Black Seminoles - in The West

In The West

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, 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. 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.

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.

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.

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 to the British-held islands to find sanctuary from American enslavement. By that time Great Britain had abolished slavery.

Some 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.