Seminole slavery

Indians from the Cherokee, Creek, and other "Civilized Tribes" of the Southeast emulated the southern American approach to slavery. Their practice of the institution had roots in the colonial period, when the British encouraged Indians to hold African slaves as a way to control their own problems with runaways. By the early 1800s, the southeastern tribes were adopting increasingly harsh slave codes and individual Indians were enlarging their slave holdings. Not long after John Horse's birth, chiefs in Georgia and Mississippi would rank among those states' largest slaveholders.