The Black Seminoles are escendants of free Africans and some runaway slaves who escaped from coastal South Carolina and Georgia into the Florida wilderness beginning as early as the late 1600s. They joined with the Native Americans inhabiting Florida at the same period. Together, the two groups formed the Seminole tribe, a multi-ethnic and bi-racial alliance. Today, Black Seminole descendants still live in Florida, rural communities in Oklahoma and Texas and in the Bahamas and Northern Mexico. In the 19th century the Florida "Black Seminoles" were called "Seminole Negroes" by their white American enemies and Estelusti, or "Black People," by their Indian allies. Modern Black Seminoles are known as "Seminole Freedmen" in Oklahoma, "Seminole Scouts" in Texas, "Black Indians" in the Bahamas, and "Mascogos" in Mexico.