Through the early 1800s the seminole welcomed runaway slaves now there are many black Seminoles why were the seminole able to take in the runaways?

Answer 1

As early as 1689, African slaves fled from the South Carolina Lowcountry to Spanish Florida seeking freedom. Under an edict from Philip V of Spain, the black fugitives received liberty in exchange for defending the Spanish settlers at St. Augustine. The Spanish organized the black volunteers into a militia; their settlement at Fort Mose, founded in 1738, was the first legally sanctioned free black town in North America.[1]

Not all the slaves escaping south found military service in St. Augustine to their liking. It is likely that many more runaway slaves sought refuge in wilderness areas in Northern Florida where their knowledge of tropical agriculture-and resistance to tropical diseases-served them well. Most of the blacks who pioneered Florida were Gullah people who escaped from the rice plantations in South Carolina (and later Georgia). As Gullahs, they had preserved much of their African language and culture heritage and their African leadership structure. These Gullah pioneers built their own settlements based on rice and corn agriculture, and they proved to be effective allies to the Indians escaping into Florida at the same time.

A new influx of freedom-seeking blacks reached Florida during the American Revolution (1775-83), when several thousand American slaves agreed to fight for the British in exchange for liberty - the black Loyalists. (Florida was under British control throughout the conflict.) During the Revolution, Seminole Indians also allied with the British, and as a result, Africans and Seminoles came into increased contact with each other. Members of both communities sided again with the British against the US during the War of 1812, solidifying ties and earning the wrath of the war's American hero General Andrew Jackson.[2]

When Africans and Seminoles first started to interact, the Seminoles were themselves recent immigrants to Florida. Their community evolved over the late 18th century and early 19th century as waves of Creek Native Americans left present-day Georgia and Alabama. By the time the American naturalist William Bartram visited them in 1773, the Seminoles had their own tribal name, derived from cimarron, the Spanish word for runaway, which connoted the tribe's breakaway status from the Creeks. Cimarron was also the source of the English word maroon, used to describe the runaway slave communities of Florida, the Caribbean, and other parts of the New World.[3]

Answer 2

Day were smart.