When the Gullah Beat the U.S. in Back-to-Back Wars

The Gullah won three wars against the United States in the 1800s. What had happened was…

The U.S. declared itself independent in 1776. That’s when the states went from being colonies of Britain to becoming the United States of America. It already had the 13 colonies/states but were hungry for more.

Problem was, Spain owned Florida and wasn’t about to give it up so easy. They put word out that if black folk made their way to Florida from the low country, they’d be free from slavery. Spain wasn’t being righteous; they figured black folk would be their bodyguards.

Florida was nothing but swamps and mosquitoes. Folk were catching malaria out there. It was hard living. But the Gullah Geechee who’d run away there preferred that than plantations.

And they made the land livable, started families and intermingled cultures with Native Americans. White folks called em “Seminoles,” meaning wild/untamed. The more melanated ones were called Black Seminoles.

Note: Runaway slaves who established their own land/communities were known as maroons. They were self-emancipated, meaning they freed their damn selves. There were maroon communities in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Nova Scotia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, Brazil, etc. #WeAllCousins.

In 1818, Andrew Jackson (who was then an army general) led the army to claim/colonize Florida. The Gullah and the Native Americans (aka the Seminoles) fought em and won. About 200 Black Seminoles, according to Rosalyn Howard’s book, Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, dipped from Florida to Andros Island in the Bahamas between 1821 and 1837. They didn’t wanna risk being enslaved again.

An army general in 1826 wrote about the Black Seminoles in Florida: “We found the Negroes in possession of large fields of the finest land, producing large crops of corn, beans, melons, pumpkins and other esculent vegetables. They are chiefly runway slaves from Georgia who have put themselves under the protection of Micanopy.”

1818 actually wasn’t the first time the U.S. tried to fight ’em. They lost so fast and so bad that they called the first couple times “skirmishes” instead of wars. It’s like they were saying, “We wasn’t ready yet, so those don’t count.”

The U.S. intentionally called ’em Indian wars because they feared calling em “negro wars” would lead to slave riots. But they knew. In a letter to Jackson, Army General Thomas Jesup wrote, “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.”

Jackson became president in 1829 and signed the Indian Removal Act the following year. As a slave owner himself, he wanted to push the Native Americans out west and expand the cotton kingdom into Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, etc.

George Washington figured the best way to deal with the Native Americans was to “civilize” ’em. The same way that Gullah Geechee were shamed into living and speaking more American than African, the Native Americans went through the same thang. But Andrew Jackson wasn’t into civilizing; he proudly wore the nickname “Indian killer.”

By 1836, he’d snatched all those southern states EXCEPT Florida. The Seminoles weren’t giving up their pride land easy. Jackson waged war against ’em again in 1835 and lost again.

In 1842, the U.S. finally beat em and forced em outta Florida and onto the Trail of Tears into Oklahoma. Some stayed there, others went to Texas, and a good bit of em went on to Mexico. #WeAllCousins. In 1845, Florida became the 27th state to join the U.S.A.

After the second Seminole War, the U.S. decided to chill for a sec and leave the remaining Seminoles in Florida alone. Then the president at the time, Franklin Pierce, decided to get the rest of Florida too. So the third war popped off, but the U.S. ended up just paying the rest of the Seminoles to leave.

In 1870, the U.S., recognizing that the Seminoles were hella strong and organized in war, invited em to join the U.S. Army. They were called the “Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.”

In 1978, historians interviewed remaining scouts in Brackettville, Texas and discovered that many still spoke Gullah and ate Gullah dishes 💛

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