Editing Underground Railroad (section)

===Freedom routes into Native American lands===

From colonial America into the 19th century, [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indigenous peoples]] of North America assisted and protected enslaved Africans journey to freedom.<ref name="auto1">{{cite news |title=The Indigenous connection to the Underground Railroad |url=https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/what-happens-when-hidden-histories-become-a-national-conversation-1.6059520/the-indigenous-connection-to-the-underground-railroad-1.6061957 |access-date=10 September 2024 |agency=CBC |date=2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Uncovering Tribal Connections to the Underground Railroad |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/tribal-ugrr-connections.htm |website=The National Park Service |access-date=10 September 2024}}</ref> However, not all Indigenous communities were accepting of freedom seekers, some of whom they enslaved themselves or returned to their former enslavers.<ref name="NPS Telling Stories"/> The earliest accounts of escape are from the 16th century. In 1526, Spaniards established the first European colony in the continental United States in South Carolina called [[San Miguel de Gualdape]]. The enslaved Africans revolted and historians suggest they escaped to [[Shakori]] Indigenous communities.<ref name="auto"/><ref>{{cite news |last1=Brockell |first1=Gillian |title=Before 1619, there was 1526: The mystery of the first enslaved Africans in what became the United States |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/07/before-there-was-mystery-first-enslaved-africans-what-became-us/ |access-date=18 September 2024 |agency=The Washington Post |date=2019}}</ref> As early as 1689, [[Slavery in the colonial United States|enslaved Africans]] fled from the [[South Carolina Lowcountry]] to [[Spanish Florida]] seeking freedom.<ref name="Opala">
{{cite book|chapter-url=http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/07.htm |first=Joseph A. |last=Opala |title=The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection – Website
|chapter=Black Seminoles – Gullahs Who Escaped From Slavery |publisher=Yale University, Gilder Lehrman Center |access-date=2009-08-04 |url-status=dead
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090829221041/http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/07.htm |archive-date=2009-08-29 }}</ref> The [[Seminole|Seminole Nation]] accepted [[Gullah]] runaways (today called [[Black Seminoles]]) into their lands.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pressly |first1=Paul |title=A Southern Underground Railroad Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Indian Country |date=2024 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820366326 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zjBQ0AEACAAJ}}</ref> This was a southern route on the Underground Railroad into Seminole Indian lands that went from Georgia and the Carolinas into Florida. In Northwest Ohio in the 18th and 19th centuries, three [[Native Americans in the United States|Indigenous/Native American]] nations, the [[Shawnee]], Ottawa, and [[Wyandot people|Wyandot]] assisted freedom seekers escape from slavery. The Ottawa people accepted and protected runaways in their villages. Other escapees were taken to [[Fort Malden]] by the Ottawa. In [[Upper Sandusky, Ohio|Upper Sandusky]], Wyandot people allowed a [[Maroons|maroon community]] of freedom seekers in their lands called Negro Town for four decades.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Finkinebine |first1=Roy |title=The Underground Railroad in "Indian Country": Northwest Ohio, 1795–1843 |date=2018 |publisher=University Press of Florida |pages=70–92 |doi=10.5744/florida/9780813056036.003.0004 |isbn=978-0-8130-5603-6 |url=https://academic.oup.com/florida-scholarship-online/book/14776/chapter-abstract/168992172?redirectedFrom=fulltext}}</ref>

[[File:Beverly Image of Native Villages.jpg|thumb|Native Americans accepted freedom seekers into their villages and escorted them to Canada.]]

In the 18th and 19th centuries in areas around the [[Chesapeake Bay]] and [[Delaware]], [[Nanticoke people]] hid freedom seekers in their villages. The Nanticoke people lived in small villages near the [[Pocomoke River]]; the river rises in several forks in the [[Great Cypress Swamp]] in southern [[Sussex County, Delaware]]. African Americans escaping slavery were able to hide in swamps, and the water washed off the scent of enslaved runaways making it difficult for dogs to track their scent. As early as the 18th centuries, mixed blood communities formed.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Gould |first1=Bill |title=Delmarva Native Americans and the earliest Underground Railroad |url=https://nativeamericansofdelawarestate.com/Delmarva_Indians_&_Underground_Railroad.htm |website=Native Americans of Delaware State |access-date=10 September 2024}}</ref><ref name="auto3"/> In [[History of slavery in Maryland|Maryland]], freedom seekers escaped to Shawnee villages located along the [[Potomac River]]. Slaveholders in Virginia and Maryland filed numerous complaints and court petitions against the Shawnee and Nanticoke for hiding freedom seekers in their villages.<ref>{{cite web |title=What is the Underground Railroad and why did it exist here? |url=https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/011000/011364/unrestricted/20090253e.pdf |website=Maryland State Government |access-date=15 September 2024}}</ref> [[Odawa]] people also accepted freedom seekers into their villages. The Odawa transferred the runaways to the [[Ojibwe]] who escorted them to Canada.<ref name="auto1"/> Some enslaved people who escaped slavery and fled to Native American villages stayed in their communities. White pioneers who traveled to Kentucky and the [[Ohio Territory]] saw "[[Black Indians in the United States|Black Shawnees]]" living with Indigenous people in the [[Trans-Appalachia|trans-Appalachian west]]. During the colonial era in [[New Spain]] and in the [[Seminole]] Nation in Florida, African Americans and Indigenous marriages occurred.{{sfn|Hudson|2015|p=155}}<ref>{{cite web |last1=Garrison |first1=Timothy A. |last2=Haefeli |first2=Evan |title=Native Americans and African Americans |url=https://oxfordaasc.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-44914 |website=Oxford African American Studies Center |access-date=11 September 2024}}</ref>