Interview with Vickie Oldham, Director, LFA
Expertise: Journalism, Project Management
Sept. 2005

Q: How Did the Looking for Angola Project come about?
A: I was hired to revise and complete the script for a documentary about the history of Sarasota. The draft written before I joined the project had problems. While reading it, I also noticed that there were no references to black settlements in the area before the Civil War. I reworded the script to include the Angola Settlement.

I knew about Angola’s existence because 15 years ago I was contracted to produce another documentary about the history of Sarasota’s black community. Sarasota County Historian Ann Shank (a godsend) pointed me to Dr. Canter Brown’s newly released book, Florida’s Peace River Frontier. Canter gave a lecture in Sarasota during that time. I met and interviewed him for a show I hosted that aired on the ABC affiliate.

Fast forward to 2003. I was undergoing a career transition in my life. It was challenging. At times I was uncertain about my next move – should I leave the area, should I stay, stay and do what? I was in the midst of redefining who I was after 20 years in very visible positions in Sarasota as a TV journalist, community advocate and host of a popular television show.

I completed the scriptwriting assignment of the Sarasota history documentary around the same time as this challenging transition. During the process, I was pushed to revisit Canter’s research about the tenacity, determination, courage, enterprise and survival skills of the Angola inhabitants. Some themes resonated loud and clear. These people were making it on their own and surviving. That message of self-determination spoke directly to me in a powerful way over and over again; morning, noon and night. It encouraged me and reminded me that I could do the same.

The story of Angola kept nudging me and playing over in my mind. I was moved to seek funding to tell the story for what became my next project, – a documentary solely based on the Angola Settlement. I spoke to Dr. Jan Matthews (at the time Director of the Florida Division of Historic Resources) at the premier of the Sarasota History documentary, about grants. Shortly afterwards, I organized a conference call to see if there was interest in the story. Invited to participate in the call was Matthews, historian Dr. Canter Brown, Jr., anthropologist Dr. Rosalyn Howard , TV 19’s station manager, and archaeologists Marion Almy and Ann Shank. During the conversation, I learned that no archaeology had ever been conducted to find artifacts of Angola. I was even more intrigued about the project after the call.

I later met with archaeologists Dr. Uzi Baram and Bill Burger. Both were enthusiastic.

Soon after, I visited a website and found out about a state historic preservation grant. The application was due in 10 days. I had no experience at grant writing but felt sure making the deadline was do-able. I asked each scholar to answer the grant questions that fit their discipline. For advice and pointers, I met with a successful grant writer, Linda Mansperger (Executive Director of Historic Spanish Point). Cynthia Newell founder of Neighborhood Leadership Initiative Incorporated allowed her non-profit to serve as LFA’s fiscal agent. I gathered letters of support from the community, the district’s legislative delegation and gathered the match needed for in-kind donations. After many hair splitting moments and lots of running around to gather letters, documents and photos, the grant was submitted on time. Bill Burger, Canter Brown and I defended the proposal in Tallahassee. It was enthusiastically approved by the grant panel.

Q: What was it about this piece of the past that held your fascination?
A: What held my fascination was the fact that the people of Angola had so little, yet they held on to the determination to live in freedom. They fought for freedom and many died for freedom. I thought, “Surely, I have more resources than they had.” The message to me was, “I can make it too with that same steely determination.”

Q: So you have pulled together a stellar team and won so much funding, working entirely on faith?
A: I’m living by faith and working around the clock to make sure the Angola settlers are honored for their sacrifice and contributions related to Florida’s development. Committing great amounts of time, effort and my own money to this project is risky (I wouldn’t recommend this work to the faint of heart). It is indeed a faith walk that requires a visionary willing to think big and dream big. I have a broad vision for this project and I believe every venture undertaken can and will be fulfilled.

Q: I sense that there was something in this story that haunted you and spurred you to action. Is this correct?
A: The message of the story kept playing over and over in my mind…The Angola inhabitants were making it on their own, doing the best they could with the innate skills and resources they had. The idea of telling the story was burning in my heart. I had no time to sit and wait on something to happen. If anything was to happen, I had to make it happen. I had the time and the drive because the story touched me in a very profound, personal way.

Q: What do you hope comes out of this research?
A: I want the message I learned from the people of Angola to resonate for others who are at a crossroads as I was.

The playing field has never been leveled as it relates to African Americans in the workplace, housing, the economy in this country. Perhaps it never will be. The Angola story taught me not to depend on the benevolence of the government and leaders to help. Our own self-determination (such as was displayed by the people of Angola) must suffice. That’s the message that I hope school students grasp, as well as people of color every where. But if you think about it, the message is universal. It’ll work for anybody.

I want the message to be accessible and understandable. That’s why LFA is a multi-disciplinary project … it’ll cross all disciplines. A documentary short is now ready for air. Phase I archaeological testing was conducted. This is only a beginning. I’d like books of fiction and non-fiction to be published based on the story, more archival research completed, theatrical performances staged, a feature length film produced, an educational component organized and placed in schools, a cultural exchange program (between teachers, students here and the Bahamas) put together and information about Angola incorporated into the social studies curriculum for Florida students and others nationwide.

I’d like to tell the Angola story through multi-media presentations, academic publications and the creative arts.

Q: How will those goals be met, and what is on the immediate horizon for the Looking for Angola Project?
A: I am currently talking with archaeologists about where they would like to conduct further investigations. There are three places that we’ve discussed. First, archaeological research should be done in the area of Red Bays, where the descendant population first landed on Andros Island. When Rosalyn Howard and I were in Nassau and Red Bays this summer, we met with officials from the National Museum of the Bahamas to discuss a partnership and to learn what it would take to conduct archaeology there. The meetings were successful. As a result, we will work with our Bahamian counterparts on an oral history project initially, as funding becomes available. The officials are willing and excited about working together on LFA. We have a wonderful letter of support from them stating such.

Uzi Baram would like to start a project at De Soto National Park to investigate the presence of the British fillibusters, the Cuban fishermen who maintained fishing ranchos along this coast, and possibly of Angola, too. He’s not absolutely certain of the Angola connection there, but it is certainly worth looking into. Another location would be on what was once called Negro Point.

My goal has always been to involve schoolchildren in this process. That’s what I’m working on right now. I’d like to engage teachers in Sarasota and Manatee Counties in the Looking for Angola Project. I’ve met with school administrators and teachers to elicit their help in developing a social studies project for two or three pilot classrooms. We would share the Angola story with students; conduct hands on activities, and also engage students and teachers on this side of the ocean with students and teachers in Andros Island. The students could write or email each other and discuss their shared history. The ultimate goal is to get the Angola story included in the social studies curriculum statewide.

Canter Brown, Jr.’s remarkable historical research is continuing, of course, and we’re working to develop and schedule a panel discussion in the near future, where LFA scholars will discuss the development of Angola, its subsequent destruction, its significance in American history, the results of the Phase 1 archaeological survey, and any other items the public would like to discuss about Angola.

We’re also looking into the possibility of staging a theater adaptation of the Angola story. I’ve met with director Nate Jacobs, who is the Founding Director of the West Coast Theater Troupe here about developing a play that tells the Angola story, to attract a wider audience.

I plan to continue production on a series of documentaries. I would especially like to produce a piece about the descendant population in Red Bays, Andros Island, the Bahamas. A feature length documentary that includes A-list actors is also on my ‘to do’ list.

When artifacts of Angola are found, LFA will apply for designation in the National Register. Then a commemorative program to remember and honor Angola residents and survivors will be planned.

I expect several books will be published about the project. I’ll write one about this entire experience focusing on my personal journey of self actualization and empowerment.

So that’s just a start. There are other components of the project, but that’s enough to say grace over for now [laughs].

LFA is my most exciting project yet. It has all the elements that keep life long learners (like me) engaged. I’d like to commit all of my time toward fulfilling the vision for LFA. Unfortunately, my bills wouldn’t get paid if I gave it my total attention. I’ll keep “pounding the rock” until the story gets the exposure it deserves. The Angola story was almost forgotten. Canter Brown must be thanked for his research. I’d also like to appreciate all of the LFA scholars, my supporters and friends who’ve contributed toward the development of LfA.

Interview with Canter Brown, Jr., Ph.D.
Discipline: History
September 2005

Q: How did you become involved in the search for Angola?
A: I first became aware that there was a settlement that we came to find out was called Angola when I was researching a book called Florida’s Peace River Frontier in the late 1980s. I was, of course, interested in all the nineteenth century history of the greater Tampa Bay and southwest Florida areas, and I kept finding references, in official documents and newspaper reports, of a massive Indian slave raid into Florida in 1821.

One day I was in Atlanta in the Georgia Archives, and I came across a collection of typed letters from the Creek Indian Agency. All of a sudden, I find this flurry of correspondence talking about this raid and even listing some of the former slaves or slaves that had been seized in this raid who were brought back to Fort Mitchell in Georgia and placed into the custody of the United States government.

I thought, “Good Lord, I wasn’t aware of any of this.” So, at that point I really focused on trying to find some sort of narrative description of the raid, and I got lucky. I was living in St. Augustine, and the St. Augustine Historical Society was wonderful about ordering microfilm for me. They got a microfilm of a Philadelphia newspaper from 1821, and, of all things, they had picked up an article from the Charleston City Gazette in South Carolina. It was a letter from a man who described himself as a planter, talking about this raid and describing it and alerting people not only to the magnitude of the raid but about how many slaves had been seized and the fact that they didn’t all make it back, and who got the value from these slaves.

With things like that, I just slowly began piecing the story together. I didn’t yet know the name of the settlement. There I got lucky. One day I was visiting Tampa, in 1992 or thereabout, and I was in the Tampa Public Library and found some old microfilm of Spanish land grant appeals. I was looking through them and all of a sudden I began to see references to Spanish land grants relative to Angola, and, as I read them carefully, it became clear that they were referring to the site of the Indian raid. So, at that point, at least we had a name.

I didn’t really find everything all at once, and I didn’t necessarily always know what I was looking for. But I got lucky, and I also persisted. Eventually, by the mid 1990s, I was able to piece together the story pretty well. I already had told it to Bob Ingalls who is a distinguished faculty member at the University of South Florida history department, who then edited the scholarly publication Tampa Bay History. He asked me to write it up for him. That was the first really extended account of Angola. Even then I still did not know the name of the settlement. Anyway, it encouraged me that people were interested but it took a long time to really round out the story and, like I say, even to discover the name of the place.

Q: Why is it important to tell the story of Angola? What does the story have to teach those of us in the present?
A: I think it’s important to tell the story on a number of levels. One, what a story! It has everything: drama, loss, exhilaration, sacrifice. It is just a wonderful, heroic human story, and, particularly, within the context of the absolute insistence upon liberty and against the bonds of slavery. On another level, it extends a legacy of Florida that had existed since early in the Spanish Era of Florida as a haven for runaway slaves.

Thanks to the great work of Jane Landers at Vanderbilt University, we know about Fort Mose, which existed north of St. Augustine, the first free black town in North America, from 1738 till (with an interruption) 1763, and Jim Covington at the University of Tampa had written about and helped us to learn more about another black settlement called the Negro Fort which existed on the Apalachicola River in 1815 and 1816.

We knew generally that that were other maroon communities such as Fort Mose and the Negro Fort, but nobody had ever suggested there was such a community in Southwest Florida, nor that it could have served such a central purpose in keeping alive that legacy of Florida as a haven for runaway slaves.

Clearly many of the men who lived at Angola, at least eventually, had served in the British Army during the War of 1812. Doubtlessly, some were survivors of the destruction of the Negro Fort in 1816. Without a doubt, some were survivors of the heroic Battle of the Suwannee in April 1818, when black warriors turned back, or at least held off, Andrew Jackson’s army, in a day long battle on the Suwannee River in the First Seminole War. Probably, I’m just guessing here, but probably some of the men still had their British army uniforms and weapons when they were living at Angola.

They certainly felt that they had commitments from the British Empire that I believe they attempted to enforce through contacts with British officers such as Edward Nicolls and George Woodbine. I suspect that they also had contacts with the Spanish Empire through Cuban fishing ranchos located on the southwest coast of Florida below Tampa Bay, including one that lay very near what we believe is the site of Angola.

So you’ve got international diplomacy going on; you’ve got armed, trained veterans ready to fight to maintain the freedom of their loved ones, their families and themselves; you’ve got a legacy being extended well into the American era in Florida, that had existed since the early days of Spanish rule; and then you have this compelling, compelling story itself of the lives and experiences these men and women had. All of those things combined, I think, suggest that this is truly a special place and it is one of those places whose memory all Floridians, for that matter all Americans, can take pride in. Where else can you see the spirit of and determination for freedom portrayed so vividly as in the spirits of the Angolans in Florida?

Q: What role does the documentary record play in this multi-disciplinary effort?
A: We have a lot more documents to discover that will allow us to have an even greater understanding of Angola, but, nonetheless, we have now a body of documentary evidence that I think is unimpeachable in establishing the existence of Angola, suggesting the types of people who were there, and giving a sense of how many people were there. Clearly we have evidence that details its destruction, and who destroyed it, and suggesting (not proving, but suggesting) that its destruction was carried out under the orders of Andrew Jackson.

Q: What are the limitations of the documentary record?
A: We have a couple of huge gaps in the documentary record. We can use documents in every aspect of Angola’s existence, but details about day to day life, as well as its specific location, nonetheless constitute huge gaps. We do have evidence on the location that seems to point pretty clearly to where the community was located, but it would have been an agricultural community, so we have to assume that it occupied a large area.

There is evidence that, I believe, indicates that there could have been as many as six or seven hundred people there by 1818 or 1819. With that many people and it being a farming community, it would have been spread out over a large area, which makes it tough to find evidence of its existence. We do have one account of an American who traveled to the site and saw ruins and remains of its destruction, and recorded how he got there. The documentary record evidences its existence, but our challenge remains to locate it on the ground.

Q: We know that there were other maroon communities in Florida but few as large as Angola. Why was this community such a magnet for freedom seekers?
A: I believe Angola became a magnet in spite of the presence of other maroon communities because of the time and place. It really grew and thrived in the aftermath of the War of 1812, of the Patriot War in northeast Florida, of the Creek Civil War of 1812-1814 in Alabama, and also the First Seminole War in Florida in 1817 and 1818.

Its location was remote enough that it afforded security or, at least, a sense of security. It also afforded direct communications for residents of Angola with their allies: their Indian allies, and the British and Spanish Empires. So, it was remote, safe, and strategically located for diplomatic and communications purposes. There was fertile land there, too. The maroons in Florida had been traditionally top quality farmers, so I’m sure they were able to grow a good deal of their own food, and you’ve got the availability of various forms of wildlife and seafood, so there were lots of advantages to the site.

Q: What sorts of economic activities did the inhabitants engage in? How did they support the settlement?
A: I think Angola must have served as not only a central communications point, but also as a market in some sense. Its location allowed easy access to Cuba and the Bahamas (there was a Cuban fishing rancho there that had served historically as a center for trade) and this was at a time when Indians from all over the American southeast–Chickasaws from as far away as the Memphis, Tennessee area, Cherokees from the mountains of North Carolina–traditionally would come into Florida for the winter. They were the first tourists.

They would come down to the south Florida hunting grounds and then they would trade the deer hides and bird plumes that they would gather for trade goods at the Cuban fishing ranchos. If the residents of Angola were growing enough food to sustain themselves and they saw an
opportunity to profit from providing goods to sustain the Indians who were hunting here, I’m sure they carried on a good trade. From an historian’s point of view, we shouldn’t just assume that these people were unable to accomplish much of anything. I think the entire record of their existence in Florida suggests that they were able to accomplish quite a lot. They could easily have supplied all manner of goods and services to the itinerant hunters.

Q: Does the documentary evidence reveal anything about the demographics of the community? Were there women and children there?
A: I do expect there were families there. In all honesty, the details of daily life are what escape us in the documentary evidence we do have. But we do know from first hand accounts and from the later writings of Congressman Joshua Giddings in his book The Exiles of Florida, that the Battle of the Suwannee in 1818, (and I suspect the survivors went to Angola), that the Battle of the Suwannee occurred because black warriors were fighting to protect their families and to allow them to cross from the west side of the Suwannee at Old Town over to the east bank in order to escape into the peninsula. So, I think it is a reasonable assumption that once the warriors were across the river themselves, they went with their families down to Tampa Bay and Angola.

Does that mean all of them stayed there? No. Angola existed for many years after the Battle of the Suwannee. There was certainly enough time for comings and goings. I guess in this automobile, jet airplane, spaceship age, we look back at the past and how difficult movement was
and suggest that people just didn’t move around very much. Lots of people moved around a lot and certainly the Indians and maroons in Florida saw no real obstacle to moving around. They simply accepted that it would take a while. There were comings and goings.

Q: Does the documentary record suggest that there were Native Americans living at Angola?
A: No. Not specifically. But certainly, we should assume that Native Americans visited Angola on a regular basis. The people of Angola would have had close ties to the Red Stick Creeks who lived forty miles away on the Peace River. I think that Indians on winter hunts would have continually come through Angola. I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually discover that the residents of Angola benefited from commercial pursuits from those kinds of visitations.

I think the Seminoles also would have kept close touch. The ties between Florida maroons and the Seminoles went back to the arrival of the Seminoles in Florida, and the Seminoles, too, came into south Florida for the winter hunting season. Could limited numbers of Native Americans have been living at Angola? Yes. Were there likely large numbers of Native Americans living there? No, not in my opinion. But, there certainly were lots of Native Americans in proximity to Angola, particularly in the winter.

Q: How could such a large and prosperous maroon community have survived unmolested for so long?
A: I think it was partly because Andrew Jackson was unable to force the issue earlier than he did, for various political and personal reasons. Spain still owned Florida, so anything that Jackson or his associates did to the residents of Angola would have violated international law and caused Jackson a problem.

In fact the raid itself that destroyed Angola did cause Jackson problems, and he had plenty of enemies waiting to take advantage of them. It’s interesting to me that the newspaper that printed the account of the raid on Angola was the Charleston City Gazette, which was closely associated with John C. Calhoun, Jackson’s bitter enemy and later his vice president. Even though these people may not have written down their political maneuverings on a national level related to events in Florida, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t occur.

Calhoun and Jackson already were maneuvering for future control of the country by the time Angola existed. That was a rivalry that was going to continue until Jackson’s death and cause bitter divisions with massive repercussions in Florida, and in the United States. I think the residents of Angola played a role in that.

Jackson didn’t like to be defied. They had defied him. The Red Stick Creeks had defied him. When he was appointed provisional governor by President Monroe in January of 1821, the letter accepting the appointment asked for permission to go into the peninsula, to take the US Army into the peninsula and get the Red Stick Creeks and the blacks, and he was ordered by the Secretary of War not to go. They felt like they had to issue him an official order from the Secretary of War not to do it.

It was about two weeks after that letter arrived in Nashville, where Jackson was living, that his own Indian allies under the authority of, if not led by, Lower Creek Chief William McIntosh went on the warpath into Florida and destroyed Angola. Now you might say, “Wait a second. They could have been acting independently.” Well, at the time, William McIntosh was a brigadier general in the United States Army by appointment of Andrew Jackson. Tell me it’s all coincidence.

Q: Where were those who were captured taken? What was their fate?
A: The newspaper account in the Charleston City Gazette mentioned that around 300 slaves had been taken. Only about 60 or so arrived back in the United States, and what happened to the remainder is open to question. The author of the letter points out that, along the way, some were given back to the people who claimed ownership, but, clearly, lots of captives just disappeared. I assume, and he hints in this letter, that they were sold for the benefit of the backers of the raid.

Q: Is there evidence that any survivors of the raid remained in the area?
A: Yes. I think that a substantial number of the survivors fled to the east, to the protection of the Red Stick Creeks on the Peace River, and they settled in a village just north of modern Bartow, that they then called Minatti. Jane Landers believes, and I think she’s right, that this was actually an attempt to spell Manatee. So, I think they named their settlement there for the River where they had lived earlier.

Historically, that became a very important site, because it is from Minatti and from Talakchopco, where the Red Stick Creeks lived (and where Osceola grew up) that I think the Second Seminole War was planned, and provoked. The war chief of Minatti was named Harry. He associated closely with Osceola in the events that led up to the Second Seminole War. The Red Stick Creeks maintained their headquarters at Talakchopco until it was destroyed in April of 1836.

So there was a real legacy of Angola in the continuing presence of survivors, just to the east. I believe that they can take credit for prompting the largest slave rebellion in United States history. Others say that the Second Seminole War was like the American Revolution and the War of 1812 in that large numbers of slaves abandoned or fled slavery because they were offered protection. I don’t think that holds up, because no one offered them any protection. I think that when the maroons and the Creeks were able to provoke a war, they were just prepared to rise up and fight for their freedom. To me, that qualifies as a slave rebellion.

The best evidence we have suggests that probably 750 to 1,500 slaves left plantations to fight, in the opening stages of the Second Seminole War. By far, that’s the largest slave rebellion in US history. I just don’t see diminishing the record by claiming it was not a slave rebellion, just because it happened during a war.

General Thomas Jesup, who commanded US troops in Florida not long after the war began, made clear in his report to the President and to Congress, that this was not an Indian war, it was “a negro war.” But, of course, it was not to the advantage of the southern press and the southern politicians who really controlled affairs in Washington to make that known.

The Democratic party and the Democratic press had invested very heavily in the growth of the southern cotton kingdom which, they believed, could not be done without slaves. And so much money was involved. They just simply weren’t going to play up anything that suggested the possibility of a slave revolt on that scale. In fact, you see many instances of raids by maroons in Florida and Georgia in the 1810s and 1820s that were portrayed by the press as Indian raids.

Q: Many of the survivors of the raid eventually made their way to Red Bays in the Bahamas. Is there evidence that any Native Americans migrated to the Bahamas as well?
A: I know that any number of attempts were made by Red Stick Creeks to engage in what I have called diplomatic missions, from southwest Florida, to either Havana or Nassau, and in one instance, I believe I saw a reference to them trying to get to Jamaica. In terms of Indians being among the settlers at Red Bays in the Bahamas, I have not seen any documentary evidence that suggests that.

It’s interesting that, in this case, we knew of the end of the story without knowing the story itself. When Rosalyn Howard wrote her fine book Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, not much was known about the existence of Angola, and exactly how its destruction set off this diaspora.

Q: What questions are you hoping to answer as your research progresses?
A: I’d like to learn anything we can learn about Angola. It would be especially wonderful to be able to trace the whole experiences of some of the residents of Angola, all the way back to the Battle of the Suwannee, and before that to the Negro Fort, and before that to the Battle of Mobile, and before that to how they were recruited into the British Army.

And I would like to learn more about their daily lives. The more we can paint a human portrait of their lives, the more compelling this story is going to be. If we can do that, I think that it will touch more people and allow more people to understand the real significance of that site, of their lives, and the importance of understanding African American history in Florida and in the United States.

Q: What else would you like for our readers to know?
A: I’d like for folks to know that African Americans have played a vital, essential, sometimes defining role in Florida’s history from the very earliest European contacts. Speaking figuratively, when Juan Ponce de Leon stood on his ship in 1513 and looked over and saw the flowers on the beach and named the land La Florida, there were two free black men–Juan Garrido and Juan Ponce de Leon–standing next to him.

Africans and African Americans played a role in the discovery of La Florida, in the development of La Florida, and in every aspect of life in, and development of, the territory and state of Florida. To look at Florida history without encompassing the contributions and experiences of African Americans is basically to create a fiction. And, unfortunately, the definition could apply to a good deal of the history that was written up until the modern era and, I would argue, consequently amounts to fiction.

Today, though, we have some top quality people who are doing excellent scholarly work that is putting Florida on the map nationally, as well as regionally, in terms of utilizing the Florida experience as case studies for larger points relating to United States history.

I guess if I were going to sum it up further, it would be that this is no light matter. This is a site of high importance, not only to the Tampa Bay area, not only to Florida, but to the United States and to some extent, to much of the world. There’s no story more important than the struggle to maintain freedom, and few people have done it under more difficult circumstances.

Every indication we have is that other than the treachery involved in the betrayal of the Angolans, whatever it was, they led their lives and equipped themselves with honor, courage, and dignity, and there was real accomplishment.

We have the opportunity to tell that story, but we need the help of people in doing it. We need their support and their open-mindedness about it, to realize that here is something we all can take pride in, here is something that we all can benefit from, and to help encourage our state to get more heavily invested in its history, particularly its African American history. Don’t let me forget to add many thanks to you and to the University of South Florida Library for aiding the Looking for Angola project along its road to discovery.

Read Canter Brown, Jr.’s latest and most comprehensive research article on Angola, “Tales of Angola: Free Blacks, Red Stick Creeks, and International Intrigue in Spanish Southwest Florida, 1812-1821.”

Interview with Bill Burger, M.A., RPA
Discipline: Archaeology
September 2005

Q: What is the significance of Angola, and what role does archaeology play in the search?
A: The story of Angola is not just significant to Florida history but our national history as well. Even international history. Archaeology’s role in the search is to find physical evidence of what we’re proposing occurred along the Manatee River.

Q: What can archaeology tell us about the lives of the pioneers who lived there?
A: You can tell a world of things about the daily lives of people – how they lived, how they adapted to their local environment.

Q: The remains of people found during the African Burial Grounds Project showed stress and the hard work the people were forced to endure. Archaeology revealed this. Do you agree?
A: Oh yes definitely. Such labor is reflected in the skeletons very clearly in a number of populations of the past. Similar studies have been done on American Indians who were enslaved prior to the introduction of slaves from Africa. So bones can exhibit this kind of information.

Q: How will archaeologists know when they have found the site? What types of artifacts will alert them to possible success?
A: Well, the definitive evidence as far as archaeological evidence of Angola will be an assemblage of materials that would include British trade ceramics and other materials; also trade materials from Cuba and quite likely some items that were made locally, that is to say ethnic materials that could be identified as African.

Q: Ethnic materials like what, for instance?
A: Well some years ago a wooden drum was found along the Little Manatee River that is clearly of an African design. It’s also not beyond the realm of possibility that Blacks would have used local clays of which there are high quality deposits along the Manatee River to make their own ceramic pots, cooking pots. And insofar as some of these people were Africans, I mean first generation here, Africans, they might then have made pots in African style that would be identifiable as African.

Q: Are there specific research questions that the team hopes to answer through archaeology?
A: Primary research questions that we’d be addressing of course would be identifying an archaeological site as Black African fugitive. In addition, depending on the nature of the site, how they lived, how they adapted to their environment in this part of Florida after escaping from North Florida which was a very different sort of environment than down here around Tampa Bay. Again, how they lived their lives in freedom down in the Tampa Bay region.

Q: What are some of the challenges you have faced in the search so far?
A: I would say the chief challenges in this project have been the more than hundred years since the event we’re trying to document. That is to say all the subsequent development that’s occurred – housing, commercial development, roads, etc.- these developments have impacted the record wherever it is. We’re still looking for it. It does make the search more difficult as well as what that development has done below ground: sewer pipes, water lines, power lines. It’s much more difficult to do archaeological work in an urban context because of those hidden dangers that are underground.

Q: Are these the same challenges that lie ahead for continued archaeological investigations in the future?
A: Yes, these are the same challenges with an urban context. There are additional areas in East Bradenton that we’d like to intensively examine. These are areas around Tampa Bay not as developed which would be relatively more easy to examine, but again another factor in the project which has not been a problem to date would be getting the permission of private property owners to examine their property.

Many people have the mistaken idea that if something is found on their land then they can no longer develop it. Well this is untrue. But this prevalent fear is something that regularly has to be addressed when an archaeologist tries to get permission to dig on privately owned properties.

Q: I’ve heard you say in the lectures you dig a hole or holes on someone’s property, but you fill them and the lawn does return to its normal state once it rains and the ground settles. You won’t ruin the lawns of property owners?
A: Another aspect of working on private property is, it is non permanently damaging. Shortly after we’ve done our work you can’t tell we’ve been there plus another aspect of this is whatever we find on a private property belongs to the private property owner. Typically, the evidence we find has no real intrinsic monetary value. The value is in the knowledge it represents. Bottom line what we find belongs to the property owner. And depending on what is found this can actually help to generate a sense of pride in the owner for the local history of a property and region regardless of the color of the private property owner.

Q: How do you think white property owners will feel about the Black Seminole story?
A: Times have certainly changed in terms of racial attitudes. Some people are more enlightened and some are not. And all individuals will have to be approached individually. Some people are intractable. Some people are more easily convinced of the value of the big picture, that the story is much more than just what you read in standard history books.

Q: What does the story of Angola have to teach us today?
A: The value of the Angola story is that it elaborates the important aspects of American history, the big picture, that are attributable to a racial minority. Blacks had a part in this country’s history, more than “just slaves.”

Further, this particular story has so many different levels besides the local, the regional and state; it also has aspects of national importance and international importance insofar as it directly relates to the War of 1812, which has been described by some as in fact the second American Revolution.

Q: What about the courage of the people? Does that touch you in any way?
A: Certainly having worked in many of the wild areas of Florida as an archaeologist I think I can appreciate more than many others the difficulties faced by people of whatever color going into an unknown, wild territory and managing to successfully exist and make a living out in the wilds.

Of course even more so when you do put color on the story and you reflect on the fact that these people were running away from slavery; they were, in my opinion, pretty regularly living with one eye looking over their shoulder since they were fugitives and always had to be mindful of the fact that they were repeatedly escaping from one danger to another. It was a remarkably difficult life, but successful for many of the fugitives in Central and South Florida.

Q: What else should our readers know about the archaeology of Angola?
A: I would just add the point that we are looking around Tampa Bay. We have some sites in particular but we don’t have documentation that points us to a particular spot. And when we speak of Tampa Bay we really mean the west coastal area of Florida, inclusive of parts of Sarasota in all likelihood, so it’s a large region. It’s very likely to have very thin evidence impacted by 100 years of development which is increasing as we all know, particularly in this part of Florida. So it’s a very challenging project but a very fascinating project which I think has great ramifications for the story of America.

Q: What if a developer’s project unearthed something in Manatee in the area you’re talking about and discovered something intriguing that looked like an artifact from the Angola Settlement. Wouldn’t that be amazing? How likely is that?
A: To be honest, I think that’s very unlikely because the evidence is very slim and not particularly noticeable to anyone without a trained eye. It would not be like the recent, accidental, fortuitous discovery of mammoth bones by a developer in West Bradenton where you have a 4 or 5 foot long thigh bone. It’s pretty obvious when you find something like that. As far as the discovery of human remains, it’s required that work stop and such remains be reported to police authorities. The medical examiner determines whether they are 50 years old or older. If they are older, then the state archaeologist comes in to investigate. But the bottom line is all human remains are protected under felony provisions of law no matter how old the bones are, what color the flesh was on the bones in life.

Q: Anything you’d like to add?
A: The discoveries that have been made along the Little Manatee River really have me interested in the Ruskin area, both the African drum and a curious metal spear point that I examined back in the 80’s during the Desoto Trail project that was found by a resident along the Little Manatee River in Ruskin. The spear point was definitely not 16th century which was the subject of our work at that time looking for evidence of Fernando Desoto. Something more recent than that, something historical, something manufactured, a substantial metal spear point. There’s still a puzzle.

Q: Where are they, the drum and the spearpoint?
A: The drum is in the collection at Gainesville, the Florida Museum of Natural History. The spearpoint is still in private hands. In doing the research I’ve done on early maps of Tampa Bay, it struck me that the Little Manatee River is really emphasized in many of these maps.

It’s shown in quite exact detail as early as 1757 as opposed to the Manatee River, the Alafia, the Hillsborough, the other major rivers into Manatee. The Little Manatee sees this great amount of detail 7, 8 miles up its course inland, deep navitable water inland, with high banks going inland. These are different pieces to the puzzle. I think there’s good potential there.

I’m sorry to say the likelihood here in Sarasota is probably less because of the impact of development. Also in John Lee Williams’ book, he relates seeing ruined structures in an abandoned field which was very clearly Yellow Bluffs, right here in Sarasota, which is covered in condos. But in between the condos is a little green space. I’d still be able to put in a couple of holes here and there.

Interview with Terrance Weik
Discipline: Archaeology
October, 2005

Q: Why is it important to tell the stories of Black Seminoles and maroons in Florida and elsewhere?
A: It’s very important because the story hasn’t been told for so many years. I think one of the lessons that anyone can take away from this history is that no matter what the odds are or how much you are outnumbered, or how you don’t have some of the weapons or perhaps the skills to have full control over your situation, there were people who faced those challenges.

Some people overcame their obstacles. Whenever and wherever people were faced with slavery, some rebelled against it, and some succeeded. That’s really a tremendous accomplishment, given what people were facing.

With regard to Angola, people need to understand that repression and exploitation work, in part, because people go along with it, with what they think they are offered. People tend to settle for what they have in front of them, perhaps because they don’t have a lot of information or haven’t taken that first step to find an alternative. Angola illustrates that there are alternatives that are definitely not the easy road. Many people do not take that road, but many do, and some succeed.

Histories like that of Angola, are an important lessons in survival strategy: they were self-sufficient, they were able to communicate across lines of language, culture and politics. They were able to grow their own food, build their own houses. How many of us can do that today? What happens if we run out of gas or the grocery store closes (laughs)? People are thinking about that more and more, with the gas crisis and the recent hurricanes.

Q: What do you feel your experience and insight have to bring to the Looking for Angola research?
A: One perspective is that I have been doing archaeology of Africans rebelling against slavery for many years now. What it has taught me is to have patience with how long it takes to do such research. It’s not like we’re going to find pyramids and treasures of gold.

The treasures we find are much more modest, very interesting nonetheless, but on a much smaller scale. It’s given me an appreciation for how patient you have to be, how careful you have to be, and how some of the nuances in the earth make all the difference. It’s a matter of being in the right place, asking the right questions, and even knowing what to look for.

The same, I think, holds for the documentary record. Now that I’m looking back at the earlier questions that I had with different eyes and doing a lot more reading, I think, “What sorts of inferences can I make?” and it can be frustrating.

So I’m learning that we have to be patient in seeking these sites out. The odds are that we can look for years before we’ve found it. That may make it more difficult to find funding, depending on where you look. When you get funding you’ve got to come up with something. That’s been a great challenge for me. People are really excited in the beginning of such a project, but it’s only the people who are willing to stick with it for a number of years, who will turn this into a product that you can really get something out of.

Just think of the Fort Mose work, that took many years, but it’s a perfect example of how a team built collaborative research, and that’s why that project was so successful. So I think that I can bring an appreciation of how long and how hard this research can be. Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can theoretically conceptualize the establishment, transformation and the perpetuation of these communities: behaviors, interactions and processes that brought about these communities. These are things I hope I can bring in.

Q: How will your involvement in the Looking for Angola project further your ongoing research?
A: One of the things that intrigues me, looking at the maps, is how far south into the peninsula people were willing to go to remain free. Another fascination is comparing Fort Mose, where you had Africans allied with Europeans; Pilaklakaha, where you had Africans allied with Native Americans, and Angola. These folks seem to have disregarded the issues of proximity and alliance and sort of went off on their own and left the safe haven of alliance. I think that is really interesting, that they were willing to go out there and take such a risk.

I think part of it was due to the nature of Florida at the time, it was a sort of frontier region. Also there were opportunities to interact economically with the Spanish fishermen and people from the many nations who were plying around the Caribbean and nearby waters at the time. It will be interesting for me to see what having access to the sea meant in a strategic way for their survival. I’m interested in how to conceptualize defense and economy in a place where you had the advantage of a seaport.

It seems like this group was more independent and autonomous in many ways, than groups in the interior of Florida. Of course there was plenty of diversity there, but rather than looking at some of the more hybrid models of Seminole and African interaction, that I would expect in interior Florida, I would be looking more at more of a model of Inter-African and African-African American cultural contact. It’s a nuance that affects diversity, the fact that they were out there on their own. My general impression is that they seem less plugged in to their Native American neighbors and allies, than the interior groups.

Q: What are the implications of those differences for the expected material culture? How might the artifacts of Angola and Pilaklakaha be similar? How might the material culture of the two communities differ?
A: I think it will be different in terms of material evidence of integration and engagement with Native Americans. I would expect that there would be a larger percentage of the Seminole brushed and sand-tempered pottery at a place like Pilaklakaha versus Angola, where I would expect to find less Native American pottery, and more European ceramics.

I’d expect creamwears, pearlwares, annular wares, ironstone ceramics. That’s one of the biggest ways I think the two assemblages would probably differ. I think there would be a lot of overlap in other categories of artifacts, though: beads, arms and ammunition, metal earbobs, tiny intricate adornments, things like that.

Q: Did the residents of Angola have ties to other maroon communities in Florida? Were there comings and goings between, say, Angola and Pilaklakaha?
A: That’s an interesting question. I think there probably were, especially during the crisis of abandonment at Angola, when they were under attack. I think it’s entirely plausible, given that protection was offered by more interior sites, such as the Withlacoochee Cove sites. I’ll be interested to see if there is evidence of family ties or personal linkages among the various communities.

The documentary record is probably the most promising for documenting that. Lists of names before and during the Seminole Wars may shed some light. I think that the documentary record will reveal evidence of people moving all about the peninsula during those times. There is already clear documentary evidence of linkages between Pilaklakaha and the Alachua communities, and I think we will find other instances as well. It’s a matter of finding specific evidence and thinking about what kinds of evidence would help us to see such a link.

I think the artifacts are a challenge, because of course, they don’t speak for themselves. It may be the more personalized objects such as stylistic links in pottery, for instance, that would help us start making inferences about linkages between the people of Angola and Africans elsewhere in Florida.

Q: What will your role be in the Looking for Angola project?
A: I’m really new to this project, so I’m trying to figure out ways in which I can be of benefit. Certainly trying to formulate important research questions and theories is something I hope to help with. I’d like to provide encouragement for folks to persevere, no matter what they find or don’t find, and of course I’d like to be on the ground when fieldwork is going on. I hope to help the team spend as much time on the ground trying to locate this site, as we do in archives. I’d also like to look at how using oral histories as evidence can contribute to our understanding of the past.

Q: Are there specific questions that you are hoping to ask of the material record, when Angola is found?
A: I’ll be interested to know if there are, indeed, differences in proportions of Seminole versus English ceramics, between Angola and Pilaklakaha. That would allow me to make inferences about how politics and economics shape the material assemblage of a given site.

Another fascinating question is, “What would a group of Africans, newly escaped from slavery, do, when they stopped running?” What decisions would they make about where to settle, building houses, etc? You have to have a long term vision of your survival or else you will quickly disappear as a group. I’d be interested to see how they made their society work by making decisions about agriculture, opportunistic commerce, arms and defense, protection from slave raiders and other issues that would affect their long term survival as a group.

Q: Is there anything else our readers should know?
A: I certainly hope that people become interested in looking for these types of sites. There’s so much more work to be done.

I think that it is crucial for people to explore not only themes such as this; resistance and succeeding against the odds, but also to learn of such things that exist in their own family histories. You just never know what you are going to find when you begin to explore your own history.

It’s clear to me that people have so much to bring to Angola’s history as well. The more eyes and ears we have out there, the more successful we will be in learning this history. It’s important to have a public component of such research. I really learned a lot from people when I traveled and spoke to different groups in Florida during my research on Pilaklakaha. Different people have different experiences and bring things to the story, as well as evidence.

I think the story of Angola speaks about people overcoming the odds and prevailing despite enormous challenges. It’s a story that people can connect to, even today.