Social History of the Africans and Indians In Florida

African slaves and the Indigenous people of the Southern United States and Northern Mexico were targets of harsh and racist treatment by both the European and American white colonizers. Due to the marginalization of African slaves and Native American peoples the question of how they responded to this oppression has hardly been explored by historians. Scholars have written extensively about the separate lives of both these groups of people, including their interactions with white Europeans, but less is known about how these two groups interacted with one another. Historians have noted that the first appearance of white Europeans only predated African slaves by around a decade. The first African slaves to arrive in the Americas came around 1502, and perhaps more significantly, the first record of slaves running away to Indian villages occurred in 1503. Using primary documents such as government records, as well as visual evidence such as maps and surveys in combination with secondary the evidence provided by the articles below, one can see how African slaves often fled to Native American villages and lived alongside one another in response to their white oppressors. Also that when these peoples came together society became more beneficial to not only Africans and Amerindians but in some instances Europeans as well. This paper will focus on the social history of the Africans and Indians in Florida and how these people lived in conjecture with one another as well as how they worked with and resisted the white oppressors. As well as looking at these groups and their internal forces, this paper will also look at the external forces which shaped the way these people lived, specifically the Seven Years War, and the three Seminole Wars. ...

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... of refuge in a continent of oppression. The constant changing of ownership in Florida allowed for the observation of different European powers as well as the emergence of the American government. To invoke a common cliché for a moment it has often been said that those who write history shape it, but the history of Florida is much better observed by those who could never tell their story. The societies created in Florida stood as the shining beacon of what White, Black and Red interactions could have been. Slavery, warfare and economy all shaped the ways in which the people of Florida lived, yet the marginalized could still flourish. Slaves and Indians could become respectable individuals and even powerful leaders. The history of interactions in Florida provides an interesting approach to American history as it is one of the most diverse yet unknown chapters.