The Seminole Wars...No the Gullah Wars. A war oblivious to African Americans

[MostReal]

A film must be made depicting John Horse and the Black Seminoles SUCCESS!!!

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

A film must be made depicting John Horse and the Black Seminoles SUCCESS!!!

Breh, the owner of the bookstore I work for is in the process of making a movie on the maroons of America. He's researched the Gullahs and Black Seminoles heavy. Only thing holding it up is funding. Sometimes I see a lot of these supposedly conscious figures in the Black community and think the shyt at least halfway fake cuz they not applying their resources to the real soldiers in the trenches they on some bullshyt too fo real. They're not obligated to do that of course, but don't bytch about cacs with one side of your lip and be silent on the other when you could put your bread into our own people that's tryna represent us. Who was there to hold down Danny Glover when he wanted to make a movie on the Haitian revolution? These nikkaz just like the high of "consciousness" tbh, it's some cosmetic shyt to them not necessarily a lifestyle or a real pillar of their overall character.

But I digress, this is extremely important information for African Americans. The resistance to slavery is discussed in a very passive (or passover even) type of manner. I feel like more people learning and knowing about other Black people that resisted and even created whole societies within this country and the greater diaspora that were all but totally divorced from white society is important in order to show that it wasn't just random moments like Nat Turner or Gabriel Prosser. More discussion is needed regarding this subject in order to show a more full picture.

 

[MostReal]

@2Quik4UHoes Most definitely

John Horse and the Seminoles to fight and live is a huge win. Dude escaped imprisonment by almost starving himself to death. And survived multiple attempts on his life.

The U.S. admitted they did all types of underhanded tactics in these wars like capturing general under the guise of treaty talks and still couldn't outright defeat these guys.

Story has to be told breh

 

[Cynic]

Reading up on Benkos Bioho, the cimarrones and also afro-panama people


I thought Zumbi and quilombos were the only ones but this sh!t is deep

 

[Bawon Samedi]

ALL should get this book if your interested in this topic. The guy in the video in the Op used this book as one of his sources which is why I picked it up.

This book is not only a good read but it solidly puts the nail in the coffin to the myth of the "Seminole War" being a mainly Indian War. Hell, Native Americans weren't even the biggest participates and Indian Seminoles is a recent/modern concept. The book argues with cited material that the word Seminole was original used for runaway Africans!

 

[JahFocus CS]

 

[Poitier]

Bump

 

[Neuromancer]

Lets start off with John Horse:

John Horse, also known as Juan Caballo, John Cowaya, or Gopher John was the dominant personality in Seminole Maroon affairs for half a century. He counseled Seminole leaders, served as an agent of the U. S. government, and became a Mexican Army officer. He served the Seminole Maroons as warrior, diplomat, and patriarch, and represented their interests in Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. He fought against the United States, the French, and Indians and survived three wars, four attempts on his life, and the grasp of slavehunters.

Little is known of John Horse’s early years but by 1826 he was living in his owner’s village near Tampa Bay. During the Second Seminole War, 1835-42, he initially led Maroons against U.S. forces in Florida, but offered the promise of freedom, he agreed to surrender and relocate west with the Seminoles in March 1837. By 1840, John Horse had married Susan July, the daughter of a Seminole Maroon guide and interpreter. Fearing that his family, and his fellow Maroons would be reenslaved, Horse entered into an alliance with disaffected Seminoles and left Indian Territory in November 1849 for northern Mexico.

Naming Horse’s followers Mascogos, the Mexicans in 1852 gave the Maroons, Seminoles, and a band of Southern Kickapoos separate land grants at Nacimiento to establish military colonies. In exchange for land, tools, and livestock, the immigrants agreed to fight against Apache and Comanche raiders. The Mexican authorities viewed John Horse as the undisputed head of the Mascogos and referred to him as El Capitán Juan Caballo.

During the summer of 1870, John Horse and many of the Mascogos returned to the United States and settled near Fort Duncan, Texas. In August, the able-bodied men enrolled in the U.S. Army as a new unit that came to be known as the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts. John Horse, however, never served with the scouts. After a failed assassination attempt against him by white Texans, Horse again led the Mascogos into Mexico. He died there in 1882 while on a mission to represent them before Mexican president Porfirio Diaz.

Sources:
Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Africans and Seminoles: From Removal to Emancipation (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001), and Kevin Mulroy, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas (College Station: Texas A& M Press, 1993).

I'm not sure how every African from the south along with arrivals from hati who escaped into florida magicaly became "gullah"

But it gets the point across so...

Da Gawd.

 

[MostReal]

John Horse was that dude

He deserves a film pronto!

 

[Samori Toure]

Watsup everyone. There have been many major slave rebellions throughout the Americas. The Haitian Revolution which we mostly know about. But again Haiti was not the only major slave rebellion or full military war. No it was not. There was one actually in our own backyard in America. And I'm not talking Nat Turner or the Stone rebellion. I'm talking about a full scale war. The Gullah/Seminoles which is oblivious to us African Americans. Many people think of African American history as just being slave history, but this totally debunks that, this shows African American history in a new and different light that we have barely heard of.

I want many people to sub to this thread, the thread serves to connect the dots on how blacks in America fought in a large scale war against slavery.

The first two sources I will be starting off with are these two videos:



In the latter video everything the man said he actually cited in the description box. Anyways get ready.

@iLLaV3
@Don Drogo
@Poitier
@Blackking
@Kemet_Rocky

Black Seminoles—Gullahs Who Escaped From Slavery
https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Black Seminoles .pdf

Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor | Where Gullah Geechee Culture Lives

 

[Samori Toure]

Actually my mother was born in NC, but my grandparents were born in N.C, All my family on my mothers side can trace their roots back to N.C. I still have family reunions in N.C. and family in the state. My family on my mothers side is very huge, though a lot migrated to NY.

Also do you agree with the man in the video?

I realize that I am late on this thread, but better late than never. I don't know if you ever found the answer to your question, but if not here is the answer: the Gullah people land ranged from as far north as Jacksonville, North Carolina (Onslow County) to Jacksonville, Florida in the South. There are communities of Gullah in North Carolina that still live by the ocean, but many (not all) Gullah that lived in North Carolina moved inland. Just a short story here, but the Gullah people were brought to the Eastern portion of North Carolina to grow rice, just like they were brought to South Carolina. It needs to be remembered that North Carolina and South Carolina were just called Carolina until it was split in around 1712. Additionally it has to be remembered that North Carolina included the region of what we now call Tennessee, because the border of North Carolina was from the ocean on the east to the Mississippi river on the west.

My folks are from west Tennessee and we trace our family back to North Carolina. In fact many African Americans in Tennessee trace their ancestry back to the Gullah people in North Carolina and if you ask them they will tell you that being called Gullah wasn't offensive; but if you called them a Geeche then you had to fight them, because to be called a Geechee was considered an insult for some reason. For what it is worth I think that most African Americans in the South may have some kind of connection to the Gullah people, because many of our older relatives were difficult to understand. Looking back on it, we used to just say that our relatives were country as Hell because they used all of that broken English. However, after hearing the Gullah people speaking it is pretty clear that our ancestors were probably using Gullah, which in many respects sounds like broken English.

North Carolina | Gullah/Geechee Nation
History of Rice Plantations In ENC
The Split - One Colony Becomes Two

A couple of other things that I will point out that you probably already know is that the Gullah people that live in Georgia by the Ogeeche River are the ones that are called Geechee. I don't know how or why they started being referred to as Geechee rather than Gullah, but like I said if you called an older Black person a Geechee then it was an insult. Finally, the Gullah people are a mixture of African tribes, but their biggest influence are the Mende people of Sierra Leone. The Gullah are also Mandingo, Temne and other groups especially from the rice/grain coast in west Africa (Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia), but are also Central Africans from Angola and Congo. But the linguist Dr. Lorenzo Dow noted that many words in Gullah were Mende. There were also a large number of Gullah that were practicing Muslims, which was observed by many writers over the years and it retained it prominence with the Gullah along the coastal regions and sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia through the 1930s, which oddly enough might be when and where the Nation of Islam roots first took hold. Finally, the tradition of the "ring shout" practiced by the Gullah appears to be associated with Islam and the "shawt" representing the tawaf the counter clockwise walk around Kaaba.




Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890-1972) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
Religion

Anyway this was a great thread and I hope that more African Americans will review the history of our people.

 

[Neuromancer]

Bump

 

[.r.]

..

 

[IllmaticDelta]

In fact many African Americans in Tennessee trace their ancestry back to the Gullah people in North Carolina and if you ask them they will tell you that being called Gullah wasn't offensive; but if you called them a Geeche then you had to fight them, because to be called a Geechee was considered an insult for some reason.

Geechee is often used by older aframs as a diss towards southern/country aframs that they don't understand. See Eddie Murphy's james brown bit





not realizing that that real geechee, was a creole language.

For what it is worth I think that most African Americans in the South may have some kind of connection to the Gullah people, because many of our older relatives were difficult to understand. Looking back on it, we used to just say that our relatives were country as Hell because they used all of that broken English. However, after hearing the Gullah people speaking it is pretty clear that our ancestors were probably using Gullah, which in many respects sounds like broken English.
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all aframs in/from the south most likely spoke something similar to gullah/geechee creole at one point and then it decreolized to what we know as "Negro Dialect" or AAVE. repost

Misconceptions About “Black Dialect”


I would like to shed some light on black dialect, which some individuals now call “Ebonics,” and how it came to be. It kinda irks me that people keep referring to it as being “made up” or some sort of street slang. They think it’s the same thing that you might hear from rappers which really isn’t the case. Black Dialect or Ebonics originated in the American south from slaves and eventually spread out when blacks began to leave the South. In fact, if you want to see or hear it in it’s true form just go find some old slave narratives or even old Blues lyrics. Rappers actually rap in a a combination of “Black Dialect” and street slang. Real black dialect has no slang. Black dialect is really Southern White American English with Africanisms. It formed the same way West African pidgins, Jamaican Patois and Creoles formed. Famous African American writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Dunbar wrote many of their works in this dialect.

What people call "Ebonics" today used to be called "Black Dialect" or "Black English". A quick history comparing "Black Dialect or Ebonics" "Gullah" and West African Pidgins


Southern American English

Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Virginia and central Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to central Texas. Southern American English can be divided into different sub-dialects (see American English), with speech differing between regions. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) shares similarities with Southern dialect, unsurprising given African Americans' strong historical ties to the region.

The Southern American English dialects are often stigmatized (as are other American English dialects such as New York-New Jersey English). Therefore, speakers may code-switch or may eliminate more distinctive features from their personal idiolect in favor of "neutral-sounding" English (General American), though this involves more changes in phonetics than vocabulary. Well-known speakers of Southern dialect include United States Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush along with playwright Tennessee Williams and singer Elvis Presley.

The Gullah Creole and "black dialect" are related. The main difference is that "Black Dialect" is closer to Standard English while Gullah has more pure African influence. One can say that "Black Dialect" is watered down Gullah. Yall may not know this but an AfroAmerican Gullah speaker and a Jamaican Patois speaker can somewhat understand each other but speakers of "Black Dialect" can't understand either one. An article take from the Jamaican-Gleaner website...


God speaks Gullah

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060128/mind/mind1.html

A NEW translation of the New Testament designed for persons who speak Gullah was unveiled last November. This translation bears strong resemblance to Jamaican Patois.

Gullah is the language that gave the world the song Kumbaya and words such as 'yam' and 'nanny'. It is spoken by about 250,000 African-Americans who inhabit the coastal areas between South Carolina and Florida.

The Gullah language according to www.wikipedia.com "is an English-based Creole, strongly influenced by West and Central African languages such as Vai, Mende, Twi, Ewe, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Kikongo.

"It strongly resembles the Krio language of Sierra Leone, a major West African English-based Creole. Some African-derived words attributed to Gullah are: cootuh (turtle), oonuh (pronoun 'you'), nyam (to eat), and buckruh (white man)".

The language originated in the slave trade that brought mainly West Africans to the Sea Islands off South Carolina. The slave traders, in an effort to thwart uprisings and escapees mixed slaves who spoke different languages. From this hybrid came Gullah. Some linguists believe that 10,000 African-Americans speak nothing but Gullah.

Gullah, also called Geechee, was developed as a way for slaves to communicate with one another without white slave owners knowing what was being said. After the American Civil War, the former slaves were able to retain their culture and language because many remained isolated on coastal islands.

Because the islands were isolated, Gullah never evolved into standard English.

Gullah many concur bears some resemblance to Ebonics, the modern African-American vernacular. But scholars insist it is a distinct language with its own grammar and vocabulary.

Bible translator Pat Sharpe and her husband, Claude, arrived in the Sea Islands all set to retire in the late 1970s. The couple decided to try a translation of the Bible into Gullah, beginning a process that would take nearly 30 years.

By the time the Sharpes had arrived, Gullah speakers had learned to be ashamed of their language. Some locals tried to persuade the Sharpes to drop the project. The couple refused to give up. They noted that Gullah had contributed to the English language such words as 'tote' (to carry), 'chigger' (flea) and 'biddy' (chicken). Other linguists joined the translation team as the project evolved.

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Jamaican website REGGAEmovement.com on Patois

http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/sullivan.html

Jamaican Patois, otherwise known as Patwa, Afro. Jamaican, just plain Jamaican or, Creole, is a language that has been until quite recently referred to as "ungrammatical English." (Adams, 199 1, p . I 1)

Creole languages are actually not unique to Jamaica, they are found on every continent although their speakers often do not realize what they are. The rest of the terms refer strictly to Jamaican Creole. Creoles are languages that usually form as the result of some human upheaval which makes it impossible for people to use their own languages to communicate. What people often refer to as the 'bad' or 'broken-English' of Jamaica are actually local Creoles that usually come about through a situation of partial language learning (Sebba 1, 1996, p.50-1.)

The technical definition of the term Creole means-, a language which comes into being through contact between two or more languages. The most important part about this definition is that a new language comes about which was not there before, yet it has some characteristics of the original language(s) and also has some characteristics of its own. The Creole of Jamaica and the Caribbean is referred to as an 'English-lexicon' and this language came about when African slaves were forced into a situation where English, or at least a very reduced form of English, was the only common means of communication. The slave traders and owners spoke English while the slaves spoke a variety of African languages and the slaves had to assimilate by learning English which explains why much of the vocabulary is English in origin. Although there is much English vocabulary, many words were also adopted from African languages when no equivalent English word could be found such as, words for people, things, plants, animals, activities, and especially religious words (Sebba 1, 1996, 50-1.) The name Jamaica itself was derived from the Arawak word Xaymaca meaning "Island of springs," but no other known trace(s) of the Arawak, the indigenous inhabitants of Jamaica, exist today (Pryce, 1997, p-238.)

Despite all the debate surrounding Patois, the international prestige of Standard English which derives from political and economic factors, has made people everywhere around the world obtain the major life goal of speaking it; even in countries where English has never traditionally been spoken people are acquiring this goal. As stated before, in Jamaica, the overwhelming feeling of prestige surrounding English causes people who speak Creole to be regarded as socially and linguistically inferior. This causes Creole languages to be considered unacceptable for use for any official or formal purpose, including education, hence the previously mentioned problem of young Creole speaking children getting frustrated and discouraged by trying to read and write in "Standard" English, which to them is basically a foreign language (Sebba 1, 1996, p.52.) We have even seen some of this debate on educational uses of language occur in the U.S. on the issue of Ebonics. Ebonics has been referred to as "Black English" and it is the language of many inner cities and until now has been thought of as slang'. Ebonics and Jamaican Patios are similar in that they both have the same roots and parts of the language came out as a result of people being taken from Africa for slavery (citation #3, WWW.) Also, the primary similarity in the debate on Ebonics and Jamaican Patios is the fact that Standard English is the language that must be mastered to conduct most businesses and to be successful in any traditional occupation (Pryce, 1997, p.241.)

.....and for the record, "Ebonics" is not slang. Basically, Black Dialect/AAVE/Ebonics is decreolized, Pidgin/Creole and that is closer to standard English

Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . AAVE . Creole | PBS

Origins: Dialect or Creole?

There are two main hypotheses about the origin of African American Vernacular English or AAVE. The Dialectologist Hypothesis, a prevailing view in the 1940s, concentrates on the English origins of AAVE, to the exclusion of African influence.

The Creole Hypothesis, on the other hand, maintains that modern AAVE is the result of a creole derived from English and various West African Languages. (A creole is a language derived from other languages that becomes the primary language of the people who speak it.) Slaves who spoke many different West African languages were often thrown together during their passage to the New World. To be able to communicate in some fashion they developed a pidgin* by applying English and some West African vocabulary to the familiar grammar rules of their native tongue. This pidgin was passed onto future generations. As it became the primary language of its speakers, it was classified as a creole. Over the years AAVE has gone through the process of decreolization - a change in the creole that makes it more like the standard language of an area.

*A pidgin is language composed of two or more languages created for the purpose of communication, usually around trade centers, between people who do not speak a common language. It is never a person's primary language.

Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . AAVE . Creole | PBS


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The Story Of English Program 5 Black On White

Program five in the series Story of English examines the origins of Black English, beginning with the influx of Africans to the American continent caused by the slave trade. In the American south, Gullah is spoken on the Sea Islands near the South Carolina coast. The old plantations bred a different strain and other regions of the south are equally unique. Footage of pidgin English speakers in West Africa is also featured. This video also discusses the roots of rap, the uses of rap in public schools, and jive talk with Cab Calloway -- including showing the efforts of non-African-American entertainers to utilize the style, with mixed success.

 

[Samori Toure]

Geechee is often used by older aframs as a diss towards southern/country aframs that they don't understand. See Eddie Murphy's james brown bit





not realizing that that real geechee, was a creole language.




all aframs in/from the south most likely spoke something similar to gullah/geechee creole at one point and then it decreolized to what we know as "Negro Dialect" or AAVE. repost

Misconceptions About “Black Dialect”


I would like to shed some light on black dialect, which some individuals now call “Ebonics,” and how it came to be. It kinda irks me that people keep referring to it as being “made up” or some sort of street slang. They think it’s the same thing that you might hear from rappers which really isn’t the case. Black Dialect or Ebonics originated in the American south from slaves and eventually spread out when blacks began to leave the South. In fact, if you want to see or hear it in it’s true form just go find some old slave narratives or even old Blues lyrics. Rappers actually rap in a a combination of “Black Dialect” and street slang. Real black dialect has no slang. Black dialect is really Southern White American English with Africanisms. It formed the same way West African pidgins, Jamaican Patois and Creoles formed. Famous African American writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Dunbar wrote many of their works in this dialect.

What people call "Ebonics" today used to be called "Black Dialect" or "Black English". A quick history comparing "Black Dialect or Ebonics" "Gullah" and West African Pidgins


Southern American English




The Gullah Creole and "black dialect" are related. The main difference is that "Black Dialect" is closer to Standard English while Gullah has more pure African influence. One can say that "Black Dialect" is watered down Gullah. Yall may not know this but an AfroAmerican Gullah speaker and a Jamaican Patois speaker can somewhat understand each other but speakers of "Black Dialect" can't understand either one. An article take from the Jamaican-Gleaner website...


God speaks Gullah

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060128/mind/mind1.html



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Jamaican website REGGAEmovement.com on Patois

http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/sullivan.html









.....and for the record, "Ebonics" is not slang. Basically, Black Dialect/AAVE/Ebonics is decreolized, Pidgin/Creole and that is closer to standard English

Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . AAVE . Creole | PBS

Origins: Dialect or Creole?



Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . AAVE . Creole | PBS


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The Story Of English Program 5 Black On White

I don't think this statement from your article is true:

"... Black dialect is really Southern White American English with Africanisms. It formed the same way West African pidgins, Jamaican Patois and Creoles formed. Famous African American writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Dunbar wrote many of their works in this dialect... ."

Matt Schaffer who is a researcher and writer discussed that Southern White American English ("Southern Accent") is actually a dialect that evolved from the slaves, specifically the Mande people (Mandingos, Mende, etc.). Here is a blurb from an article written by Schaffer.

"...My first insight into the possibility of significant Mandinka content in the Southern accent occurred in one memorable conversation in Ziguinchor during 1972 with Buli Drame, the Mandinka from Suna Karantaba who guided me to the four villages I emphasized in studying Pakao. We proceeded to converse in French and he asked where I was from. After I told him, he slowly repeated after me, "St. Simons Island," pronouncing the words with such a strong Southern drawl that a chill ran up my spine. After years at college and graduate school away from the South, my own Southern accent had mostly disappeared. Yet Buli pronounced these and [End Page 351] other English words with a strong, seemingly perfect Southern accent, certainly an accent of the Georgia coast where Africanisms of The Gullah Dialect and Drums and Shadows both suggest a strong Mande influx and influence. One can debate how much a coastal Georgia accent resembles variable accents elsewhere in the South, but the accents of Charleston and coastal South Carolina and Georgia, spoken by both slaves and elite whites, were established before much of the inner deep South was settled... ."

Project MUSE - Bound to Africa: the Mandinka Legacy in the New World