Early Forms of African Flight and Rebellion in the Southeast Region of North America

Spain controlled the area now known as Florida from the 16th to the 18th centuries which resulted in the development of a mode of resistance which held off British and United States settlers and slave drivers for two hundred years

By Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Wednesday February 11, 2026

African American History Month Series No. 2

Chattel slavery in North America in the popular mind has its origins within the English colonies of Virginia and neighboring territories.  

In 1619, twenty Africans from the area now known as Angola, were kidnapped and transported circuitously to the colony of Virginia.

Yet, more than a century before the establishment of the colony of Virginia and the proliferation of African enslavement, explorer Christopher Columbus had been contracted by the Spanish monarchy to search for riches beyond Europe. Thinking he was in India, Columbus landed in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is today’s states of Haiti and Dominican Republic. 

These historical circumstances would initiate a new economic system based upon the capture, sell and forced labor of African people. In the Caribbean, many of the Indigenous people died from forced labor and diseases imposed upon them by the European colonialists. 

Beginning in 1513, Spanish explorers moved into the area known today as the State of Florida where they set up colonial outposts. They brought with them enslaved Africans who were later subjected to a system of labor exploitation which took into account the need for collaborators in their colonial endeavors. 

By the mid-1600s, Spain would be in fierce competition with the English over the control of trading routes, the seizure of lands and the enslavement of African people. Portugal, one of the major rivals of Spain, also conquered territory in South America later known as Brazil. 

In addition to the presence of Spain, Britain and Portugal in the Western Hemisphere, France took over areas in the South along with Quebec in Canada. The Netherlands moved into the Northeast region in the early 1600s taking over the areas which are known today as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, among others. 

However, the British would take control of New York rendering the Dutch to a secondary colonial role in North America. Eventually they would force out the Spanish and French colonialists in the Southeast and Southwest of the North American continent. 

One source on the history of Spanish colonialism and slavery in North America noted:

“In Spanish Florida (first settled in 1513), settlers purchased enslaved Africans for various forms of labor, but scholars argue that slavery in this context proved less restrictive. As a military tactic, the Spanish offered freedom to slaves who escaped from their English rivals, particular from the nearby English colonies of Carolina and later Georgia. This led to various free African settlements in Florida composed of runaway slaves. These escaped Africans often intermixed with Seminole American Indians in northern Florida. By the nineteenth century, tensions between African and American Indian Seminoles and the United States government led to a series of violent conflicts called the Seminole Wars (1814-19, 1835-42, 1855-58). A plantation economy based on enslaved labor did not fully form in Florida until it became a part of the United States in the early nineteenth century.” (https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/sectionii_introduction/contrasting_beginnings_of_slav)

Those Africans who pledged allegiance to the Spanish Crown in Florida and agreed to serve in their military forces were able to exercise personal freedoms largely absent from the later British system of colonial domination. Under Britain during the course of the 17th century Africans went from being indentured servants to permanently enslaved. 

The colony and later commonwealth of Virginia was the first British outpost which imported enslaved Africans for the purpose of labor exploitation in what later became the United States. By the time of the American war of separation from Britain, Africans were fleeing from the plantations to the areas controlled by Spain. 

In another war in 1812 when the British attempted to economically strangle and retake their former colonies in the U.S., they had established a fort in North Florida as a base to fight the American military. When the British did not prevail in the War of 1812, the Royal Army turned over their arsenals and other resources to Free Africans and their Indigenous allies. 

Africans established a Fort which proved to be a grave threat to the U.S. government. Fort Negro (Black) was then attacked by U.S. cannons killing approximately 270 people. This massacre demonstrated the extent to which the U.S. government would go to eliminate any threat to African enslavement in North America. 

By 1819 under U.S. pressure, the Spanish signed a treaty relinquishing its claims to Washington which asserted its colonial control over Indigenous land and the independent communities of African people. These developments by the U.S. did not end the resistance to the colonial encroachment from Washington. 

The Black Seminole Wars Against the U.S. Government

Africans who had been formerly enslaved formed alliances with the Indigenous groups in Florida known as Seminoles. During the period between 1817 and 1858, three wars were fought against the settler expansion of the U.S. by a coalition of African and Indigenous political and military forces. 

The Museum of Florida History says of this period on its website:

“The United States viewed Spanish Florida as a lawless frontier refuge for Native tribes and Africans who had escaped enslavement. It wanted to rid the border area of these threats. An attack by Indigenous peoples on an American boat on the Apalachicola River provided the pretext for invading northwestern Florida. The US forces raided deep into the interior, burning hundreds of Seminole and Black homesteads. The already-controversial presence of the US military was worsened by wartime incidents…. General Andrew Jackson’s actions threatened to provoke war with both Spain and Great Britain. He demanded that Spanish Pensacola surrender, which led Spain to strongly protest the violation of its territory. When the war ended in 1818, West Florida was under American occupation.” (https://www.museumoffloridahistory.com/explore/exhibits/permanent-exhibits/la-florida/forever-changed-phase-2/the-second-spanish-period-1784-1821/)

When the U.S. military and other settlers began to pour into Florida, Washington advised the Seminole leaders to abandon their lands and move to “Indian Territory” in Oklahoma. There was a treaty signed between some Seminole leaders and the U.S. in 1832 where they agreed to move to Oklahoma. However, many of the Seminoles and Africans refused to move and instead armed themselves in defense units which attacked incoming U.S. soldiers. 

According to an historical account of the Second Seminole War from 1835-1842:

“As Major Francis Dade marched from Fort Brooke toward Fort King, 180 Seminole warriors led by Micanopy, Alligator and Jumper attacked. Only one man of that army detachment survived the ambush. The campaigns of the Second Seminole War were an outstanding demonstration of guerrilla warfare by the Seminole. TheMicos Jumper, Alligator, Micanopy and Osceola, leading less than 3,000 warriors, were pitted against four U.S. generals and more than 30,000 troops. The Second Seminole War (1835-1842), usually referred to as the Seminole War proper, was the fiercest war waged by the U.S. government against American Indians. The United States spent more than $20 million fighting the Seminoles. The war left more than 1,500 soldiers and uncounted American civilians dead. And the obvious duplicity of the U.S. government's tactics marred Indian-white relations throughout the country for future generations.” (https://dos.fl.gov/florida-facts/florida-history/seminole-history/the-seminole-wars/)

The increased frustration of the U.S. government resulted in extreme acts of brutality and mass murder against the Black and Seminole people. Even though the hostilities were said to have ended in 1842 there was never a peace treaty signed. Later in 1858 fighting resumed between the U.S. settler state against many of the remaining Seminoles and Blacks which also ended with mass atrocities by Washington and its agents. By the conclusion of the Third Seminole War there were an estimated 200 of them left in the state of Florida. 

Flight and Rebellion as Responses to Enslavement and Settler Colonialism

The wars fought against the U.S. regime by the alliance between African and Seminole people in Florida during the early and mid-19th century provides one of the best historical examples of opposition to the expansion of the settler colonial project in North America. Even prior to this period, Africans and Indigenous people were able to negotiate alternative relationships with Spanish colonialists which were viewed as a threat by the British and later American settlers. 

Black Seminole warriors were distinguished for their military prowess as well as diplomatic acumen. Abraham, a Black Seminole served as an interpreter between the Indigenous nation and the U.S. government in 1825. Later John Horse would lead a group of Seminoles into Northern Mexico from “Indian Territory”. Slavery had been abolished in Mexico two decades earlier. 

In the 21st century there is greater interests in the history of the 19th century Black Seminole alliance and the wars fought against the U.S. settler state moving into Indigenous lands located in Georgia and Florida. The heroism of these African and Indigenous people is representative of the resistance to enslavement and genocide. 

This settler colonial state known as the U.S. was founded in the forced removals and genocide of the Native people along with the kidnapping and forced labor exploitation of Africans. The abolishment of this legacy can only be carried out with the acknowledgement of these crimes which were committed and the efforts of the Africans and Native people to resist and overthrow their oppressors.