[KurtFF8]

About a month or two ago I was reading a book for my Introduction to Public Policy class called The Swamp By Michael Grunwald.

It's about the Everglades and the problems with policy on it, but the first part of the book is pretty much a history of southern FL and there is a part about a post-Civil war incident where the Seminoles had been living in isolation in the Everglades and apparently maintained slavery even after the Civil War. Here's the excerpt:

"When informed that the negroes were free he ejaculated: 'White man's N***** mebbe free, but Indian's N*****, no.'

(... Same page)

...pushed him (the slave) into the canoe and paddled back to the Everglades."

I just found this to be one of those obscure historical tales that not many know about, thought I'd share. (I had been meaning to post this for a while, but just never got around to it)

[| I, CWAS |]

Also

It is not known how many Indians were enslaved by the Europeans, but they certainly numbered in the tens of thousands. It is estimated that Carolina merchants operating out of Charles Town shipped an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Indian captives between 1670 and 1715 in a profitable slave trade with the Caribbean, Spanish Hispaniola, and northern colonies. Because of the higher transportation costs of bringing blacks from Africa, whites in the northern colonies sometimes preferred Indian slaves, especially Indian women and children, to blacks. Carolina actually exported as many or even more Indian slaves than it imported enslaved Africans prior to 1720. The usual exchange rate of captive Indians for enslaved Africans was two or three Indians to one African.

From 1750 to the American Civil War in 1861, Native Americans, especially those in the Southeast, interacted with enslaved blacks in every way possible, although there is no evidence that blacks ever owned Indian slaves. The nature of this interaction depended upon the historical character of the Indian groups, the enslaved people in their midst, and the white slaveholders. Native Americans assisted runaway slaves and also tracked them down and returned them to slavery. They married free and enslaved blacks, and accepted the children of such unions with few strings attached. They also sold blacks to whites, trading them like so many blankets or horses. Most importantly, many Indians owned black slaves. By 1824, it is estimated that the Cherokee owned 1,277 black slaves; the Choctaw and the Chickasaw held over 5,000 blacks in slavery by 1860. Some mixed-blood Indians, such as the Choctaw chief Greenwood Lefore and the Cherokee chief John Ross, owned between 100 and 400 enslaved blacks respectively. And when the southeastern Indians were forcefully marched west to present-day Oklahoma by the American government in the infamous "Trail of Tears" in the 1830s and 1840s, as many as 15,000 enslaved blacks were taken with them.

Native Americans resisted, as best they could, Anglo-American encroachment on their lands after 1800, as illustrated by the Creek Wars of 1813 and 1836, and a series of wars with the Seminoles that lasted into the 1850s. At the same time, the leaders of the major tribes of the southeastern states—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creeks and Seminole—responded to the overwhelming power of the Anglo-Americans by attempting to imitate their lifestyles. This adjustment process included accepting the white practice of private land ownership, working and living on family farms and plantations, and acquiring slaves as workers much as was the case with white slaveholders. Indeed, these southeastern Indians came to be known among whites as the "Civilized Tribes" because of their willingness to embrace the ways of life and labor identified with Anglo-Americans.

Source

[MB.]

The Cherokee were slave holders. There was some long and complex thing that happened with their slaves due to their siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War.

I can't remember, but its fairly interesting.