Birdue& Woodie, can you guys shed some light on the Seminole Scouts? The reason I ask, is there's a cemetery in Fort Clark where a lot of them are buried, quite a few recipients of the MOH. We always get up a working party and clean up the graves.
One of the most remarkable and longest sagas in our history; the partnership of the Seminole leader Widcat and the nominal slave Juan Caballo AKA John Horse, a Black guy.
The Black Seminoles in Florida were runaways and their descendants who were allowed to live in Seminole territory paying some tribute in the form of crop yields. There was a lot of intermarriage, Osceola himself said to be a mix of White, Back and Seminole.
Second Seminole War, 1840’s, the Seminoles and their Black Seminole allies fought the US to a standstill. So much so that 500 Black Seminoles, who had recently been at war with the US Government, were actually allowed while still bearing arms, to remove with the Seminoles to Oklahoma.
The pretext was this they were called slaves of the Seminoles.
Things did not go well in the Indian Territory, tribal conflicts between tribes and slave raids on the Black Seminoles by neighboring Creeks who were selling them into actual slavery. 1850’s, the US passed a law forbidding slaves to bear arms, making things worse.
Wildcat and John Horse cut a deal with Mexico; a land grant in Mexico south of Eagle Pass in return for intercepting Indian raids. They did this, in the 1850’s intercepting more Indian raids than did the US Cavalry or Texas Rangers.
1857 Wildcat died of smallpox, most of the Seminoles subsequently returned to the US, the Black Seminoles remained in Mexico.
Twenty years later the US Army is sucking wind for Indian Scouts in Texas, Texas having chased out most all their Indians.
So they contract out to the Black Seminoles, a bunch of whom, including their aging leader John Horse, move up from Mexico and settle around Fort Clark.
Four Medal of Honor winners buried in that little “Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery”, highest per capita rate in the world.
