This tale of a extraordinary humans, the Black Seminoles, and their charismatic chief, leader John Horse, chronicles their heroic fight for freedom.

Beginning with the early 1800s, small teams of fugitive slaves residing in Florida joined the Seminole Indians (an organization that thrived for many years on reciprocal recognize and affection). Kenneth Porter strains their fortunes and exploits as they moved around the kingdom and tried to reside first past the legislations, then as dependable servants of it.

He examines the Black Seminole position within the bloody moment Seminole battle, whilst John Horse and his males unusual themselves as fierce warriors, and their compelled removing to the Oklahoma Indian Territory within the 1840s, the place John's management skill emerged.

The account contains the Black Seminole exodus within the 1850s to Mexico, their provider as border troops for the Mexican govt, and their go back to Texas within the 1870s, the place a number of the males scouted for the U.S. military. participants in their combat-tested unit, by no means numbering greater than 50 males at a time, have been provided 4 of the 16 Medals of Honor obtained through the various thousand Indian scouts within the West.

Porter's interviews with John Horse's descendants and neighbors within the Nineteen Forties and Fifties supply eyewitness bills. while Alcione Amos and Thomas Senter took up the undertaking within the Nineteen Eighties, they included new details that had due to the fact come to gentle approximately John Horse and his humans.

A robust and stirring tale, The Black Seminoles will allure particularly to readers drawn to black background, Indian background, Florida background, and U.S. army history.