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This movement of Afrikans would have taken place during Pangaea, a period when the Afrikan and American continents were joined together, as indicated by the similarity of tropical plants, animals, geographic traits, and their shapes fitting together like a piece of a puzzle, before the continental drifts separated the landmasses into the 7 major continents, known today as Afrika, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Antarctica.
These Black Mound Builders were the Washitaw-Muurs or Ouachita � Moors, and many were huge as attested by their ancient skeletons, which generally measured between 7 to 8 feet. The only other living people on Earth with such a massive physique were the Massai of Afrika, another group of Blacks.
Columbus was therefore not technically incorrect when he called these people "Indians," because the word India comes from Indi which means Black, as in India ink, hindu and Indigo, the darkest colour in the colour spectrum. On the left is a Darienite of Panama.
Ancient Native Black Nations of America before and after Columbus included:
The Spanish, who in the early part of that century controlled Florida, gave land to a group of Creek Indians, with the intention of creating a buffer zone between themselves and the English settlers located in Georgia and the Carolinas. The Creeks were joined by other tribes over a period of time, such as the Mikasukis and the Apalachicolas.
In the meantime, the Spanish encouraged runaway African slaves to head south, promising a safe haven if they converted to Catholicism. This policy showed Spain�s general inclusion of Black Africans at various levels of society, an action which would have stemmed from the 700 years of Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.
So by the late 1600s, African slaves, who had escaped Carolina plantations and evaded slave hunters through dangerous Indian country, gained their freedom by crossing St. Mary's River, which was an international border dividing Spanish and British colonial territory. When the first fugitive slaves from Charleston arrived in St. Augustine, Florida in 1687, they were given refuge and were also integrated into a unified, multiracial, multicultural, multilingual community, where the men worked as cartwrights, jewellers, butchers, and innkeepers, and the women worked as cooks and laundresses.
In this new environment, these Blacks showed the ability to adapt, be creative and to survive. By 1738, these former slaves had formed the first free Black community in North America known as Gracia Real de Santo Teresa de Mose or in short, Fort Mose.
This outpost was established to protect the capital of Spanish Florida which covered from the Gulf of Mexico to Georgia and South Carolina, but it also was to assist the Spanish in weakening the slave-based economy of the English settlers in the Carolinas.
A West African Mandingo named Francisco Men�ndez, who had escaped from the Carolinas with the help of Yamassee Indians, became captain of the Black Company at the St. Augustine garrisons, which was before the establishment of Fort Mose. He also became the captain of the garrison at Fort Mose, and was recognized by the Spaniards as the Cassique or chief of the community.
Fort Mose was deserted around 1763 when Spain surrendered its colony to Britain, and some of the residents of the fort moved to Cuba.
In 1994 Fort Mose was designated a National Historic Landmark, becoming the leading site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail, providing a physical reminder of the people who risked everything, including their lives, in a valiant attempt to grasp freedom.
These Black Seminole Indians, also known as Indian Blacks, Black Muscogulges, Seminole freedmen or Maroons, who are the descendents of slaves or runaways from the plantations of South Carolina and Georgia, sought refuge in Spanish-controlled Florida and lived among the Seminole Indians. They were closely associated with the Indians, although maintaining a separate identity through preserving their own culture and traditions.
The remnants of the most resistant tribes, - the Creek, Hitichi, Yamasee and Miccosukee Indians - who had been fighting the Europeans for centuries also followed, and by 1822 this group numbering somewhere between 3,900 to 5,000, became known as the Seminoles, breaking away eventually from the main Creek tribe. The word Seminole comes from the Creek word "semino le" which means �runaway,� �emigrants who left the main body and settled elsewhere�, or �one who has camped out from the regular towns.� In Spanish the word may have been coined from the corrupted version of the word cimarrones.
Thousands of intermarriages took place between Blacks and Indians causing, in some cases, whole Indian tribes to disappear into the Black community. Blacks have similarly been absorbed into Indian tribes, which was largely due to the fact that until 1909 it was against the law to live in the Southeast and be a Native American. It was better to be passed off as Black and be a slave than to be removed to Indian Territory.
The Southeast is where most of the inter-mixing between Blacks and natives took place, but it also occured in the Northeast and the West, where a mulatto Mountain man named James Beckwourth, a well respected warrior known as Bloody Arm, married into the Crow Nation.
As a result, the quality of life for ex-slaves improved, and out of respect to the Indian chief, they paid a yearly tax of either corn or some other foodstuff to be used for the common good, and in return for their allegiance, they were given the protection of the larger Seminole Indian community.
A small number of Blacks, who had learnt to ride and manage the herds passed on their knowledge to the Seminole Villagers, teaching them horsemanship and herding skills, as well as how to construct homes and speak English and Spanish. Therefore, the first American cowboys (vaqueros) were not the John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart type, being - white and tall in the saddle - as highlighted in the movies, but were Indians, Black men or descendants of the Spanish Black slaves who became the first Black cowboys. (left). Two famous early Florida Indians who raised cattle were Chief Billy Bowlegs and Chief Cowkeeper.
The Blacks who lived among the Seminoles adopted the Indian ways of living and dressing, and having mastered many language skills, spoke Creole, English, Spanish, and Indian (Muskogean) dialects. They also understood the ways of the white man having lived on plantations, where they had developed the ability to anticipate the direction of a particular situation. This combination of skills made them invaluable to the Seminoles as interpreters, mediators and advisors. Their quest involved contact with settlers, traders, other Native Americans, government officials, Spanish, British and American soldiers. Today their descendants can celebrate the persistence and perseverance of their ancestors who had suffered and survived deprivation, exploitation and destitution.
In due course the Blacks and Seminoles had established such strong communal ties that they merged forces and fought side by side to defend their land and freedom against their American adversaries, who wanted to occupy Florida and prevent its use as a haven for run-away slaves.
In contrast to the Anglo-American society, neither the Black Seminoles nor the Native American Indians aspired to subdue or conquer nature, but to be a part of the natural world. However, the U.S. government seemed determined to systematically eliminate the Native Americans and manipulate the descendants of the Black slaves, an imperialistic attitude which sanctioned the policies of the U.S. government to treat groups of people with less respect and concern than they treated their own cattle.
The First Seminole War (1817-1818) was started by the invasion of eastern Florida by U.S. army forces under the command of General Andrew Jackson, who destroyed Black and Indian towns, burnt Spanish forts, and routed the British. Finally, Jackson captured Pensacola, and the Spanish ceded Florida to the United States in 1821.
Twenty five miles north of the Gulf of Mexico up the Apalachicola River, more than 300 Blacks and Indians manned a fort called Negro Fort that the British had built for them. They fired at whatever ships came down the river until a single shot from an American ship hit the fort's ammunition dump, killing 270 of the 320 inside. When the war ended, the Black and Indian militia stayed.
Around 1823 some Seminole Indian leaders were induced to move to a reservation site in Florida, and return any runaway slaves that did not belong to them. Using the typical divide and rule tactic, the Indians were told that the Blacks did not care about them, and only needed a place of safety from enslavement. Later, the 1830 Indian Removal Act passed by congress and authorized by President Jackson, decreed that the Indians be moved to the West, but the Black Seminoles resisted this relocation attempt by the land hungry American settlers, fearing that they would lose their homes, their independence, and their freedom.
The Blacks knew that if they assembled at one place along with their Indian allies waiting to be moved, they would be captured and sent back into slavery, so they took the lead in stirring up resistance to this removal, joining the Seminoles in a guerrilla warfare which prompted the Second Seminole War (1835 -1842).
Historians compared the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) to the Vietnam War where many Americans called the war un-winnable and immoral. Daily newspapers questioned why American boys were dying in a worthless piece of Florida swamp as the Seminole war grew into the longest and costliest of all American Indian wars. It was also the deadliest, costing the U.S. Government 30 million dollars with more than 2,000 regular soldiers and sailors lost.
Although the North-South debate over slavery was in full swing at the outset of the Second Seminole War, the public at first was unaware of the connection between the slavery of Blacks and the removal of Indians from Florida, but the military, was well aware of the connection.
The second war began on December 28, 1835 when a column of 108 soldiers led by Major Dade was massacred by Seminole warriors at the Dade Battle in Sumpter County, later known as The Dade Massacre. Soldiers hastily built a triangular barricade and held off the aggressors for nearly six hours until they were startled by the sound of pounding hooves. Fifty Black warriors on horseback swarmed the barricade, stabbing and axing the wounded, taunting them with cries of "What do you got to sell?" - a question soldiers often directed towards Blacks when they visited military posts. Only three whites survived. The horsemen most likely had heard the battle in the distance, and came galloping in to aid their comrades. The Seminoles were horrified by their allies with their to-the-death style of combat.
Greedy American settlers backed by the U.S. Army and the Federal Government, tried to forcibly remove and relocate the Native Americans along with any Black Seminoles from the Southeast section of the United States to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), in order to secure more land. But, frustrated by Osceola's continuing successes, General Jesup resorted to the usual deception, luring Osceola, the great medicine man, and Chief Coacoochee (Wild Cat) into a trap under the guise of a peace meeting. When the Seminole leaders arrived at the negotiation site, they were promptly arrested and confined at Saint Augustine, then at Fort Moultrie at Charleston, South Carolina, where on January 30, 1838, Osceola contracted a fatal illness and died.
After a merciless and cruel roundup of Seminole families, the deadly journey began. Many tribal members did not have adequate food or blankets, so many died of starvation and disease, while others were ambushed and killed by bandits who preyed on them. They were herded like cattle by the despised Bluecoats to Indian Territory on what is known as the The Trail of Tears (1830), so named because survivors were not permitted to stop and bury their dead, as hundreds of men, women and children were marched to their deaths.
The Army however, was powerless to remove all the Maroons and Seminoles from Florida, where many of them hid in the thick vegetation of the Everglades. One such fierce warrior, a Black Seminole named Billy Bowlegs (Alligator Chief), led the tribe in the Second (1835-1842) and Third (1855-1858) Seminole wars.
The Third Seminole War started when a party of army engineers and surveyors working in the Great Cypress Swamp, stole crops and destroyed banana trees belonging to Bowlegs' band, and then when confronted did not offer any apology or compensation. Bowlegs led his warriors in a series of raids on settlers, trappers, and traders.
The second war turned out to be a War of Independence for the Blacks. Some authorities even declared that this was the time when the Blacks emerged as a distinct social group, because they shared the experience of running away, resisting slavery, and fighting for their freedom. It was evident especially to the outside world, that they possessed the skills and intellect to survive on their own and to create self-sufficient communities.
Gopher John and his group of Black Seminoles were more concerned about acquiring land where they would be safe from Creek slave hunters, but the kidnapping of Black Seminoles by the Creeks and white slave hunters became so prevalent, that Gopher John was forced to find ways to leave the territory.
The Black Seminoles became upset when the U.S. attorney general in 1849, decided that Black Seminoles were still slaves, but the final straw came when the whites demanded that Black Seminoles, who were living in separate towns, must surrender their guns. Gopher John went to Washington to negotiate a special removal policy for his people, but since nothing came out of these efforts, he was left with no other choice but to join Wild Cat's plan to relocate to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829. Many Black Seminoles escaped to the Bahamas after the First and Second Seminole Wars, but others, along with their Native American allies, were forcibly removed to Oklahoma.
Some of the Afrikan-American Indians took the opportunity offered by Wild Cat, the Seminole Indian leader, to flee to Mexico, in order to escape the pursuit of slave hunters, slave traders and the military. So in 1850, under the leadership of Wild Cat and Gopher John, more than 300 Seminole Indians, Black Seminoles and Kickapoo Indians set out for Mexico on a nine month journey to the border.
The Mexican government, which desperately needed people to patrol the Texas-Coahuila border against the Comanche and Apache raiders and looters, promised citizenship to the migrants in exchange for protecting the northern border. They also provided the Seminoles with a joint grant of land at the juncture of R�o San Rodrigo and R�o San Antonio.
So one of the requirements for the migrants was that the men serve as border patrol to protect the towns from raids by the Comanche and Lipan Indians, an area in which the Black Seminoles again proved to be exceptional soldiers, also gaining the reputation of being faithful troops. These Blacks drew on survival skills learnt while in the Florida wilderness, and adapted these skills to the harsh and barren terrain of the Mexican borderlands. As youths they learnt to ride, hunt, track, trap and shoot, becoming legendary frontiersmen. Some even served as soldiers in the Mexican Army, gaining a reputation for being tough and daring.
On entering Mexico in July 1850, John Horse said, when we came fleeing slavery, Mexico was a land of freedom, and the Mexicans spread out their arms to us. The Black Seminoles eventually settled in Nacimiento where some of their descendants known as the Indios Mascogos still live to this day, while the Seminole Indians settled nearby in Muzquiz. The Blacks put the food subsidies, tools for farming and building materials given to them to effective use, and soon had a flourishing agricultural community. A school and church were also established.
In Mexico, Gopher John was given the name Juan Caballo or John Horse, because he was very good with horses, but he became very famous after joining the Mexican Army and fighting against Maximillian's troops. John Horse was so brave that he was made colonel and later became known as El Colonel Juan Caballo. The Mexican Army gave him a silver-mounted saddle with a gold-plated pummel in the shape of a horse's head, which he used whenever he rode his favourite horse.
Eventually the Black Seminoles became tired of this role, especially after being summoned to engage in the civil and foreign conflicts that overwhelmed Mexico in the early 1860s, so at the end of the Civil War in the United States, the Black Seminoles looked forward to returning there. But external and internal pressures throughout the 1860s divided the Mascogos into three groups in Mexico; at Parras, Nacimiento, and Matamoros, with a group led by Elijah Daniels across the border in Texas.
By this time more white settlers had moved to the Southwest using the Overland Trail to cross from Texas into New Mexico, Arizona and California, bringing them into conflict with south-western Indian tribes, like the Comanches and Apaches, who had also been relocated from their traditional hunting grounds to reservations in the New Mexico Territory. So in retaliation, they raided white settlements, stole livestock and horses, and destroyed property.
Army personnel at frontier bases in Texas were not in a position to prevent these raids, because they lacked the necessary manpower to guard the unstable Texan border and track down or confront the fast-moving Indians, so what they needed were experienced fighters who knew the rugged terrain of the borderlands, understood the ways of the Indians, and could speak the border language which was (Mexican) / Spanglish -a mixture of English and Spanish.
The Black Seminoles having lived in the border country for more than twenty years, knew the land and the Indian groups that lived in or came to the area. These Seminole Negroes, with the reputation of being fearless fighters, were experts in frontier and hand to hand combat, so in 1870 the United States Army entered into negotiations with John Kibbetts, the leader of the group at Nacimiento, to employ Black Seminoles as Indian scouts and fighters in West Texas.
In 1871, Elijah Daniels' band and the Matamoros faction arrived at Fort Duncan, increasing the number of Black Seminole Scouts by eighteen. They worked to protect the borders and were promised salaries, rations, and living quarters for their families at the forts where they were stationed, in return for their services. They were also guaranteed their own land in Texas or in the Indian Territory at the end of their service as scouts.
After the 1870s, the scouts' numbers were further strengthened by American freedmen, Mexican Blacks, and Blacks from the regular army. It took two years to find a commanding officer who could manage the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts and gain their respect. That officer was Lieutenant John L. Bullis, a Quaker who commanded United States Coloured Troops during the Civil War. John Bullis' fighting skills and religious background helped to establish a closeness with the scouts that resulted in him receiving invitations to perform marriages and baptisms in their Indian villages.
From 1873 to 1881 under the command of Lieutenant John Bullis, the Black scouts went on twenty-six expeditions and were engaged in twelve or more documented battles without suffering a single loss or incurring a serious injury even when greatly out numbered, a credit to the Black Seminoles' skills and superior marksmen. Unlike the soldiers, they could also live off half rations indefinitely.
On a trail they were the best shots from the saddle and were capable of finding water and food that others had missed. They could also pickup trails from up to three weeks old, and even stay on a trail for months at a time. In one extraordinary act of tracking, Lt. Bullis and 39 scouts trailed Mescalero Apache raiders for 34 days over 1,260 miles. Many of their culprits incorrectly thought they had escaped from these scouts.
Famed for their bravery, four of the Black Seminole scouts were awarded the Medal of Honour in the 1870s for gallantry in action during the Indian wars. Adam Paine was awarded the Medal of Honour for gallantry in action on the Staked Plains. John Ward, Pompey Factor and Isaac Payne were awarded the Medal for rescuing their commander, Lieutenant John Bullis. The trio rode in under enemy fire, and Ward pulled John Bullis up onto his horse, before riding away to safety.
But as usual, government officials had fooled the Negro Indians, since the U.S. failed to honour its commitment and began denying responsibility for the safety and welfare of the group in spite of the numerous appeals by the scouts and the officers who supported their requests.
Originally, the army classified the maroons as Indians and indicated that the group could be settled on Indian land, but questions soon arose from Indian agents concerning the ethnicity of the group. Near the end of their service to the government, Chief John Horse of the Seminole Negroes asked that their treaty be honoured, but the War Department claimed there was no copy of it therefore no land could legally be granted to them since they were not ethnic Indians.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs would not honour those claims either claiming they were not entitled to lands granted to real Indians. To make matters worse, registration for Seminole Indian reservation lands was closed in 1866, making the Black Seminole-Negroes in Texas and Mexico ineligible for any Indian Reservation lands, therefore the Black Seminoles never owned land anywhere after they left Florida.
There has been an ongoing debate among Seminoles with African ancestry and Seminoles with Native American ancestry regarding the legitimacy of the Black Seminoles. These arguments have reached crisis proportions as families are split along racial lines. Blacks Seminoles have been voted out of tribal councils and can no longer fully participate as a Seminole, while some have completely lost their rights in the Seminole nation.
Strangely enough, Indians who have mixed with European or Asian blood have no problem being accepted by the Native community, but African Americans on the other hand, find it a lot more difficult to obtain that same acceptance, even though many of their descendants fought alongside them against the white man, and many African American ancestors also walked the Trail of Tears with the Indians, yet they are not accepted.
This is mainly due to the general American prejudice, discrimination and governmental indifference against Black people who remain oppressed and disenfranchised.
In 1879, Black Cherokees petitioned for full citizenship in the Cherokee Nation, declaring, "It is our country. There we were born and reared. There are our homes. There are our wives and children, whom we love as dearly as though we were born with red, instead of Black skins." Citizenship was granted.
However, no amount of gallantry won the Black Seminoles the land they were promised under the treaties signed by General Zachary Taylor and President James Polk. By the 1880s the number of enlisted scouts was cut back and an ungrateful army also reduced their rations, but in spite of these setbacks, they continued to live on the Fort Clark military post under unsafe and often destitute conditions.
As the Indian wars declined, the scouts were transferred to custodial and constabulary positions, before the detachment was finally disbanded in 1914, at which point the maroons at Fort Clark and their dependents who numbered between 200 and 300, were told to leave the post they had been living in for more than a generation. Bitterly disillusioned, many of the scouts left for Mexico in 1914, never to return, where the Seminoles and Maroons once again found liberty and a sense of community across the Mexican border. In the Mexican state of Coahuila where most of the Black Seminoles remained to this day, these Maroons or Mascogos, as they were called in Spanish, were able to acquire property, crops, and livestock.
Others went to nearby Brackettville, where the Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery is located, while some tried to stay on at Fort Clark and Fort Duncan, but without any rations, some of them resorted to killing stray cattle for food, and as a result, local citizens often distrusted and resented the Seminole-Negroes.
The descendants who live in Coahuila, Mexico, refer to themselves as Indios Mascogos, and in Oklahoma as Freedmen, for similar reasons.
The experience of the Black Seminoles was similar to other maroon societies that flourished throughout the Americas before slavery was abolished, and because they were in constant fear of being recaptured, they defended their freedom by developing extraordinary skills in guerrilla warfare. They were proactive in finding ways to survive economically in new environments, and were also skilled in their interaction with Native Americans. Leaders emerged from their communities who were savvy at understanding and negotiating with whites, but most importantly, all of these maroon communities borrowed, combined and integrated elements of their experiences into their own African heritage.
As usual, many historians have ignored the important cultural contributions of the Black-Indian relationships, since the background of European colonial imperialism has corrupted the intellect by representing both Africans and Indians as uncivilized peoples without any histories, who have not contributed anything to the world. Books, movies and television shows have never spread their story, and as result, only a few people have heard or even know of their existence, or the mark the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts left on the frontier west.
This section is dedicated to correcting those misconceptions that are yet prevailing even today regarding Black people in general, while stimulating an interest in their history which has been deliberately and carefully hidden from the masses for centuries."The truth is out there."
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION SECTION 10
Black people were in Florida before the Seminole Indians, as supported by the discovery of over 200,000 ancient pyramids and huge mounds of Earth fashioned like cones, animals and geometric designs stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. These structures were built by the dark-skinned, woolly-haired Black Native American people otherwise known as the Mound Builders, the indigenous inhabitants of North America, and kin to the Olmecs of South America. On the left is an ancient Negroid basalt mask (1879) depicting an Ancient American before the arrival of Columbus, and on the right is a Black Californian native. 
The term Mound Builders came about when the origin of these discovered monuments was deemed mysterious by European Americans especially, who assumed that the Native Americans were too uncivilized and barbaric for such fine accomplishments, but in reality this thriving Native American culture was common place in the Midwest and Southeast United States at a time when Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages.
Others became farmers, ranchers, cowboys, interpreters, hunters, small business owners, traders and warriors, while some lived short, violent lives as outlaws, raiding plantations, recruiting extra Blacks, and trading in contraband. 
The five so-called Civilized Tribes of the Southwest were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and the Seminoles, who were considered the least civilized of the five Tribes because they had the least prejudice towards Blacks. Though they owned 800 slaves, it was not in the traditional sense using the plantation style of bondage, because the Black Maroons were not subordinate to their chiefs. Consequently, the distinction between a runaway or slave became blurred and in due course vanished. The association between Blacks and Seminoles was one of affection and mutual respect, and with intermarriage inevitably occurring between the two groups, by 1907 no Seminole family was free of Black intermixing. 
During the first Seminole War, Abraham (left), a former Black slave, fought against General Andrew Jackson's troops. Afterwards, Abraham recruited other Blacks into the tribe, and became an interpreter while also attaining the status of lawyer for Chief Micanopy on his trip to Washington in 1826. He governed Peliklakaha, also known as Abraham's Old Town, and married the widow of Chief Billy Bowlegs. In the right photo from left to right are John Jumper, Abraham and Billy Bowlegs. 
Throughout the conflicts, Blacks were recognized for their aggressive military expertise which impressed both white opponents and Seminole leaders. Many warriors had come from the fiercest tribes of Africa like the Ibo, Egba, Senegal and Ashanti, and as the war intensified, Blacks rose rapidly through the ranks, even wielding political clout within the tribe. 
Four days later, the famous Seminole leader Osceola (pronounced Asi-Yaholo) (left) attacked a column of 750 men under General Duncan Clinch in the Battle of Withlacoochee in Citrus County with only 250 warriors. Osceola soundly defeated the soldiers, promising to fight the white invaders till the last drop of Seminole blood has moistened the dust of my hunting ground. The Seminole Nation fought slave trackers, other Indian tribes and the U.S. government, in an attempt to keep their ancestral lands and farms in tact.
However, 19 of his fellow prisoners along with the courageous leader Wild Cat (right) and a Black Seminole named Gopher John (left) escaped, and made their way to friends who assisted them by providing supplies. Wild Cat and Gopher John rode many miles together and developed a close friendship that lasted a lifetime. 
Being close to starvation, Billy Bowlegs (left) and his warriors, hid in the swamps during the day and carried out raids at night. This continued for several years because Bowlegs knew that life in the Indian Territory would have been less secure for African-Indians. Eventually, Bowlegs and some of his members in exchange for small cash outlays, agreed to emigrate west, where he took 33 warriors together with 80 women and children (about 165 altogether) to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) on May 7, 1858. Relentless U.S. military raids, along with bloodhounds, reduced the Seminole population to between 200 and 300, but shortly afterwards, Colonel Loomis, commander of the forces in Florida, announced an end to all hostilities, since the U.S. government had abandoned efforts to remove all Seminoles.
Blacks proved to be courageous fighters once more, serving in important roles as advisers, spies and intermediaries. Their influence on the Seminole Indian chiefs prompted General Thomas S. Jesup (right) to say, this you may be assured is a Negro and not an Indian War. To end the long, bloody and costly war, Jesup resorted to opportunism, granting freedom to the Blacks if they would go west as part of the Seminole Nation. However, once settled in Indian Territory (1841-1850), the Black Seminoles and the Seminole Indians faced another common enemy, the Creeks, who were intent on enslaving the Black Seminoles and integrating the Seminole Indians into their community, but Wild Cat, the leader of the Seminole Indians and Gopher John, the leader of the Black Seminoles, resisted this domination. Wild Cat did not want his power diminished by the Creek chiefs, so he planned to form a confederation with other south-western Indians of which he would be the leader. 
John Kibbetts was commissioned a sergeant at Fort Duncan, and ten Black Seminoles enlisted as privates. This detachment of Seminole Negro Indian Scouts known as Buffalo Soldiers, made up the Ninth Cavalry's M Company. After being promised that they could return to their former homes in the Indian Territory, many of the Afrikan American Seminole Indians opted to return to Texas. So on July 4, 1870, these Afrikan Americans and their families crossed the Rio Grande into Texas and established temporary camps on Elm Creek near the fort on military reservations, while awaiting clearance to the North, but top level government officials in charge of that task, began to treat the matter as a low priority.
The Black Seminole scouts were the best desert fighters and trackers in the history of the United States Army.
The descendants of the Maroons or the Black Seminole community who live in West Texas today, continue to use the name Seminole to set themselves apart from other Blacks, and to emphasize the pride they had in their unique history of having run away and resisted slavery. They are still proud to declare themselves Native Americans. It was a long, hard road for the Black Seminoles and Maroons who had to overcome the persecution of the Spanish, the English, slavery, disease, the abuse by the United States Army, the Trail of Tears, starvation, bounty hunters, other hostile Indian tribes, and the unfavourable conditions of the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, yet through all of this, they managed to survive. The fact that they were not completely eradicated and still have descendants living today, is testimony to their tenacity, bravery, and enduring strength of spirit. 
From the 1920's onward, development exploded in Southern Florida causing the Seminoles to lose hunting land to tourists and settlers. They were gradually forced into the wage labour economy where they become agricultural workers, attracting tourists with their exciting and colourful patchwork clothing. Here are two Black Seminole Maroon Women.
