Black Seminoles

point in federal government policy of moving away from encouraging the Seminoles to move to the Florida, and instead to force migration to the west of the Mississippi. Among the rationalizations discussed before the introduction of the proposal were that the Indian Territory would supply the Seminoles with more game to hunt, and better soil for cultivation. While no new federal treaty would be negotiated until 1832, the Florida Legislature in 1827 passed a decree to further persuade the Seminoles to comply with the Moultrie Creek Treaty. The decree stated “that any male Indian found out of the reservation ‘shall receive not exceeding thirty-nine stripes on his bare back, and his gun…

Since the assimilation of the native American tribes into white culture, there has been many cultures that have disappeared. Some cultures have been lost forever, but fortunately there has been an awakening and a willingness to preserve certain cultures and languages. One specific example is the Chickasaw culture. One way to reclaim their history and heritage is through the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma. The cultural center is located on 109 acres of land and includes a museum,…

The Green Corn Ceremony is an important Native American gathering. This passage will pertain solely to the Floridian Seminole ideas with some mention of Oklahoma Seminoles. Each tribe has their own rituals and traditions but are fairly all connected. To the Seminoles, the Green Corn Ceremony represents the first corn of July or August. Therefore, the special event is held every year to celebrate the growing season and a new year or new beginnings. The ceremony also depicts the community’s social…

Joy Harjo 's choice to use of Creek Indian Social Ball Game by Solomon McCombs as cover art for Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings invokes Mvskoke cultural traditions and methods of conflict resolution. The references to traditional ceremonies and the treatment of storytelling in her poems affirms that Harjo sees preservation of her heritage through art as a form of healing from ancestral trauma, a theme that dominates her poetry. Healing implies that the body and soul have worked through a…

military advances and helped build the Negro Fort (1816) on the Apalachicola River. The Fort became a haven for African Americans who had escaped slavery from neighboring Southern States. The fort was attacked and destroyed during the first Seminole War (1817-1818) and most captured African Americans were returned to slavery. Abraham, as one of the few survivors, made his way to Seminole territory further south and east into the peninsula, although his exact arrival and assimilation into the…

among others, for the most part, assimilated with the more recent arrivals. Migration and the passage of time contributed to the spread of Muscogee language dialectal influences throughout Florida. The use of the term Seminole…

Miccosukee Seminole Indian tribe Over 200 years ago, the Miccosukee tribe have been known by its characteristic way of fighting to protect their territory. First, the Spaniards, and then even worse, the Anglo-American who tried to exterminate the Miccosukee’s Indians almost two centuries ago and who eventually left them no other option than to live in a very small place in ancestral areas of the Everglades in Miami. The Indians seeking for a decent style of life had to adapt themselves to sleep…

The arrival of various Creek and other Muscogee people to Florida in the mid-1700s signaled the genesis of what would eventually be recognized as the Seminole tribe of Florida. These Indians settled in parts of Florida where the original, albeit much less in numbers, inhabitants of Florida still resided. Many of the Florida Indians by the time of the British arrival were trading for decades with the Spanish and its colonies to the immediate south. The Creek nation was a loose confederation of…

The Native and African alliance in the later part of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century could be better described as a political partnership with common interests. They both cooperated against British occupation and aggression, and later American expansion and slave raids. The tenuous partnership began disintegrating more so as early as the 1845 Treaty with the Creeks, which would be temporarily moderated with the elimination of all slavery among the Seminoles and the other…

First Seminole War happened in the years of 1817 to 1818 between the United States and the Seminoles of Florida. The first Seminole War was a punitive journey led by Andrew Jackson into the La Florida, which was a Spanish colony in 1818. Many are under the impression that the United States were responsible for the cause of the war and everything that happened in the war, when in fact both sides were responsible for the war, and both were equally to blame for the consequences of the war. The…