Abraham, Seminole war-name Souanaffe Tustenukke, [2] called Yobly by some whites, [3] was a 19th-century Floridian who served as an interpreter and lieutenant for "Micanopy, the hereditary leader of the Alachua Seminoles." [4] As of July 1837, he was termed "the principal negro chief" of the Seminoles and by all accounts exerted a great influence on Micanopy, approximately 500 Black Seminoles, and the white Americans with whom he treated and negotiated. [5]
Abraham was born enslaved in Georgia in the 1790s and died in the 1870s in what is now Seminole County, Oklahoma. [6] He was described as having ties to Pensacola, having traveled to Washington, D.C., and the Indian Territory, and having had "fluent speech and polished manners." [7] He is sometimes described as Micanopy's "chief negro" in parallel with John Caesar, who was deemed "chief negro" to Ee-mat-la. [7] Abraham, sometimes called Negro Abram, was a key participant in the 1837–38 negotiations regarding the end of hostilities in the Second Seminole War, a potential move to the Indian Territory, and the legal status of "Indian slaves" versus "runaway plantation slaves." [8] Abraham founded a settlement called Pilaklikaha (Many Ponds), also known as Abraham's Old Town, that was home to 100 people in 1826 who grew "fields of rice, beans, melons, pumpkins, and peanuts" and managed herds of cattle and horses; American troops burned Peliklakaha to the ground in 1836. [9] Pilaklikaha was located about halfway between what is now Withlacoochee State Forest and Orlando. [9]
The Seminole Wars were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and American settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. A series of cross-border skirmishes escalated into the First Seminole War, when American General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. The U.S. and Spain soon negotiated the transfer of the territory with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
Center Hill is a city in Sumter County, Florida, United States. The population was 846 at the 2020 census.
The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, as well as independent groups. The Seminole people emerged in a process of ethnogenesis from various Native American groups who settled in Spanish Florida beginning in the early 1700s, most significantly northern Muscogee Creeks from what are now Georgia and Alabama.
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Creek and Black Seminoles as well as other allied tribes. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminoles' removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in Dade's massacre in 1835. This engagement officially started the war although there were a series of incidents leading up to the Dade battle. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842 by Colonel William Jenkins Worth.
Prospect Bluff Historic Sites is located in Franklin County, Florida, on the Apalachicola River, 6 miles (9.7 km) SW of Sumatra, Florida. The site contains the ruins of two forts.
The Black Seminoles, or Afro-Seminoles, are an ethnic group of mixed Native American and African origin associated with the Seminole people in Florida and Oklahoma. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free Africans, and escaped former slaves, who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. Many have Seminole lineage, but due to the stigma of having mixed origin, they have all been categorized as slaves or Freedmen in the past.
Holata Micco was a leader of the Seminoles in Florida during the Second Seminole War and was the remaining Seminole's most prominent chief during the Third Seminole War, when he led the Seminoles' last major resistance against the United States government. With the possibilities of military victory dwindling, he finally agreed to relocate with his people to Indian Territory in 1858. As part of the settlement, he was paid $6,500 plus $1,000 each for the subchiefs and $100 each for the women and children who went with him. Several sources claim that he is buried at the Fort Gibson National Cemetery, but it is disputed whether the grave marked "Captain Billy Bowlegs" is actually his or that of a different Billy Bowlegs.
Micanopy, also known as Mick-e-no-páh, Micco-Nuppe, Michenopah, Miccanopa, and Mico-an-opa, and Sint-chakkee, was the leading chief of the Seminole during the Second Seminole War.
Bolek, also spelled as Boleck or Bolechs, and known as Bowlegs by European Americans, was a Seminole principal chief, of the Alachua (Oconee) chiefly line. He was the younger brother of King Payne, who succeeded their father Cowkeeper as leading or principal chief in Florida. Bolek succeeded King Payne in 1812 when he was killed during the Patriot War.
Wild Cat, also known as Coacoochee or Cowacoochee (from Creek Kowakkuce "bobcat, wildcat") (c. 1807/1810–1857) was a leading Seminole chieftain during the later stages of the Second Seminole War and the nephew of Micanopy.
The Dade battle was an 1835 military defeat for the United States Army.
John Horse, also known as Juan Caballo, Juan Cavallo, John Cowaya and Gopher John, was a man of mixed African and Seminole ancestry who fought alongside the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War in Florida. He rose to prominence in the third year of what was to become a seven-year war when the first generation of Black Seminole leaders was largely decimated and the primary Seminole war chief, Osceola, fell into the hands of the American military commander, General Thomas Sydney Jesup.
Negro Fort was a short-lived fortification built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, in a remote part of what was at the time Spanish Florida. It was intended to support a never-realized British attack on the U.S. via its southwest border, by means of which they could "free all these Southern Countries [states] from the Yoke of the Americans".
John Forbes (1767–1823) and his elder brother Thomas Forbes (d.1808) were Scottish traders who operated in East Florida, West Florida, Spanish Florida and the southeastern borderlands during the tail end of the eighteenth century. John Forbes & Company took control of the assets of its precursor trading firm, Panton, Leslie & Company, after William Panton died in 1801, followed by John Leslie in 1803.
Fort Basinger's original site is located approximately 35 miles (56 km) west of Fort Pierce, Florida, along U. S. Highway 98 in Highlands County, Florida. It was a stockaded fortification with two blockhouses that was built in 1837 by the United States Army. It was one of the military outposts created during the Second Seminole War to assist Colonel Zachary Taylor's troops to confront and capture Seminole Indians and their allies in the central part of the Florida Territory in the Lake Okeechobee region. The Seminole Indians and their allies were resisting forced removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River as directed by the Indian Removal Act.
Luis Fatio Pacheco was an Afro-Spanish enslaved person who became known in 19th century Spanish Florida for his connection to the Black Seminole community.
Louis (Luis) Fatio Pacheco was an Afro-Spanish enslaved person who became known in 19th century Spanish Florida for his connection to the Black Seminole community.
Fort Drane, also known as Fort Auld Lang Syne was a fort built during the Second Seminole War in 1835. While the exact location of the fort is debated, generally speaking, it was located in what is now Marion County, Florida, possibly some 10 miles south of Micanopy. It was one of many fortifications built in Florida as a part of a strategy by the U.S. military to defeat the Seminole Indians.
John Caesar was a Black Seminole lieutenant and interpreter to Ee-mat-la, hereditary chief of the St. Johns River Seminoles in Florida. In Joshua Giddings' history of the wars against the Seminole, Caesar was described as "an old man and somewhat of a privileged character among both Indians and Exiles." Recent scholarship has deemed him a "primary instigator of the destruction of plantations in East Florida by primarily Black Seminoles and plantation slaves," partially validating the thesis that the Seminole Wars should be considered slave rebellions as much as wars for Indigenous survival.
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