Page 19: Anthropology - Looking for Angola
The Search for an 1800’s Black Settlement
Excavations are underway for the first time to pinpoint the location of an 1800’s settlement known as “Angola,” formerly located along the Manatee River. UCF Assistant Professor Rosalyn Howard is a member of the interdisciplinary research team that includes historian Canter Brown, Jr. (Florida A&M University), historical archaeologist Uzi Baram (New College of Florida), archaeologist Bill Burger, and Louis Robinson (Sarasota educator). The team is working to combine decades of research in the effort to uncover evidence about this little known story missing from the pages of American history. The saga of Angola highlights Florida’s continuing role as a beacon of freedom for refugees from slavery in the American South. The historical archaeology of the settlement will shed light on matters of national and international importance.
The community thrived from 1812-1821. It was comprised of formerly enslaved Africans and African-Americans and Seminole Indians. In 1821, American soldiers and bounty hunters raided the Angola Settlement. Survivors of the raid escaped south along the Florida coast to Cape Florida where they boarded canoes and wreckers, heading for safety and freedom in The Bahamas. According to Rosalyn Howard’s research, published in her book Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, this was the same year that Black Seminoles established a settlement on Andros Island called Red Bays where a descendant population of these original inhabitants lives today. The ongoing excavations will likely provide a direct link of the Angola exiles to today’s population in Red Bays.
This multi-disciplinary project includes archaeological field surveys of four sites in Manatee County, Florida; historical research throughout England and Nassau, Bahamas; public lectures; the production of a documentary; an educational component that involves middle and high school students playing a vital role as researchers; and an international cultural exchange program.
“The story of their lives, courage, determination and enterprise deserves preservation and commemoration,” says Vickie Oldham, project director.
The search for Angola will attract groups traditionally underrepresented in archaeology. The story brings together the heritage of Africans in America and the Caribbean, the Spanish in Florida, Seminoles on the Gulf Coast and American expansion into the state’s interior. It is attracting international attention; journalists with the British Broadcast Service (BBC) have conducted two radio interviews that aired throughout Africa in Portuguese and English.
The Angola project is funded in part by the Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation and the Florida Humanities Council. o
Want to know more?
Anthropology website: www.cas.ucf.edu/soc_anthro
Rosalyn Howard: rhoward@mail.ucf.edu
Book: Black Seminoles in the Bahamas
The majority of the Black Seminoles living in contemporary Red Baysare descended directly from the original settlers. As part of her research, Howard lived for a year in this small community, recording its oral history and analyzing the ways in which that history informed the evolving identity of the people. Her treatment dispels the air of mystery surrounding the Black Seminoles and provides a foundation for further investigations.
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