 The Seminole only wanted to return to their villages, so the maroons became owners of the Fort.It soon came to be called the 'Negro Fort' by Southern planters, and it was widely known among enslaved blacks by word of mouth – a place nearby where blacks were free and had guns, as in Haiti.The white pro-slave holding planters correctly felt its simple existence inspired escape or rebellion by the oppressed African-Americans, and they complained to the US government.