Black Native Americans: The History Of A Shared & Complicated Legacy

Black Native Americans have always existed, yet their history remains one of the most overlooked and frequently misunderstood chapters of American history. Their stories are woven into the history of Indigenous nations, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, resistance, and the fight for freedom. But how did people of African descent become part of Native American tribes between the 1600s and 1800s? The answer is far more complex than many people realize.

According to the National Museum of the American Indian, Black and Indigenous identities are not mutually exclusive. Black Native Americans are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as descendants of Indigenous peoples of Africa. This history also includes Freedmen: formerly enslaved Black men and women held in bondage by citizens of the Five Tribes—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw—and their descendants.

These communities represent generations of African and Indigenous ancestry, cultural exchange, survival, and resistance. Their identities carry the legacy of ancestors who endured enslavement, displacement, colonial violence, and systemic erasure, all while they attempted to preserve their cultures and communities.

As the National Museum of the American Indian explains, “It is impossible to lump Black-Native identities into a single identity. We are as diverse as we are numerous and our lived experiences, like our identities, are not monolithic. We therefore refer to ourselves in a number of ways, such as “Afro-Indigenous,” “Black Native,” “Indigenous and Black,” “Black and Native,” “Black and a tribal identity.”

To understand how these identities developed, we have to go back to the 1600s, when African people began escaping slavery in British-controlled territories and seeking freedom in Spanish Florida.

Spanish Florida: An Early Pathway to Freedom

During the late 1600s, enslaved Africans in the British colonies of Carolina and Georgia began making dangerous journeys south toward Spanish-controlled Florida. Unlike the British colonies, Spanish Florida offered some enslaved people an opportunity to escape bondage through conversion to Catholicism, military service, and alliances with Spanish authorities, according to historians The Yarbros.

For many, reaching Florida meant risking their lives. Runaways faced slave catchers, bounty hunters, and the possibility of recapture. Some never made it to freedom. Others found refuge in the swamps and settlements of Spanish Florida, where they established communities outside the control of British slaveholders.

One particularly significant development occurred in 1687, when eight African men, two women, and a nursing child escaped from Carolina and reached Spanish St. Augustine. They requested baptism into the Catholic faith, and Florida’s governor sheltered them under the principle of Christian obligation, refusing to return them to their enslavers.

News of their successful escape spread, encouraging other enslaved Africans to make the dangerous journey south.

In November 1693, Spanish King Charles II issued a proclamation offering freedom to enslaved people escaping from British colonies who would convert to Catholicism and serve the Spanish Crown. This policy helped establish Florida as an important refuge for people fleeing slavery and laid the groundwork for some of the earliest free Black settlements in what would become the United States.

The Rise of the Black Seminoles

One of the most significant examples of African and Indigenous history coming together is the emergence of the Black Seminoles,

According to the Seminole Cemetery Association, the history of the Black Seminoles began in the early 18th century, when African, Indigenous, and European colonial societies increasingly came into contact.

As more enslaved Africans escaped from plantations throughout the Carolinas and Georgia, many sought protection in Spanish Florida. Some established independent maroon communities near Indigenous settlements, particularly those belonging to the Seminoles, whose ancestry includes Creek and other Southeastern Indigenous peoples who migrated into Florida.

These relationships developed into powerful alliances. Although Black communities and Seminole communities often maintained distinct social identities, they lived alongside one another, developed shared customs, exchanged knowledge, and sometimes intermarried.

Black Seminoles contributed agricultural expertise, military knowledge, and labor to these communities, while Seminole people provided protection, political alliances, and opportunities for social integration.

Together, they developed a distinctive Afro-Indigenous society that would become an important force in resisting slavery, colonial expansion, and American territorial ambitions.

The Five Civilized Tribes and the Complicated History of Enslavement

While some Indigenous communities provided refuge to formerly enslaved Africans, the relationship between African Americans and Native nations was not always one of freedom and solidarity.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, five Southeastern Native nations—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole—became collectively known as the Five Civilized Tribes. The label was given to them by European Americans because these nations had adopted certain European-American cultural, political, economic, and religious practices.

These changes included Christianity, European-style education, participation in plantation agriculture, and, among some members of these nations, the adoption of chattel slavery.

Some wealthy Native slaveholders purchased enslaved Africans and established plantations, particularly as cotton production expanded throughout the Southeast. This created complicated relationships between Native and Black communities, with some Indigenous people participating in the same system of racialized enslavement imposed by white Americans, The Yarbros noted.

The late Robert Remini, an historian, wrote about this complex dynamic, previously noting, according to The African American Registry, “They presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans.” According to Remini, George Washington’s “six-point plan included impartial justice toward Indians, regulating the purchase of Indian lands, promoting commerce, promoting experiments to civilize or improve Indian society, granting the president the authority to give presents, and punishing those who violated Indian rights.”

However, it is important to recognize that Native nations were not monolithic. Not every tribal citizen enslaved Africans, and Indigenous communities had different relationships with slavery, African Americans, and European settlers.

There is also a painful irony in this history: some Native nations adopted aspects of the plantation economy and European-American society in an effort to protect their sovereignty and lands, only to experience forced removal and the seizure of their territories by the United States.

The forced removal of these nations, particularly during the 1830s and the Trail of Tears, further complicated the lives of both Indigenous people and the Black people living within their communities.