When Florida became a British territory in 1763, the residents of Fort Mose relocated to Cuba, where they formed a new town called Ceiba Mocra in the Matanzas province.

Despite initial surveys, historians and researchers have not found much else about their presence in Cuba. Afro-Cubans, however, have actively served in many of that country’s wars and military campaigns. Could these be descendents of Fort Mose's free black militia?

Types of Cuban Patriot Soldiers.
Printed in Harper’s Weekly, October 23, 1869.     
Historical Museum of Southern Florida.
1997-362-8.

By the end of the Seminole Wars, the United States government had removed most of Florida’s Seminole Indians to western territories in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Approximately 200 Seminoles managed to remain, including a number of Black Seminoles.

Tommy Osceola, Charlie Dixie and Charlie Cypress pole a dugout canoe in the 10,000 Islands. Early 20th century.
Dixie was a half-black, half-Seminole chief who had a camp near Chokoloskee.
Courtesy of Florida State Archives.
 

After being forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, tension erupted between the Black Seminole and native groups, who sought to profit from the sale of blacks to slaveholders. Many Black Seminoles fled to Mexico and settled around Nacimiento. In 1870, they put their extensive expertise in guerilla warfare to use for the U.S. Army tracking hostile Native Americans in the Southwest. The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts, as they were called, operated from a base at Fort Clark in southwest Texas. Many of their descendants live in Brackettville, Texas.  

Seminole Negro Indian Scouts. 1889.
From left: Plenty Payne, Billy July, Ben July, Dembo Factor, Ben Wilson, John July and William Shields.
Courtesy of Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The New York Public Library.