Terrance Weik

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Terrance Weik, a University of Florida anthropology graduate student, compares a pottery shard Tuesday, June 12, 2001, from the site of a 19th-century black Seminole town in Sumter County with another Seminole pot. Both have a brush-stroke pattern that is unique to Seminole pottery. Weik is leading a team of researchers currently digging at the site to learn how the runaway slaves lived within the embattled Seminole Indian nation. Called “Maroons,” a term derived from the Spanish word “cimarrones,” meaning fugitive, the black Seminoles fled from Georgia and South Carolina to Florida, where some of them escaped pursuing authorities to befriend and live with the Seminole Indians.

(UF photo by Ray Carson)
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