Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

nation, and to promise Africans freedom if they would participate in a Black
militia loyal to the French. The alliance between the French, and their indigenous
and African allies was finally able to defeat the Natchez in 1731 . The French
colonial government was very much concerned with Native/African collaboration :
Its spies had uncovered a plot by the Natchez and Chickasaw nations to enlist
enslaved Africans in New Orleans in an insurrection to kill the white settlers and
form a Native/ African state . 10
The existence of African maroons and Black armed resistance in Florida
has been well documented . Florida is also an acknowledged site of Red/ Black
solidarity. From the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, Florida,
then claimed by the Spanish empire, was a refuge point for African maroons from
the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and the Mississippi territory. In at least two
different cases, Europeans armed African maroons in Florida . In 1731, enslaved
Africans fleeing captivity in British America were offered asylum and Spanish
citizenship in Florida. This policy was designed to undermine the stability of
England in North America, particularly in the southeast. In 1739, the Spanish
governor of Florida set aside land to build a fort, Gracial Real de Teresa de Mose
(often called Fort Moussa), to be occupied by fugitive Africans, people of
Moorish descent and Natives . Fort Moussa, located near Saint Augustine in
northeast Florida, was to help defend the Spanish empire's colony of Florida from
British invasion . The adult men of Fort Moussa were organized into a Spanish
military company with their own chain of command and arms, including four
cannons . The African maroons of Fort Moussa initiated raids of plantations in
South Carolina to encourage exodus and, if possible, uprising . The instigation of