They Came West With the Indians, "Captured Prisoners of War, Black Seminoles"

    “As the war progressed, the ranks of blacks were swelled by refugees from Florida plantations and others captured by the Indians. It is impossible to say how many blacks were among the Seminoles during the war. One early estimate set the number of black warriors at 250, with 150 of these estimated to be runaways. Another estimate set the total number of blacks at 1,400, of whom only an estimated two hundred were slaves of the Indians. Yet when the Seminoles were finally removed between 1838 and 1843, nearly five hundred blacks went west with them.”

Africans and Seminoles, From Removal to Emancipation, Dr. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr.

   On Sept 22, 1837, General Thomas S. Jesup who oversaw a portion of the Seminole removal from Florida, wrote to the Secretary of War, Poinsett, seeking “sanctions” for actions he undertook regarding the purchase of “negroes, captured by the Creek,” for which he paid $8,000. 

 

   Jesup’s letter to the Secretary argued that “promises made to them before they entered the service, to all Indian negroes and other Indian property captured by them.” He went on to bolster his argument by informing Secretary Poinsett his rationale for his actions, “To end all difficulty on that subject, I have purchased the negroes from them on account of the public for eight thousand dollars. There are about eighty of the negroes besides Abram’s family, and those who are free; some of them perhaps, may be found on investigation to be the property of citizens.”

 

   Clearly, Jesup’s actions of paying the “Creek Warriors” the $8,000 was done before he received approval from the War Department and as a way of demonstrating the urgency of his actions, he included, perhaps, his reasons for the payment. 

 

   “The Creek Indians had been promised a reward for the captures they should make of negroes belonging to citizens of the United States-had compensation not been promised they would have taken no prisoners but would have put all to death.”

 

   Perhaps, Jesup rightfully concluded that since the Creeks were entitled to this “reward” therefore, justifying his “compromised payment for eighty negroes” at “twenty dollars for each slave captured.”

 

   Jesup’s letter reveals a lot more about this transaction. He suggested “The Seminole Annuity, it seems to me, might be charged with the amount paid to the Indians for these negroes, as well as with the reward for securing those who belonged to citizens.” There is a certain duplicity in this payment, making the Seminoles pay for the claims of slaves by United States citizens, as well as paying the Creek Indians for capturing them to avoid the murder of eighty slaves. Jesup concluded the payment of twenty dollars a slave to the Creek Indians was “entirely satisfactory to them though it is far less than the value of the negroes.”

 

   The struggle of the Seminoles in Florida and the Blacks that lived among them had been problematic from the start. As early as 1823 and the signing of the Treaty at Camp Moultrie, a stipulation was written in the document “that all runaway slaves which go into the Indian country after the date of that treaty, shall be taken up by the Indians, and restored to their owners.” It was the idea that the Seminole Nation in Florida was a harbor for runaway slaves from nearby states, that made it an imperative to remove the Seminoles and the blacks that lived among them west of the Mississippi. This was a population of black people that had minimal control if any on their freedom of movement. This was a problem for the nearby states when the nation was in Florida and could become a problem again, in Indian Territory.

   “It is highly important to the slave holding states that these negroes be sent out of the country; and I would strongly recommend that they be sent to one of our colonies in Africa.”

 

   The muster rolls for the Seminoles and Negroes “captured prisoners of war” being removed west are loaded with good historical and genealogical information. These rolls offer something unique about the story of removal. In no other tribe that was removed west are the names of the African and African-Native descendants that came with them. When the Seminole Nation commemorates their forced removal west of the Mississippi, the story of those Black people among them should always be included.

M-234 Seminole Muster Roll #290, Frame 247 (Ancestry.com)