Given the many contacts and long experience the Seminoles already had with persons of African descent, it is not surprising that they offered a refuge to the new wave of black refugees who fled from Propsect Bluff in 1816. Their geopolitical knowledge, military experience, and languages were valuable assets for the Seminoles. The independent "village Negroes," as they were sometimes called in English sources, provided annual tribute and military service to the Seminole chiefs with whom they were associated, but black leaders ruled the black villages. Reshaping his life once more, Abraham became a trusted interpreter and adviser for Chief Micanopy. Nero became the adviser and interpreter for the Seminole's principal leader, Chief Bowlegs, and located his village near to that of Bowlegs. Americans who later wrote about the Black Seminoles were unable to conceive of the vassalage relationship between Seminole chiefs and escaped slaves; they thought that all blacks living among the Seminoles were enslaved chattel. Thus, they believed that Micanopy "owned" Abraham, and Bowlegs "owned" Nero. Recognizing that the Americans intended to return them to slavery, Abraham, Nero, Harry, Fernando, and other runaways encouraged a Seminole alliance with the Spaniards, who were also feeling the pressure of American expansionism. The Spaniards stood to lose their colony, the fugitive blacks their freedom, and the Seminoles their rich lands and cattle herds. It may have been a marriage of convenience, but all of them pulled together against the common enemy (185). ...Abraham governed the independent village of Pilaklikaha (Many Ponds) near present-day Bushnell, Florida... When the former slave trader turned settler Horatio Dexter visited Pilaklikaha in 1823, he reported that "about 100 Negres belonging to Micanope and his family of different ages and sexes" had planted approximately 120 acres of corn, peanuts, and rice there. Dexter, like other Americans, could not see or acknowledge the independence of Abrahams villagers. Dexter also visited and reported on another black settlement at Boggy Island, where blacks allied to Sitarky had planted corn, rice, and sugar cane--the later from plants that Dexter had provided during an earlier visit to the village (196). (Landers: Atlantic Creoles)