Rebels in Arms: Black Resistance and the Fight for Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic by Justin Iverson

Author:Justin Iverson
Format: epub

Peace at Moultrie Creek

The manner in which Maroons solidified peace with Whites in Florida followed the longer pattern of Maroon warfare and how White imperial and colonial forces fought and armed Maroons in the Black Atlantic. Though American plantation owners successfully rid themselves of the Spanish presence in Florida with the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819, the treaty did not fully address the hostile Amerindian and Maroon populations in the territory. Formal peace with the Florida fugitives and the Seminole Nation would not come until September 18, 1823, when the United States came to terms with the signing of the Treaty of Moultrie Creek.

Approximately 425 Florida Natives were present at the signing of Moultrie Creek, and thirty-two Seminole leaders signed the 1823 treaty, seventeen of whom can be positively identified. Although the only known account of the treaty meeting does not make a reference to Seminole Maroons being present at the signing, at least a handful of Seminole chiefs who were present presided over communities that included the Black settlers, including Chief Philip, Chief Oponney, and Chief Emoteley. Even more importantly, at least one signatory of the treaty was a Black Seminole Maroon named Vacapachasie or Cow Driver, whom Americans called Mulatto King. King was once at Prospect Bluff before its destruction, and he was one of the “six principal chiefs of the Florida Indians” who also signed Article 11 of the treaty, which promised the six chiefs that they could stay on their lands instead of moving to a reservation. King was able to stay with his Maroon community near the Apalachicola River.⁶⁷

Composed of eleven articles, the treaty reflected planter ambitions for more land in Florida and other boundary concerns. The treaty greatly extended the boundary for White settlement from what the Seminole and Creek previously agreed to in Georgia in a treaty in 1790. Articles 1 and 2 gave all of Florida to the United States except for land that was allotted to the Seminole, who would also receive livestock and farm implements to sustain their villages. Importantly, American diplomats forced the Seminole to agree to help capture Black Maroons and destroy the surviving communities, a point that further underscored how central the Maroons were to the fighting and peacemaking process. Article 7 stipulated that Seminole chiefs and warriors be “active and vigilant in the preventing the retreating to, or passing through, of the district of country assigned them, or any absconding slaves, or fugitives from justice; and further agree to use all necessary exertions to apprehend and deliver the same to the agent.” It was this article that was most unique to the treaty.⁶⁸

In contrast to Article 7 in the 1823 treaty, there was no provision in the 1790 agreement for the Natives to continue to capture and return Maroons still living in their midst or who might later join them, which matched treaties that the Seminole’s predecessors and many other Native nations agreed to throughout American history. Instead, Natives in 1790 were obligated to restore enslaved people who fled to them or whom they captured during the fighting.

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