Seminole Indians Removal

During these times of insurrection, white vigilance through terror, torture, and killings increased including bribing African Americans and Indians to do the corrupt work for them. The threat of African Americans aligning with Indians complicated matters for the whites. African Americans among the Indians would achieve freedom easier and would in turn help Indians fortify their defenses against whites who sought a policy of removing Indians west of the Mississippi River. The reluctance of many African Americans to leave Florida or separate from the Seminoles was intensified by their importance as food suppliers to the Indians, and they also had a special attachment to the land they cleared, tilled, and planted crops in Florida for decades that more rights and privileges under Spanish and British rule gave them. Consequently Seminole Indian unwillingness to return to Creek authority control in Oklahoma, from whom they had continuously separated for many decades, were important considerations to resist removal for both African Americans and Seminoles.

in 1826 to accompany Micanopy for preliminary meetings regarding the future Payne’s Landing Treaty (1832) earned him his freedom. While Abraham received his freedom from Micanopy, his free status would not be formally recorded until 1835. Although Southeastern Native American mythology regarded the African American as an inferior being to both Indians and whites, they understood that African Americans played an influential role in negotiating treaties with the federal government and respected their participation. This treaty was being created to further expedite the moving of the Seminoles out of Florida since the earlier Treaty of Moultrie Creek did not address the issue of removal from Florida. While the Moultrie Creek treaty specified removal from Florida within 20 years or so, the federal government desired to shorten the time to three years with the Payne’s Landing