Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Black Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery

Appreciate your posting this. I find it all very interesting.

I remember that movie. It was actually pretty funny.
And back when Lou Gosset Jr actually had hair. 😂

If you ever saw the movie, “Lone Star” with Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, about a crooked sheriff in S. TX, it mentions the story of Wildcat several times.
Pretty good flick, too.

I didn’t realize the US Army officially credited Wildcat (AKA Caocoochie) with originating the term HOOAGH! Until just now tho I read of it years ago.

Wildcat and John Horse (AKA Gopher John in this account) made quite an impression upon the US Officers they interacted with, including Brigadier General Thomas Jesup who eventually allowed them to stay in his Washington residence and lent his support.

I believe it was on the occasion described below that Wildcat and Horse, ever the life of a party, showed up purposefully and outlandishly dressed to the occasion in Shakespearean garb from a trunk taken from a traveling acting troop.

https://www.thehistorycenter.org/coacoochee/

Army Spc. James Pernol, a military public affairs journalist at Fort Dix, N.J., cites the official Army position, supported by military history, that attributes the origin of the term to Coacoochee and the 2nd Dragoons (mounted riflemen) assigned to the Florida wars in 1841.

At a banquet following truce talks with the Seminoles, Coacoochee listened as officers of the garrison offered toasts, including “Here’s to luck!” and “The old grudge” before drinking, according to many military sources. Coacoochee turned to the interpreter Gopher John, who explained the toasting. Coacoochee is said to have raised his cup high and shouted, “Hough!” The 2nd Dragoons joined in, creating the enduring legacy.

It’s easy to dismiss John Lapham Bullis, a Quaker whose postwar career was commanding Black troops. Turns out on closer examination he was among the West’s premier hardasses and most successful Indian fighters.

Eight years commanding the Seminoles, twenty-six Indian fights, all involving grueling marches over difficult terrain, many concluding down in Mexico. A true Spec Ops guy of his day.



Bullis’s personality and the nature of his relationship with his scouts was illustrated in the Eagle’s Nest Ford fight of April 25th, 1875. He was out with three Seminole Scouts when they came across a major Indian trail. They get the drop from a hillside above on a group of 25-30 Indians herding 75 stolen horses. Outnumbered about 7:1, Bullis orders an attack anyway, hoping to stampede the Indians and recover the horses..

On April 25, 1875, Lieutenant John Lapham Bullis was on patrol with Black Seminole Scouts Isaac Payne, John Ward, and Pompey Factor when they came across a fresh trail of about 75 horses. The men followed the trail until they came to a place on the Pecos River known as Eagle’s Nest Crossing. Near the crossing the men spotted a group of about 25 Comanche. Bullis could not resist the opportunity; he and Payne, Factor, and Ward dismounted and started to attack the Comanche. After about 45 minutes the Comanche, using repeating Winchester rifles, were able to push back Bullis and the scouts.

As Payne, Factor, and Ward escaped, they saw that Bullis was not able to get on his frightened horse. The men knew Bullis would die if he was left behind. Payne and Factor provided covering fire while Ward rode to Bullis’s rescue. All four men then rode 56 miles back to Fort Clark, Texas, to safety.

Not mentioned is that in the course of rescuing Bullis, Ward’s carbine stock was shattered and its sling cut by incoming small arms fire.

This was the incident that prompted a grateful Bullis to recommend all three scouts for a Medal of Honor.

These were the three guys in whose company a hard charger like Bullis went out with on patrol and felt confident enough in their abilities to take on a far larger group of Indians. Not your stereotypical Western heroes. One account says they trailed that party of Indians for 170 miles before launching their attack.

John Ward, the guy whose carbine stock was shattered by gunfire…



Isaac Payne looked like JJ Walker from Good Times.



Pompey Factor late in life.



Different accounts identify the Indians as Apaches or Comanches. Could have been both.

In popular History we nail our Indians in place on the map and assign individuals to teams (Tribes). In reality mixed tribal assemblies in advance of the expanding Frontier went way back clear to New England.

Northern Mexico across the Rio Grande in those years comes across as a rough neighborhood where the lines between White, Mexican, Tribes and Blacks were blurred in practice and in breeding.

That was the environment from where the Black Seminoles brought their tracking and fighting skills. Multiple testimonies to the effect that the Black Seminoles were a cut above most Indian Scouts in their willingness to engage in combat and if Bullis was going into Mexico that was their home ground.

Gotta wonder if things would have been different in the 1880’s if there had been Black Seminoles in New Mexico and Arizona.

Great write up and pictures! Thanks.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Great thread! Keep it going, Mike!

Years ago I was talking to a friend in Mexico and he was telling me about the Black Seminole going to Mexico. Very enjoyable reading

Had a community of white pioneers accomplished half of the feats that the Black Seminoles accomplished in the 1800s, they would have easily entered the national consciousness. Had a white man accomplished half of John Horse's feats, he would have certainly become a legend -- and in fact several white frontiersmen, like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, did become such legends, on slimmer resumes than John Horse.

This from the people at johnhorse.com. I haven't spent any time on that website so I dunno what their agenda, if any, may be, but you can't really argue with the above.

The life of John Horse AKA Juan Caballo AKA Gopher John (1811-1882) is so full of details no one website captures all of it. The son of a possibly mixed-blood Spanish Trader and a probably enslaved Black woman he emerges into history as literate, and conversant in English, Spanish and a number of Indian languages. Wiki provides a good overview but omits many details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horse

Also reported as a fine marksman. I've reported in other threads here on Borthworth's 1840 work "A Treatise on the Rifle" (still in print, and a steal at $8) in which he quotes General Edmund P. Gaines report to the War Department that in January of 1836 Seminole riflemen on the Withacootchie River were scoring single aimed hits on US soldiers (including on Gaines himself) at ranges "between four and five hundred yards", the longest hits by round-ball flintlock rifles ever recorded in print (Gaines was definitely NOT a bullchitter and is another forgotten hero worthy of a thead in is own right). Coulda been Black guys making some of those shots.

The fieldcraft and combat abilities of John Horse are probably best evaluated as represented by his relations and proteges; the Black Seminole Scouts. To me one of his more impressive feats occurred in 1838 when himself and Wildcat starved themselves for three weeks to slip out of the narrow window of their place of confinement in Fort Marion. Horse accepted a deal for freedom in return for agreeing to Removal relatively early on (1839?).

He was returned from the Indian Territory by the Army to convince Wildcat and his Seminoles to accept Removal. Three trips to Washington, the third time on his own, using a position as a manservant of an American Officer to safeguard his passage, in order to plead for their interests.

Essentially double-crossed by political maneuvering during their residence in the Indian Territory wherein open-season was declared for Slave Catchers to capture the Black Seminoles and, as the descendants of runaways, to sell them into slavery. John's own sister and her children suffered this fate. An escape along with Wildcat's band by night, beset during their year in Texas by Creek Slave Raiders and hostile Comanches. Barely escaping across the Rio Grande ahead of US Cavalry and Texas Rangers.

Over most of the next decade he actively intercepts Indian raids as part of the agreement granting them land in Mexico.

Four reported assassination attempts during his life; seriously wounded at Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory at the hands of a different faction of Seminoles and again at Fort Clark here in Texas, probably upon the orders of the norious "Cowboy Mafia" head John "King" Fisher, after which he returned to Mexico for his own safety.

Late in life he still had the wherewithal and authority to suggest and supervise the eradication of a local band of outlaws/Indians vicitmizing villages by the strategem of getting them drunk and then killing them when they were too drunk to resist.

His last journey was to Mexico City in 1883, an apparently successful visit to Mexican President Porfirio Diaz to secure his peoples' landholdings in Mexico. He died there of pneumonia age 72, and was buried in an anonymous pauper's grave.

An extraordinary life.

Digressing a bit: Only a small minority of men joined Texas Ranging Companies. A companion of Jack Hays estimated the casualty rate among rangers in those early years fighting Indians was about 50% each year. Frontier service was a hazardous occupation and only those young men inclined to a high risk lifestyle would voluntarily participate.

This group included the best and the worst of men. No taint of scandal has in popular history been associated with Jack Hays, but if a man is known by the company he kept, Jack Hays’ close associates in Mexico included the alcoholic scalp hunter John Glanton and the theiving, homical Mustang Gray. The Texas Rangers’ exploits in Mexico included large-scale reprisals that have been likened by some to the future activities of the einsatzgruppen. Certainly Jack Hays seems to have returned from the Mexican War a changed man, quit rangering and left the state.

One of Gray’s more infamous acts was the interception of the Benavides caravan. The Benavides Clan along the Lower Guadalupe prominently came down on the Texian side during the Revolution but this did not save them. The Victoria region became notoriously lawless during and after the Republic Era and the Benavides family lost heavily, in both lives and fortune.

In an effort to recoup losses they organized a trading expedition to Mexico and it was this that was intercepted by Gray and his party. All the men were first tied together and then shot down in cold blood.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gray-mabry-b-mustang

Cholera took out Gray at age thirty-one a few years later, couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Rough men in a brutal era to be sure, but worth remembering when judging the actions all the participants in those times.

Relevant to this thread, mostly forgotten today is that one of the ways these wild young men financed their lifestyle was the lucrative capture of runaway slaves. With Mexico so close at hand losing slaves by escape was always a risk and Eagle Pass, originally founded as a smuggling town, was a frequent escape route.

Texas Ranger Captain John Salmon “RIP” Ford was one of those best of rangers whose life ran all through the events Texas history:

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ford-john-salmon-rip

His collected memoirs, RIP Ford’s Texas (still in print) are a must-read for anyone interested in that time and place. Certainly elements of Ford’s career were inspiration for parts of Lonesome Dove.

Producing newspapers was one of his callings and from 1852 to 1857 he partnered in editing the Texas State Times out of Austin. In 1855 the Times carried this story. Interesting that the Black Seminoles from even that distance were already perceived to be ‘good fighters’.

Among the Seminoles, there are 220 odd negroes. Some of these went to Mexico before these Indians, and have since intermarried with the negroes who came in with them, and are, therefore, identified with the Seminoles in every way. Fifty or more of these Negroes are well armed and are good fighters….

There are negroes in Santa Rosa and vicinity, who have not been incorporated with the Seminole negroes. They are designated as “State raised”. [a term for escaped slaves] The Seminole darkies has as little to do with them as possible, because they say the white folks wish to retake them, and they may thus become entangled, in their difficulties.

Negroes arrive frequently from the US… fully three thousand negroes have entered Mexico since 1848.

Thousands of escaped slaves living in some form of liberty just across the Border was of course a profound threat to that institution here in Texas, and also represented much lost capital that could be recovered to profit those who could recapture them. These things did not go unnoticed.

Undoubtedly the accuracy of that piece was due to the fact that RIP Ford himself had participated in an unsuccessful slaving expedition into Mexico four years earlier (1851) and had presumably witnessed for himself the Seminoles in action.

Ford didn’t mention his participation in that endeavor in his memoirs.

+1 on "RIP Ford's Texas".

It has been said that the only thing that could really unite Mexico is a US invasion. This was certainly true of what was experienced by most of those Americans crossing the Rio Grande in order to recover escaped slaves.

https://brill.com/display/book/9789004523289/BP000014.xml?language=en


On a spring day of 1851, a young laborer named Jesús Rodríguez came rushing into Flores’ office. He had spotted some miles away from the village an “Americano” (whose name turned out to be James Bartlett) riding a horse and dragging on the ground a former slave, Manuel Bonis (or “Wones”), who had absconded from Bartlett’s brother in Matagorda County…..

Bartlett captured Manuel and retreated back to Texas, eastward from Guerrero. Meanwhile, Flores quickly enlisted three local residents to track the footprints left by the kidnapper and the abductee. They found the slave refugee’s hat before coming across Bartlett and shooting him through his left lung after he refused to surrender.

A well-known anecdote from the early Jack Hays era, when Jack was reputed to be able to shoot the head off a rooster across the street with his Paterson Colts. Here rendered in a lengthy and highly informative Master’s Thesis…..

https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1696&context=leg_etd

In February 1839 Webber accompanied a Brazos Planter…. to San Antonio to pick up a fugitive slave who had been detained there by the rangers.

Some versions have it the small band of rangers were celebrating this capture that evening the a local cantina and became indisposed.

Weber observed that “escaping to Mexico is a favorite scheme of the slaves in Texas, numbers of them annually attempt, and some few effect it.” He also remarked on the aid given escaping slaves by Tejanos….

The young slave in the story managed to escape from his chains after seeing that his master had arrived in San Antonio to reclaim him. He broke out during the night and “jumping on a splendid horse, the very finest in town”, fled across the prairie toward Mexico with a lead of several hours…. . The young fugitive slave was never apprehended…

This escape was actively abetted by a young man by the name of Gonzalez, who felt strongly enough to further intervene, at risk of his own life....

the group of pursuing rangers…. assembled at dawn in the plaza of San Antonio……. Gonzalez… is captured after ambushing and wounding one of the pursuing rangers…… Gonzalez told the rangers that, attracted by a human sympathy for the boy, whom he had met accidentally in the shop of the blacksmith, with his heavy chains on - he had furnished him with a file to cut them - and advised him to the utmost in his manner of escape.

Hays had Gonzalez tied to a tree and ordered him shot. The same man Gonzalez had shot from ambush, impressed by his resolve and cool demeanor in the face of death, earnestly requested that Gonzalez be spared, which in most accounts he was.

A good insight as to the nature of the rangers. One hopes Gonzalez went on to live a long and happy life.

Check out this 1958 Dissertation 😎

I haven’t perused it all yet, I dunno if it will mention a sojourn into Mexico after runaway slaves but it fills out many of the details of Ford’s exploits:





“RIP” Ford, Texan: The Public Life and Services of John Salmon Ford, 1836-1883

The exact future and borders of Texas as we know them today were less definite early on. The Great Comanche Raid of 1840 was aimed at the Mexican Federalist Government in exile,while at that same time many of the personnel the Texian Army, such as it was, were down along the Border fighting in the cause of establishing the Republic of the Rio Grande. This with the tacit approval of Texas President Lamar.

In 1840 Mexico was still a very real threat such that Mexican armies would take San Antonio and the Alamo again in 1842. A new Republic along the border founded by Tejanos at the very least might serve as a buffer. Anything that destabilized Mexico was to our benefit.

One name that runs through all these endeavors is the Texas-born Victoria native Jose Maria Jesus Carbajal, who would eventually establish himself as Military Governor of the Mexican Border State of Tamaulipas and build a mansion in Piedras Negras.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_María_Jesús_Carbajal

In 1851, Carbajal, this time with the tacit approval of the Governor of Texas, was invading Mexico from Texas again with the intent of establishing a Republic of Sierra Madre. The inducement for Texas was that Carbajal, if successful, promised to lower tariffs and also allow free access to slave catchers going after the thousands of escaped slaves living South of the Border, presumably including the Black Seminoles.

It was probably this prospect that induced RIP Ford and thirty rangers, quite likely acting under orders from the Governor, to join Carbajal’s incursion. Given Ford’s personality, any funds obtained by the recovery of slaves would probably have gone to the State coffers rather than to Ford in person.

Ford mentions nothing of this in his otherwise long and detailed memoirs. Having gone on a runaway slave-catching expedition for the Old South does not seem to have been one of the things most men would brag about decades after the War Over Secession.

Ford does not have many nice things to say about Black people, though he did about his Indian and Mexican opponents. As quoted in an earlier post, he did however pronounce the Black Seminoles as being “good fighters”.

A long passage, copied from the incomparable Noah Smithwick, all available free online 😎 Note that Smithwick claimed ownership of at least one slave himself, selling the young man before departing for California.

https://archive.org/details/evolutionofstat00smit/page/327/mode/1up?view=theater

Page 326 THE EVOLUTION OF A STATE

My dwelling, which stood near the edge of a narrow strip of table land between the river and the hills, was headquarters for a number of the mill hands. One night, just after dark, my dogs ran to the edge of the hill barking furiously at something below. Stepping out to see what game they had flushed, I heard a stone fall among them, by which I knew it was some person, and suspected that he was skulking, as the road ran on the opposite side of the house.

It was too dark to make observations and knowing the watchful nature of my canine guards, I didn't give myself further trouble. It was, perhaps, an hour later that a bright light like a campfire was noticed a mile or so above in the river bottom ; coupling that with the incident earlier in the evening, we someway hit upon the theory that they must be runaway negroes, which were not desirable additions to the neighborhood.

We determined to investigate, but the light died down, and there being no other means of locating the supposed camp, we deferred the foray till morning. Bright and early a couple of the boys set out to reconnoiter. In an hour, before it was light, one of them returned, confirming our suspicions. A party of five of us then sallied forth, another having remained in the vicinity of the camp to watch the movements of the occupants, who were seen to be negro men.

The runaways, too, were early astir, and by the time the storming column reached the camp were off. The dogs of course accompanied the chase, and among them was a noble fellow, half bloodhound, that could be depended on to track anything living. Tiger promptly took the trail and bounded away with the rest of the pack at his heels; we hurried on and directly heard the dogs baying and then a shot. In a few minutes the dogs came back, Tiger bleeding from a shot through the skin under the throat.

This put a serious aspect on the affair; we had not counted on armed resistance. The sight of my wounded favorite aroused my wrath and what had before been a mere frolic now became a personal matter. Tiger, who was not seriously hurt, was also apparently eager for revenge, but to guard him against further injury I tied one of the ropes we had brought along to secure our contemplated prisoners with around his neck so as to keep him in hand.

Finding him hard to manage I handed my trusty rifle to one of the boys, taking an old-fashioned horse pistol in exchange. The delay had given the fugitives a chance to reload and get away. The river being up prevented escape in that direction. A little way on we came upon a horse which they had stolen on Hickory creek : the animal had bogged in crossing a little creek and, there being no time to waste, his captors abandoned him.

The negroes then took to the higher ground. By some chance we separated, three of us carrying rifles getting off on the trail with the dogs, leaving me, armed with the old pistol, and two others with only small pocket pistols.

For some reason the negroes doubled on their track and came back in full view of our position. We intercepted them and demanded an unconditional surrender, the only reply being the presentation of a rifle in the hands of a powerful black fellow. Thinking that he meant business, I threw up my pistol and without waiting to take sight, blazed away. There was a deafening report and something "drapped," but it wasn't the darkey.

I sprang to my feet, the blood streaming from a wound just above my right eye ; my right hand was also badly torn and bleeding, and my weapon nowhere to be seen. I comprehended the situation at once. The old pistol had been so heavily charged that when I pulled the trigger it flew into fragments, the butt of it taking me just above the eye.

My blood was now thoroughly up, and thinking that the negro had fired simultaneously with myself I snatched a pistol from one of my companions and called to them to charge while his gun was empty. I discharged my piece without apparent effect, the only remaining shot was then a small pocket pistol in the hands of Billy Kay.

"Charge on him, Billy," I commanded.

Billy charged and received a bullet in the groin. The negro had reserved his fire. By this time the other boys came up, but the negroes had gotten the best of the fight and were off, with the dogs in hot pursuit. Tiger had gotten away when I fell; directly we heard another shot and the dogs returned, Tiger having received a shot through the body. Neither Kay nor the dog were disabled, but Kay's wound was a dangerous one and we made all haste to get him home and get a surgeon.

The chase had therefore to be abandoned.
In sorry plight we returned home……

The neighborhood was aroused and the country scoured in vain. Several days later the fugitives were heard from over on Sandy, where they held up Jim Hamilton and made him give them directions for reaching Mexico. We subsequently learned that the negroes had escaped from the lower part of the state.

They were never recaptured, though one or two other parties attempted it……

That was unquestionably the worst fight I ever got into. I think now, looking back over a life of ninety years, that that was about the meanest thing I ever did. Though having been all my life accustomed to such things I did not then take that view of it. The capture of fugitive slaves was a necessity of the institution.

Billy Kay was laid up about two months, the bullet finally causing suppuration, by which means it was located and removed. Tiger's wound eventually caused his death. My injuries soon healed, but I still bear the scar, which might well have been the brand of Cain.

This here is John Salmon Ford, Texas Ranger extraordinaire and properly a legend in Texas history, one of those guys whose life would seem improbable fiction if he hadn’t pulled it all off. Better yet he wrote it all down.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Salmon_Ford



I wrongly said earlier that Ford didn’t mention his participation in Carbajal’s 1851 incursion into Mexico. Indeed he did, and the reason for it (quoted from the book RIP Ford’s Texas). Ford wrote much of his collected memoirs in the sense of third person….

During those days slaves held in Texas, induced to run away from their masters by Mexicans, found refuge across the Rio Grande. It was calculated that there were, at that date, 3,000 Colored men north of the Sierra Madre who were owned by men living in Texas. General Carbajal agreed to a proposition to have them surrendered to their masters…

Ford had agreed to join General Carbajal and did so early in October, carrying with him about 30 of his trained Indian fighters with their own arms and equipment and packed meals. The accoutrements were paid for out of Ford’s pocket……

The Rangers were pitted against a band of Seminole Indians fighting with the enemy. A small hole was made in a brick or stone wall. Each man took his turn to fire through it; McCurley went, fired, and stepped back; a ball entered, struck him in the neck, and killed him…

The writer’s [Ford’s] connection with the Carbajal movement did him injury in the estimation of his fellow citizens. Many of them were not informed of the motives actuating him. They did not know he was endeavoring to give an additional support to an institution of the South, namely, slavery….

They judged the whole transaction by the rigid rule of success, and, because it failed, condemned it. An overcautious man might have felt himself justified in passing by the matter in silence. It seems more proper just to tell the truth about the writer’s actions and shoulder the responsibilities arising from such a course.

Ford ended his working career as Superintendent of the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin, 1879-83.

He made it a school rather than an asylum for illiterate handicaps. He revise the curriculum, introduced the teaching of trade skills…. And conducted a crack typography course….

He came to love his work at the Institute more than anything he had ever done, taking great pride in the rapid progress. His pupils were making.

I really enjoyed living in Texas for 4 years. Lots of great US history. Never ever passed a highway historical marker.

People have often asked me why I moved to Michigan in the north after living in Texas. To me, a Michigan winter is a lot better than a Texas summer.

No winters here, something like Fall arrives in November, it’s Spring now and summer will arrive in March. Second half of June through July, August, September don’t fall into any season, it’s just hot 🥴

Meanwhile, back to the narrative.

From Ford, who said that slavery was the cause of Secession.

Slavery came to the Southern Man authorized by the Supreme Law of the Land. It came to him authorized by time, and custom, and law. The assumption in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” was not intended to include the African race, or was a falsehood on its face. It was an institution sanctioned by the Bible, and it had all the authority of time to uphold it.

I quoted Noah Smithwick earlier in the attempted capture of escaped slaves. Earlier in his career Smithwick had actually partnered with a guy from Connecticut named Webber (whom Webber’s Prairie south of Bastrop is named after) that had bought and freed an enslaved woman he had gotten pregnant, even married her, so their children would be born free.

Easy to imagine a guy like Webber would be a social pariah most places, yet Smithwick partnered with the guy, was a close neighbor and railed bitterly about “the better sort” who moved in after the area became safe and eventually ran the Webber family off, despite their numerous charitable works (they moved to Mexico).

Yet even a guy like Smithwick on one occasion pursued escaped slaves because The capture of escaped slaves was a necessity of the institution.

A major enemy of the Black Seminoles up in the Indian Territory had been one Marcellus Duval of Alabama, then acting Subagent to the Seminoles. Among his complaints was that an Army Officer at Fort Gibson was teaching Black Seminoles to read and possibly write.

It was another Southerner, US Attorney General John Y. Mason from Virginia who decided that the Negroes should be restored to the condition in which they were prior to the intervention by General Jessup in Florida (ie. Slavery). President Polk quickly approved his opinion.

It ain’t surprising then that Wildcat’s and John Horse’s appearance with their band in Texas, the same people who had less than ten years earlier been effectively bearing arms against the United States and including in their number more than 200 (officially) escaped slaves, should not go unnoticed by the State Government in Texas.

If there hadn’t been a Mexico to flee to most likely the Seminole party woulda been the target of an organized military action. As it was, in the same time period (1851) of Ford’s incursion, Governor Bell of Texas authorized the appearance of one Warren Adams in Eagle Pass, a professional Slave Catcher, who was acting under the commission of Marcellus Duval.