New Frontier

If Coacoochee saw a chance to revive Seminole traditions in Mexico, the Black Seminoles saw much more. Mexico had outlawed slavery in 1829 under President Vicente Guerrero, the revolutionary leader of mixed African, Indian, and Spanish ancestry. From that time on, hundreds of fugitive slaves had escaped into Mexico in an improvised version of the underground railroad. Slavery had threatened the Black Seminoles from Florida to Oklahoma. In Mexico, they might finally find legal freedom.