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Two hundred years ago, free Blacks and fugitive slaves joined the Seminole tribes in the Florida territory, and became known as the Black Seminoles. They formed alliances with other Indigenous populations to fight white colonization in the area. A man named John Horse (also known as Juan Caballo, Juan Cavallo, and Gopher John) defeated the U.S. Army on three frontiers to resist returning his people to slavery, while helping the Seminoles defend their homes.
The Florida Seminoles are unique among the Native American tribes and Nations in that they emerged from various other Native American groups to form their own society. In fact, the name Seminole means “runaway” or “wild one.” The Florida territory, owned by Spain, was also a refuge for fugitive slaves for at least 70 years by the time of the American Revolution.
Many of these people joined the Seminoles or lived in communities that developed a strategic alliance with them, and came to be known as the Black Seminoles. Black Seminole culture took shape in the early 19th century, becoming a dynamic mixture of African, Native American, Spanish, and slave traditions.
The Black Seminoles flourished in this environment. An Army lieutenant ran across a Black Seminole community in 1826, and recorded his own observations:
“We found these negroes in possession of large fields of the finest land, producing large crops of corn, beans, melons, pumpkins, and other esculent vegetables. … I saw, while riding along the borders of the ponds, fine rice growing; and in the village large corn-cribs were filled, while the houses were larger and more comfortable than those of the Native Americans themselves.”
Naturally, white colonists were envious of their bounty. The Black Seminoles were estimated to number just under 1,000. However, unlike other Black communities in the South, their settlements were highly militarized. This worried American slaveholders. Adding to their troubles was the deep resentment of Andrew Jackson, who made destroying their settlements a top priority. Jackson didn’t forgive the Black Seminoles for aligning with the British during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The Black Seminoles had good reason for doing so; they were frequent targets of raids by southern militias who believed that all Black people should be held in bondage.
Andrew Jackson would not tolerate the safe haven the Seminole tribe was providing for runaway slaves, and ordered the U.S. army to attack a garrison that was a refuge for escaped slaves, killing 270 people. This would help launch what would become known as the First Seminole War (1817-1818). While Jackson ensured Black Seminole communities were attacked during this conflict, the Seminoles returned the favor and raided American settlements along the Georgia–Florida border.
After multiple U.S. military expeditions into the territory, Spain finally gave up and formally ceded Florida to the United States in 1821. Andrew Jackson became the territorial governor of Florida. The Black Seminoles’ fears were proven true, as Jackson ordered an attack on one of their largest villages and forced almost one-third of the residents into slavery. The Army urged the Seminole tribe to leave their lands and relocate to the western Indian Territory, now known as Oklahoma. Some Seminole leaders agreed and signed a treaty to leave Florida by 1835, although some of the chiefs claim to have been “wheedled and bullied into signing.” Others refused to sign and fled to the Florida Everglades.
The Indian Removal Act, which was signed in 1830, authorized the removal of Native Americans to the lands west of the Mississippi river. The forced migration of Indians from their ancestral lands became known as the “Trail of Tears.”
The Trail of Tears was the most horrific example of Native American genocide, not only displacing thousands of Native Americans and destroying their native cultures, but leaving thousands to die in the death march they were forced to take en route to the West. The Seminole leaders remaining in Florida didn’t go willingly. They prepared for war, and fought ferociously against this forced migration using guerilla tactics. The Second Seminole War was the fiercest war ever waged by the U.S. government against American Indians. The United States would end up spending more than $20 million fighting the Seminoles.
The Seminoles, Black Seminoles, and other Native American tribes across Florida coordinated fighting off the military advances. Black Seminoles fought particularly hard because they were fighting for their very lives and freedom. Andrew Jackson, who was elected president in 1828, had ordered that the Black Seminoles be moved west and incorporated with the Creek Indian Nation, knowing full well that this would subject them to southern-style slavery.
The Black Seminoles fought ferociously, as U.S. Army Lieutenant John T. Sprague attested when he witnessed the Black Seminoles in action:
“The Negroes, from the commencement of the Florida war, have, for their numbers, been the most formidable foe, more blood-thirsty, active, and revengeful, than the Indian. … They were a most cruel and malignant enemy. For them to surrender would be servitude to the whites; but to retain an open warfare, secured to them plunder, liberty, and importance.”
After years of fighting the Black Seminoles, General Thomas Jesup feared that their victories might inspire slave rebellions across the South. In fact, the U.S. was careful to refer to these wars as Indian wars, because any indication that Blacks were fighting and winning would, they feared, inspire slave rioting. General Jesup wrote to Jackson, “This, you may be assured, is a Negro, not an Indian war; and if it be not speedily put down, the south will feel the effects of it on their slave population before the end of the next season.”
By the Second Seminole War (1835-42), John Horse, a warrior of African and Indian descent, became the leader of the Black Seminoles. There were only 4,800 Blacks and Indians opposing 34,000 Florida colonists with military support, but amongst those 34,000 were 16,000 enslaved people.
The Black Seminoles had visited the surrounding plantations over months leading up to the war, helping to inspire an uprising. The Seminoles quickly overran multiple Florida plantations, with hundreds of enslaved people joining the Black Seminole brigades.
By 1836, 17 of Florida’s largest and most-developed sugar plantations were destroyed, and the enslaved people were freed. In 1837, John Horse led a contingent of 400 Black and Indian allies to face off against Colonel Zachary Taylor and his 1,000 military troops. It’s likely you haven’t learned any of this because historians have still failed to recognize the size and scope of this rebellion today.
Since 1860, scholars have subscribed to the conventional wisdom that no major slave rebellions took place in the U.S. after 1831. This mistaken notion has many sources, but it mainly stems from a southern tradition that sought to bury all memory of slave rebellions. The tradition nearly erased the Black Seminole uprising from national consciousness.
Indian aspects of the Florida war entered national history, as did the maroon elements to a lesser extent, but not the slave uprising. And yet evidence of its existence abounds, in military records, newspapers, plantation journals, legal petitions—even Southern pleas for help in quelling the violence.
General Jesup issued what would be the first emancipation proclamation in the United States, predating Lincoln’s “emancipation” by 25 years. The Black Seminoles had won, and Jesup had to tell the former slaveholders that their runaway slaves were not coming back. Further, he announced that these people could not be conquered, and the cost of war was too high to continue.
John Horse tried working within the system with the promise of peace. However, that peace wouldn’t last. General Jesup captured him and many other Seminole leaders by seizing them while under a false white flag of truce.
They were put in the notorious Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, which held Florida’s strongest prison. Horse and the other leaders accomplished the only known escape of this fortress, which has become an integral part of the National Monument’s legacy.
A Third Seminole War, the last one, would finally remove all but 500 Seminole warriors, whose descendants make up the Florida Seminoles today.
After years of broken promises, Horse and the Seminole leader Wild Cat, who was a strong supporter of the Black Seminoles, decided to lead a mass exodus to Mexico. The Mexican military secured a large land grant for the Black Seminoles in return for John Horse’s allegiance to the Mexican military, which was fighting the Apache and Comanche Indians at the time.
Horse would spend the remainder of his life defending and advocating for his people. He would travel back and forth between the capitals of Mexico and the United States for the rest of his life, lobbying on behalf of his people’s freedom. He was a brave and honorable man, and one who is mostly forgotten in history.
Instead, the students in this state will be told about the “heroism” of Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, whom Donald Trump decided was worthy of hanging a portrait of in the Oval Office. This is despite the fact that Jackson was the man responsible for the genocide of thousands of Blacks and Indians.
John Horse, however, truly was an American hero. He led the largest slave revolt in U.S. history, won the only emancipation of rebellious enslaved people long before the Civil War even started, and spearheaded the largest mass exodus of enslaved people in U.S. history.
Florida schools should hail their heroes, and Horse is one of them. Yet DeSantis’ plan to allow citizens to sue schools who they believe are teaching critical race theory ensured this week that his name won’t even be uttered in our schools. It will be a risk just to tell students that slavery was a bad thing in the first place:
Considering DeSantis’ specific proposal, what if a teacher teaches something very broad, like “slavery was bad”? That is something that CRT scholars would agree with, though it’s not a sentiment that is unique to CRT by any means. Would that be enough to justify a lawsuit? And if a lawsuit did take place, would the teacher have to defend themselves, or would it be the responsibility of their school district?
John Horse literally fought for the ideal of freedom that this nation was founded upon, and his legacy embodies the American spirit far more than Gov. DeSantis, Andrew Jackson, or Donald Trump ever could.
We have allowed racist authoritarians to keep stories of Black heroes like John Horse and Robert Smalls from our students for over 150 years, with no end in sight. This isn’t just about history. Right now, we are in the midst of a grand fight over civil, immigration, and democratic rights in this nation. If we can’t push back on this right-wing, government-backed censorship against these heroes of the past, I wonder how many centuries it will be before we are allowed to tell school children about what is going on today.
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