Today, Black Seminole descendants live primarily in rural communities around the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Some were held as slaves, particularly of Seminole leaders, but the Black Seminole had more freedom than did slaves held by whites in the South and by other Native American tribes, including the right to bear arms. Historically, the Black Seminoles lived mostly in distinct bands near the Native American Seminoles. Many have Seminole lineage, but due to the stigma of having mixed origin, they have all been categorized as slaves or freedmen in the past. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free Africans, and escaped former slaves, who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida. The Black Seminoles, or Afro-Seminoles, are an ethnic group of mixed Native American and African origin associated with the Seminole people in Florida and Oklahoma. Protestantism, Roman Catholicism and syncretic Islam An Afro-Seminole elder smoking from a pipe (1952)
