Black Seminoles - Culture

Culture

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; 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 the plantation years. Certain cultural practices, such as "jumping the broom" to celebrate marriage, hailed from the plantations; other customs, such as some names used for black towns, reflected African heritage.

As time progressed, the Seminole and Blacks had some intermarriage, but historians and anthropologists have come to believe that generally the Black Seminoles had independent communities. They allied with the Seminole at times of war. The Seminole known as King Phillip was known to have married a Black Seminole woman and had a mixed-race child with her. The Southeast Indians generally had matrilineal systems, in which they believed that children belonged to the mother's clan. While the children might integrate customs from both cultures, the Seminole believed them to belong to the mother's group more than the father's. Under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, adopted in slavery law in the colonies, the children of mixed unions took the mother's social status, so any children born to a slave were also considered slaves, even if the parent had escaped.