Texas Tech University Press, 1993

Filled with ironies and incongruities, this book is a tale of epic dimensions about a few hundred rather obscure people—the Seminole maroons. These runaways (and their descendants) from the plantations of the southeastern United States first appear in Kevin Mulroy’s narrative as “slaves,” yet they were armed, relatively autonomous, and more industrious and prosperous than their ostensible Seminole “masters” in Florida. Living in separate towns under leaders of their own, they never genuinely assimilated with the Seminoles with whom they had sought safety but became their “vassals and allies” in a mutually beneficial relationship.