cattlemen of Masotte. You can read more about it in the following pages.
The Gullah spoke the Gullah language, an African and English based creole language. That enabled them to communicate better with the British and later Americans than the Creek or Mikasuki-speaking Seminoles. The Seminoles used them as translators to advance their trading with the British and other tribes.
The language of the Seminole Maroons is a mix of African, Seminole, and European words influenced by the Gullah dialect. The language's roots trace back to the African coast from West African Pidgin English, eventually making its way to Georgia and South Carolina's Sea Islands when the transatlantic slave trade took many rice-cultivating Africans from Sierra Leone and other West-Central African regions. The African heritage of the Black Seminoles, according to academics, is from the Kongo, Yoruba, and other African ethnic groups. Linguist and historian, Lorenzo Dow Turner documented about fifteen words spoken by Gullah and Black Seminoles that came from the Kikongo language. Other African words spoken are from the Bantu, Twi, Wolof, and other West African languages. Seminole and Spanish words entered the language when enslaved people escaped to Spanish Florida from the British colonies. Their language is called by scholars an Afro-Seminole Creole. Afro-Seminole creole also has English and Scottish English dialects from the 1700s. Afro-Seminole Creole was identified as a distinct language in 1978 by linguist Ian Hancock. Black Seminoles and Freedmen continued to speak Afro-Seminole Creole through the 1800s in Oklahoma. Hancock found that in 1978, some Black Seminole and Seminole elders spoke it in Oklahoma and in Florida.
Seminoles and Maroons had limited intermarriage, since they were generally segregated and required to have independent communities. Although they did ally with the Seminole at times of war. The Seminole society, like many tribal cultures, was based on a matrilineal kinship system, in which inheritance and descent went through the maternal line. Children were considered to belong to the mother's clan. Those born to ethnic African mothers would have been considered Black by the Seminole and banned from participating in religious rites. However, the children would sometimes integrate customs from both parents' cultures.
Maroons adopted some elements of the European-American culture. Certain cultural practices, such as "jumping the broom" to celebrate marriage, hailed from the plantations. However, other customs, such as some names used for Maroon towns, reflected African heritage. Maroon families gave African-derived names to their children based on the day or week their baby was born, such as "Cudjoe" for Monday and "Cuffy" for Friday. They built their homes in the Seminole architectural style of thatched palmetto plank houses.
The Seminoles were organized around itálwa, which was the basis of their social, political and ritual systems.
It is roughly equivalent to a town or a clan.
Each itálwa had civil, military, and religious leaders.
They had a matrilineal kinship system, in which children are considered born into their mother's family and clan, and property and hereditary roles pass through the maternal line.
Children are born into their mother's clan and derive their status from her people.
This was used in many cultures across the world, since the husband could not be guarunteed to be always be the father.
However, males still held the leading political and social positions.
They were each self-governing throughout the 1800s, but would cooperate for mutual defense against foriegn adversarries.
The itálwa continued to be the basis of Seminole society in Oklahoma into the 2000s.
One of the more significant cultural aspects that the Seminole inherited from the Creek was the Green Corn Dance ceremony.
The Seminole observed the stomp dance and the Green Corn Ceremony held at their ceremonial grounds.
Other notable traditions include the use of the black drink and ritual tobacco.
Contemporary southeastern Native American tribes, such as the Seminole and Muscogee Creek, still practice these ceremonies.
The Seminole followed the nativistic principles of their Great Spirit.
However, many Seminole converted to Christianity, both Protestantism and Catholicism.
As converted Christians, Seminoles established their own churches, they incorporated their traditions and beliefs into a syncretic Indigenous-Western practice.
For example, Seminole hymns are sung in the Indigenous Muscogee language.
Also, hymns are frequently led by a song leader, a traditional Indigenous song practice.
The Muscogee term "mekko", meaning chief, conflates with "Jesus".
In terms of spirituality, the Seminole ethnic groups remained distinct. Seminole historian Susan Miller says that Black Seminoles were not allowed to participate in Seminole ceremonies. Participation in spiritual practices required matrilineal descent within a Seminole clan.
Seminoles Maroons inclined toward a syncretic form of Christianity brought with them from the plantations and developed a Pan-African culture that was expressed in writing, language, religion, and social structure. Spirituals, singing, clapping, and the African-American ring shout is performed in the churches. The ring shout is counter-clockwise circle dancing that involves singing, clapping, and shuffling of the feet culminating in the possession by the Holy Spirit.
Negro folklore depicts the myth of Uncle Monday, an enslaved Negro conjurer, medicine man, and shapeshifter in the Southern United States.
According to the folk story, he escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad traveling from South Carolina and Georgia to find refuge with the Seminole and Black Seminole tribes in Florida.
He used his conjure powers to shapeshift into an alligator and led a resistance movement against slavery.
Those not spiritually gifted like Uncle Monday that were not able to defend themselves from American invasion resettled in Oklahoma's Indian Territory.
This folktale is based on historical accounts of the alliance between the Seminole people and Black Seminoles and their resistance movement against enslavement and colonialism.
The Black Seminole leader John Horse is also interpreted as a mythic hero in the two characters High John the Conqueror, an African-American folk hero, and Brer Rabbit, a cunning trickster hero.
These three heroes were resistance leaders against oppression and used their wits, charms, and intelligence to outsmart their enemies.
Seminoles and Black Seminoles ate the same foodstuffs prepared the same way.
Just like the Timucua before them, they gathered the roots of a native short palm called the coontie.
They would grind, soak, and strain them to make a starchy flour similar to arrowroot.
They also mashed white maize (corn) with a mortar and pestle to make sofkee, a sort of porridge often mixed with water and wood ash, for flavor.
It was then drunk as a beverage.
Derived from the Creek word safke or osafke.
The early Black Seminole people used an African-style large wooden mortar and pestle for food preparation.
They used it for processing the maize, grains, seeds, and coontie roots.
The Gullah also introduced their staple of rice to the Seminole, and continued to use it as a basic part of their diets.
Rice remained part of the diet of the Black Seminoles who moved to Oklahoma.
Animal proteins prepared and cooked by Seminoles Maroons in Florida were venison (deer), alligator, freshwater species of fish including bass, carp, eel, and catfish, as well as sea turtles.
Herbalism was practiced by the women. They gathered roots and herbs from nature and made teas with mint, rosemary, oregano, and other medicines.
The Seminole use the spines of Cirsium horridulum (also called bristly thistle) to make blowgun darts.
1739-1750s - Spanish and Seminole Response
to British Slave Owners
In 1739, British slave owners in the Carolinas complained to Spanish Florida Governor, Manuel de Mantiano, about enslaved laborers escaping to Spanish territory.
However, Mantiano upheld the Gullah slaves' right to seek sanctuary in Spanish Florida and established it into law.
However, the Spanish colonists and Seminole tribes continued to own slaves, even re-enslaving some of these very same sanctuary seeking people.
By 1750, the Muscogee (Creek) people established an "Indian Country" in Florida and had more semi-autonomy than Native Americans in other colonies controlled by the Spanish and the British.
The Seminoles also maintained a tradition of accepting escaped slaves from Southern plantations.
Enslaved people continued to seek refuge in Indian Country, and British slaveholders demanded the return of their enslaved laborers from the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole Indians.
Native Americans allied with or enslaved, into military service, these, mostly Gullah, Negro peoples.
Together they fought against European colonists and slaveholders.
The Maroons lived in proximity to Seminole villages but lived in independent separate communities on Native land and were culturally and politically autonomous.
After raids by British colonists on Seminole settlements, the Seminole retaliated by raiding the Southern Colonies, primarily Georgia, purportedly at the behest of the Spanish.
John Griffin
John Griffin, a former Groveland City Councilman and Vice Mayor, was a descendant of the Black Seminole. For many years, he participated in the reenactment as a Black Seminole warrior.