The Seminole Freedmen

The Seminole Freedmen are a group of black Oklahomans with a unique history.  As previously mentioned the Seminoles have a long established history of interaction with people of African descent.  The blacks who joined with the Seminoles were not treated as slaves, but instead were treated as allies.  Between the years of 1835 and 1842 these two groups, the runaway slaves and the Seminole Indians, engaged the United States in major wars in history.  One of those wars, known as the Second Seminole War, cost Americans 20 million dollars and the lives of 1500 soldiers.  However, it cost the Seminoles a great deal more.

At the conclusion of the war the Seminoles, including their black allies were forcibly removed to Indian Territory in what is now eastern Oklahoma.  The southern slave owners at the time encouraged the army to return the blacks to slave status but the army refused.  Perhaps in part because the military officers had been impressed with Indian Negro warriors fighting skills and feared the consequences of returning them to slavery in the southern states.^[1]

Today about 800 Freedmen live in Seminole County, Oklahoma.  They had endured violent attempts to re-enslave them, the destruction of civil war, bitter injustice, racism and segregation.  Through it all the Freedmen retained a strong sense of group identity and still participate in Seminole tribal affairs.  Those who remember the Seminole Wars from their past history classes will probably remember them as Indian wars.  Generations of American historians have found it convenient to forget that the United States government once fought a major war against escaped Negro slaves.  I suspect that most Oklahomans are unaware that the Seminole Freedmen exist.  It is noteworthy to understand that the Muskogee Indian word Este Luste, meaning black or Negro, is how the Freedmen’s ancestors referred to themselves.  They also referred to themselves as simply Seminoles.  Today’s Freedmen frequently use the term “Native” to distinguish themselves from the whites and blacks who arrived in Indian Territory at or after the turn of the century.^[2]

The Treaty of 1866 also had a significant impact on the Seminole Freedmen, just as it did with the Freedmen of other tribes.  Under the treaty provisions, The Seminole Freedmen were adopted by the Seminoles and placed on equal footing with the Indians.  The Seminole Freedmen had finally found a home on their long and difficult journey.  This official power enabled the Seminole Freedmen to control six of the forty-two seats on the tribal council, and several of them served with distinction in the Seminole Lighthorse Police. 

Not only did the official conditions change for the Freedmen the day to day lives changed as well.  The Freedmen re-established their towns and built churches, cleared land and made prosperous farms, party due to the protections offered by the tribal government.  The Freedmen and Seminole Indian children attended the same schools and intermarriage was common during this time.  In the days following the Civil War the Seminole Tribe was divided into fourteen bands, two of which composed of Freedmen.  Caesar Bruner and Dosa Barsus became the first leader of their respective bands.^[3]

Unfortunately this industrious period would be short lived for the Seminole Freedmen.  The Dawes Commission would soon take the necessary steps toward dissolving the tribal governments in Indian Territory.  Agreement was reached with the Seminoles in 1897 to sever the tribal lands into individual allotments among the Indians and the Freedmen.  Each allotee would receive a minimum of forty acres, which was non-taxable and could not be sold after the extinguishment of the tribal government.  By 1899, the Commission had completed their work and assigned all allotments.  At the time there were approximately 3,000 Seminoles and roughly one-third of them were Freedmen.  This would be the beginning of the end for the Seminole Freedmen who had lived the past century in the ways of the Indian.

In 1901, the Seminole and the Freedmen were made citizens of the United States for the first time.  By 1904 there was enormous pressure from land hungry whites to remove restrictions on the allotted lands.  President Theodore Roosevelt, succumbed to that pressure and removed the restrictions from the Freedman lands.  At this same time the railroads were opening up the territory to thousands of whites who were eager to swarm the Freedmen and defraud them of their land and other property.^[4]  By 1906, the Seminole Freedmen were once again in the white man’s world.^[5]

In 1906 Congress passed the Enabling Act permitting the people of Oklahoma and Indian Territories to form a single state.  After statehood in 1907, the state legislature provided the additional avenues for whites to seize more rights from the Seminole Freedmen.^[6]  The Seminole Freedmen had come to enjoy a privileged lifestyle by most standards at the time.  Prominent Freemen formed organizations to oppose these developments, but there efforts were not successful and things worsened to an atmosphere of violence and fear around 1910.

One of the most important was the Negro Protection League led by J.  Coody Johnson, a black lawyer.  In the final days of the Seminole Nation Johnson had gained prominence as a legal advisor and interpreter for Chief Hulputta Micco.  Johnson was a Creek Freedman who spoke the Muskogee language fluently, and who was well respected in the Seminole community.  In 1910 a rash of lynchings began in Oklahoma, which was to continue for almost a decade.  Some of the Seminole Freedmen turned to Chief Sam’s Back-to Africa Movement.  Chief Sam was native of the Gold Coast in West Africa who appeared in Eastern Oklahoma in 1913 exhorting a return to Africa and selling shares in a colonization scheme.  He collected enough money to buy a ship, and in August, 1914, he set sail with sixty followers from Galveston bound for the Gold Coast.  The group reached their destination in January, 1915, after a brief detainment by British officials in Sierra Leone.  The colony lasted barely eight months, but most of the Oklahoma blacks managed to return home.  Others joined Native organizations such as The Crazy Snake Rebellion, led by Chitto Harjo, a Creek Indian who preached nativism and opposed the Dawes Commission.^[7]

Some Freedmen continue to prosper despite these setbacks.  Many of them fought in World War I and II, and many left Oklahoma to settle elsewhere.  A few of the Freedmen became wealthy during the 1920s when important oil discoveries were made in Seminole County.  Many are still poor, but opportunities have arisen since the civil rights era of the 1960s to enable more Freedmen of all tribes to be educated and productive members of society.

The Undocumented Freedmen

The process of documenting the Freedmen was set against a background of racism, deceit, segregation, and greed.  These are not the factors that usually produce just and equitable results, thus the process of documenting the Freedmen served only to further legitimize illegitimate and, in my opinion, illegal processes that served to enrich the coffers of those who were supposed to be protectors.  The end result was a process that omitted a vast number of people who had blood ties or at least cultural ties for several generations with the Indian peoples that comprise the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma.