Black Indian in Southeastern America

African slaves were brought to America to supposedly to labor in the place of the Indigenous people, who showed themselves ill-suited to enforced tasks, and moreover were being annihilated in the Spanish colonies in the 1500’s. African slaves lived among the Seminole from an early period.  The first intimate relation of an extensive character established between Africans and Indians in America was that as fellow slaves. It’s remembered that Africans were imported into Spanish America to take the place of the Indian. According to J.B. Davis, "Indian Territory in 1878," Chronicles of Oklahoma IV (1926): 264, a Cherokee from Oklahoma remembered his father's tale of the Spanish slave trade, "At an early state the Spanish engaged in the slave trade on this continent and in so doing kidnapped hundreds of thousands of the Indians from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to work their mines in the West Indies.” The Indigenous Indians were said to lack the physical stamina to endure the physical labors of work on the plantations or in the mines.  Estevanico, the famous companion of Cabeza de Vaca, the explorer, in 1528-36, was a Black Moor.  Estevanico (pronounced es-tay-vahn-EE-co), also called Estevan, Esteban, Estebanico, Black Stephen, and Stephen the Moor was a Muslim slave from northern Africa (Azamor, Morocco) who was one of the early explorers of the Southwestern United States. The importance of African companions of Spanish explorers has been discussed by Wright (Am. Anthrop., iv, 217-28, 1902). Everywhere that explorers like Ponce De Leon, Vazquez De Ayllon, and Hernando De Soto went "exploring" throughout the American Southeast, they were accompanied by bloodhounds, chains, and iron collars for the acquisition and exporting of Indian slaves, according to Edward Gaylord Bourne, Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, 2 Vols. (New York, 1922), 60, 94-9, 103-105.

African slaves and their descendents were captured, enslaved, married, lived freely, and procreated with the Indigenous Indians. Notably, the low country of North Carolina to Florida, mostly Gullahs descend from West Africans brought to South Carolina and Georgia to work as slaves on cash crop plantations of rice, sea cotton and indigo. Originally named Sainta Elena by the Spanish explorer Pedro de Quexos in 1525, St. Helena Island, South Carolina is one pearl in the string of Sea Islands halfway between Charleston and Savannah, in Beaufort County, South Carolina. The Warto and Yamasee Indian tribes remained in the area now known as Beaufort County and Charleston, until 1715 when the remaining Indian peoples were driven across the Savannah to San Augustin, today known as Saint Augustine. (Johnson, 1930, p.3-6).

In De Soto era a chief of the Yuchi ran away with one of his African slaves. Some Yuchi fled to Florida and joined the Seminole, where Uchee Billy was Chief a century agoaccording to Who Were the Mysterious Yuchi Indians of Tennessee and the Southeast? Other Yuchi of mixed heritage successfully "passed as Caucasian," and remained on their land, which required hiding all evidence of their Indian heritage." . . . . "Today, the tribal Yuchi number a few hundred and are partly assimilated into the Creek and Seminole Nations."Of the other Indians of Muskhogean stock the Creeks seem to have most intergrated, nearly a third of the tribe having perceptible African mixture.

In addition to Indian-Black intermixture there was the practice of African slavery among the Indians of the south Atlantic and Gulf states. The Melungeons of Hancock County, Tenn., but formerly resident in North Carolina, are said to be "a mixture of Caucasian, Indian, and African" (Am. Anthrop., ii, 347, 1889). The Croatian of North Carolina and Redbones of South Carolina seem to be of the same mixture. The holding of Black slaves by the tribes of the Carolinas led to considerable intermarriage.

The Indian- African intermixture has proceeded on a larger scale in South America and West Indies, as well as various parts of the northern continent.  Around 1890, W. H. Clark (Johns Hopkins. Univ. Circ., x, no. 84, 28) said of the Gay Head Indians: "Although one observes much that betokens the Indian type, the mixture of African and Caucasian blood has materially changed them." The deportation of the Pequot to the Bermudas where they were sold into slavery, after ( the Pequot War was an armed conflict in 1634-1638) defeat of 1638 may have led to mixture there. The Pequot of Groton, Conn., who in 1832 numbered about 40, were reported as considerably mixed with Caucasian and Black blood, and the condition of the few representatives of the Paugusset of Milford in 1849 was about the same (De Forest, Hist. Inds. Conn., 356, 1853). Of the Indians in Ledyard we read: "None of the pure Pequot race are left, all being mixed with Indians of other tribes or with whites and Negroes."Of the Pamunkev and Mattapony of Virginia, Col. Aylett (Rep. Ind., U. S. Census 1890, 602) states that there has been a considerable mixture of Caucasian and African-American blood, principally the former. Traces of Indian blood are noticeable, according to G. A. Townsend (Scribner's Mag., no. 72, 515, 1571), in many of the freeborn Blacks of the Maryland eastern shore.