A Separate Nation: Free Blacks and Indians on the Florida Frontier

Jane Landers
Vanderbilt University

This paper examines the ultimately unsuccessful attempts of free blacks and Indians to carve out an autonomous middle ground--a separate nation--on the volatile Floirda frontier in the early nineteenth century. It argues that self-interest rather than abstract national idoelogies shaped the politics of these interstitial groups. The paper compares two loci of resistance: the so-called Negro Fort at Prospect Bluff upriver from pensacola, and the black and Seminole villages along the Suwannee River. At Prospect Bluff runaway slaves and Choctaws, supported by British agents and traders, rejected both U.S. and Spanish efforts to "reduce" them. At Bowlegs Town on the Suwannee free "village Negroes" and Seminoles, suported by Spanish aid, waged their own desperate resistance to U.S. forces. Drawing on archival materials from Spain and Florida, this paper also considers how the black/Indian alliances affected the course of Spain's political fortunes in the region.