RJA #2b: Research Topic ENG 1020

Most Americans are aware that this country was populated by indigenous people prior to the arrival of Europeans. Often missing from the body of history taught in public schools, are the stories of how indigenous peoples collaborated and cooperated with African slaves both to survive and to resist the invasion of their native lands. The Black Seminoles are one such group of cooperating African and Indigenous Americans and are of particular interest to me since at the time of my birth, my family resided in Seminole, Oklahoma and could quite possibly be apart of my own geneology.

The Black Seminoles have traceable connections to the Africans imported from West Africa for their expertise in rice agriculture to work the rice fields on the barrier islands just off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when slavery was the accepted labor force. African escapees from some of these plantations were better suited for the tropical climate of what was then, Spanish Florida, and were key proponents and strategists in several skirmishes between the Native tribes and the American military, both Confederate and Northern. The Black Seminoles were also forcibly relocated to Oklahoma, following along the Trail of Tears.

What is quite intriguing about the Black Seminoles is that theirs is an amalgamation of cultures originating in West Africa, fused with English, Spanish and American Indigenous. I am interested in identifying and tracing specific distinguishing aspects from each of these parenting cultures.