they were nominally owned by. In fact, except for the obligation of the blacks to join in hunting and war parties, and to supply an annual tribute of crops to the tribal chief for the general welfare of the tribe, there was little effective difference between how the Seminole lived and the lives of their nominal slaves. This changed in the course of the Second Seminole War when the old tribal system broke down under the pressure of the fighting and the Seminole resolved themselves into loose war bands living off the land with no distinction between tribal members and their so-called slaves. But this changed yet again in the new territory when the Seminole were obliged to settle on fixed lots of land and take up settled agriculture. At that point the chattel slave model adopted by their Creek cousins and other displaced tribes in the region took on more attraction for many of the Seminole. Their increasing poverty, due to the poor land they had been given and their own farming inexperience also made regaining a source of slave labor attractive to them (since the blacks were generally better farmers and craftsmen than their "owners"). The Seminole sub-agent, Marcellus Duval, became a tireless advocate for restoration of alleged Seminole property rights over their former allies in the field, a restoration he apparently hoped to turn to his own benefit as much as to the Indians'. With Mason's reversal of Jesup's wartime decree, those who had been freed by Jesup now suddenly found their status reversed, as Duval and the pro-Creek Seminole demanded their return to Seminole service, only now as chattel slaves. A new open season by the raiders from nearby groups and towns was about to commence as more than 280 Black Seminoles, including John Horse's own family, were now at risk again. Duval, who had slave interests of his own, then effectively procured a decision from Washington that would force the blacks living under the army's protection at Fort Gibson to return to the settlements of those Indians who were now deemed their legal owners. The Indian sub-agent had, in fact, already worked out an agreement with the pro-Creek faction within the Seminole tribal council to provide a large number of the re-enslaved blacks to his lawyer brother in payment for legal services rendered on their behalf in Washington in pursuit of their property rights over