Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico (review) |
Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico (review)
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Volume 115, Number 2, October 2011
E-ISSN: 1558-9560 Print ISSN: 0038-478X
pages 214-215
William M. Clements, Professor of English
Arkansas State University
Shirley Boteler Mock, Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico, Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2010, 400 pp.
In the early 1700s, Spanish and Native communities in Florida were offering refuge for runaway slaves from the British colonies. Meanwhile, dissidents from the Creek Nation were forming an independent confederation using the name “Seminole.” Persons of African descent found the Seminole communities particularly welcoming, and many developed relationships of servitude with the Indians. Although sometimes considered to be “slaves,” these blacks, in fact, enjoyed much more independence than their counterparts in the colonies that became the states of the Old South, particularly in their ability to maintain African-derived cultural forms while integrating with the Seminoles, often through marriage. Nevertheless, when Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, these blacks were considered property and, despite the armed resistance known as the Second Seminole War, accompanied the Seminoles who were transported to Indian Territory in 1838. There they became subject to stricter slave codes. Finding these…
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Tags: Shirley B. Mock, Shirley Boteler Mock, Shirley Mock, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, William Clements, William M. Clements