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

After I left the Border Rally, Google Maps said it was only about forty miles to Brackettsville/Fort Clark (just down the block in Texas terms), said detour adding just 15 miles to my trip back home.

Consider the improbability of 500 Florida Negroes, recently bearing arms against the United States, being allowed in 1840 to remove to the Indian Territory while still bearing arms. But it happened.

Ten years later those same people, subject to incessant slaving raids by surrounding Creek Indians, strike a deal with Mexico; a land grant in return for defense against raiding Apaches, Comanches and Kiowas.

Once again consider the improbability in 1870 of the US Cavalry contracting with around 50 of these Black Seminoles and their families to settle around Fort Clark so as to serve as Scouts. A Frontier saga entirely overlooked by popular History.

Anyways, this has been their cemetery since 1872, maybe three miles south of Fort Clark, not far from Las Moras Creek. I hadn’t stopped in here in about fifteen years.



There are four Medal of Honor winners buried here, the highest per capita of any cemetery anywhere. Did they award that medal more freely during the Indian Wars than they do today? No doubt.

Were these four medals handed out here a sort of 1870’s Affirmative Action program? Prob’ly not, one was recommended by Ranald MacKenzie himself who comes across as a no bullchit kinda guy. The other three were recommended by a Captain Bullis, in gratitude for them saving his life in the face of heavy Comanche fire after his horse ran off. Medals or not, these guys were the real deal.



It ain’t very often you come across an account of Indian War Era PTSD…..

On May 17th, 1873, Colonel MacKenzie’s command crossed the Rio Grande….. After a forced march of approximately eighty miles, travelling all night at a “killing pace”, the four hundred or so men struck the Lipan, Mescalero and Kickapoo settlements… early the next morning…

As the battle raged about him, Seminole scout Tony Wilson had a Lipan in his sights. Just as he squeezed the trigger, his target threw up an arm revealing that she was female. The carbine cracked, and the woman fell dead.

Wilson was reportedly haunted for the rest of his life by this error in judgement. It eventually made him insane.

I always hope this guy is resting in peace.

Good write-up, Mike. Thanks

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Mckenzie barely missed rescuing one of the Smith boys in that raid into Mexico. The band of Apaches he was with had left like a week earlier.

Great write up Bird!!

I suspect that the old sword fighting battles left a lot of it with all the blood and horrible infected wounds. In many sword battles, the later deaths from infection often exceeded the immediate deaths by a large margin. Taking care of all those dying men would stress anyone.

Never heard of any of this. May have to look in to it more. Thanks

Fascinating history. Thank you!

Guy

Birdie: My friend's son lives in Uvalde he's a retired Marine and when we went hunting in that area (we still do, Canyon Ranch, etc) we always made it a point to police up the cemetery and in fact, we even approached the actor Morgan Freeman to see if we could garner interest in a film about the Seminole Scouts and their acts of heroism in fighting the Comanches.

Very interesting bit if history.

We read about tracking, but not often do we get such a detailed description:

From the Seminole Cemetery Association

At four o'clock one morning, a Seminole Indian, attached to the command, brought me intelligence that six hours previously six horses, four lodges, one sick Indian, five squaws, and several children had descended into the canyon one mile above us and were then lost to sight. I asked:

"Had they provisions?"
"Yes, corn and buffalo meat."
"How do you know?"
"Because I saw corn scattered upon one side of the trail and flies had
gathered upon a piece of buffalo meat on the other."

"How do you know that one of the Indians is sick?"
"Because the lodge poles were formed into a travois, that was drawn by a horse blind in one eye."
"How do you know the horse was half blind?"
"Because, while all the other horses grazed upon both sides of the trail,
this one ate only the grass that grew up upon one side."

"How do you know that the sick one was a man?"
"Because when a halt was made all the women gathered around him."
"Of what tribe are they?"
"Of a Kiowa tribe."

And thus, with no ray of intelligence upon his stolid face, the Seminole Indian stood before me and told all I wished to know concerning our new neighbors, whom he had never seen. Two hours later Captain Boyd found the group of Kiowas, just as the scout had described them.

Floridians were glad to see them go. If y'all out there want more, we can send those too.

Good on ya 😎

As you know, another guy largely forgotten today is John Lapham Bullis, tho he was a celebrated enough hero and Indian fighter in his day that they named Camp Bullis Military Training Area after him.

Bullis was one of those guys that loved the West and looked for adventure. MacKenzie’s raid into Mexico was the first major exercise he participated in as the Seminoles’ Commanding Officer. It was his lead-from-the-front style, sharing the hardships and learning fieldcraft from the Scouts, that led them to their more famous exploits.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook

The Black Seminoles played a major part in the Second Seminole War, which dragged on so long that the US resorted to taking Osceola, Wildcat and the Black Seminole John Horse prisoner by treachery under a flag of truce.

Horse, Wildcat and Osceola were all confined in the same room at Fort Marion. Wildcat and Horse starved themselves for three weeks so as to slip through the small window of the room, or so the story goes. Osceola was suffering the effects of the illness that killed him there and was unable to accompany them.

The two leaders eventually gained the support of General Jesup who was commanding on the US side and travelled to Washington, Horse twice.

All the more remarkable that these same two guys would become a force on the West Texas Plains.

I'm on the road to Del Rio a lot with work. I need to see that cemetery the next trip down. I have been wanting to see the little museum in Ft. Clark but it is closed during the week.

It was war, and there was more than enough “treachery” to go around. Little love lost for Osceola croaking in Spanish fort in St Augustine.

Thank you Mike.

Lots of interesting stuff in this thread.

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Google Maps knows where it is, headed west you hang a left at the top of the hill leaving town and continue on that road past a big sheep pasture on your right. There used to be a sign on Hwy 90 but looks like they widened the highway.

One of the best researched and most comprehensive sources on the Indians of Texas comes from an unlikely place, the National Park Service at Lake Amistad.

http://npshistory.com/publications/amis/aspr-34/chap3.htm

From this source we get the context of the Black Seminoles during their 20 year hiatus in Mexico before accepting employment by the US Army.

Note the presence of Wildcat, in those years in virtual partnership with John Horse. Within ten years after guerrilla warfare in the swamps of Florida, Wildcat, who had been to Washington and also negotiated with the government in Mexico far a grant of 70,000 acres, was leading raids as far north as Bandera and the Upper Medina.

At one point he ransoms John Horse from slave catchers in Eagle Pass with a bag of gold pieces. IIRC the guy he paid the ransom to, Texas Ranger Captain and part-time Slave Raider John (?) Callaghan was from Bandera. I dunno if there was a connection with the raid.

Surely Wildcat, feared in Texas at the time and all but forgotten today, was a guy who belongs among the pantheon of notable Indian leaders. Smallpox took him out in Mexico in 1857.

From the NPS…

In the spring of 1850, 234 Maroon (Black Seminole), some 200 Seminole, around 100 Kickapoo, and some Cherokee and Creek Black (and possibly some Caddo) began their trek under the leadership of Wild Cat, a Seminole chief. The trek took a relatively south-southwestern course, moving from southeast Oklahoma, arriving on the Llano River in May 1850. There they established a temporary village to plant corn and to await Wild Cat's negotiations with the Mexican authorities. The following month, Wild Cat had garnered 70,000 acres for them, located between 50 and 90 miles south of modern Del Rio.


As early as 1854, Seminole and Seminole Maroon chased the Comanche and Mescalero Apache, who were raiding along the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass to Big Bend, to Chihuahua. In 1856, the Maroons again patrolled the Rio Grande from Del Rio to the Big Bend country for their adopted homeland (Mexico), pushing the Comanche, Kiowa, and Tonkawa north of the river. The Seminole Maroon repeated this effort when Lipan Apache stole their horses in 1858, recapturing the horses on the Rio Grande.

During the same time period of time, the Seminole Chief (Wild Cat) elected to attack settlers on the Medina River with the help of the Lipan and Tonkawa, and the next year attacked a band of Texas Rangers near Bandera. It is likely that the raiders crossed the Rio Grande in the vicinity of the Amistad NRA to avoid Fort Clark. While it is unknown if Maroon were present in these two raids, it is possible that they were since they mixed freely with the Seminole during Wild Cat's leadership in Mexico.

Just a side note; in the ‘70’s there was a Western Comedy starring James Garner and Lou Gosset Jr called “Skin Game”. James Garner would sell Lou Gosset as a slave and then later steal him back.

I dunno how often this particular scam was pulled off in history but Wildcat was known to have pulled it off twice, both times as payment for whiskey; once in Fredericksburg TX in 1850 and again at a later date in Eagle Pass.

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.

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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.

Even today it would be an arduous journey to travel to Eagle Pass on foot, hot sun, little water. Back in the days before four million 1880’s-1890’s South Texas sheep (another one of those things that escapes popular history ) transformed prairie into brush, there was little cover either.

This speaks of the desperation of those enslaved attempting to cross. Slave-catchers, Indians (one account relates a Comanche partially skinning a captured Black Seminole girl ‘to see what color she was’).
At Eagle Pass itself there was a mixed-blood free-Black family that would pretend to aid runaways who made it, only to sell them back into slavery.

Twenty years later (1870’s) the remoteness of Eagle Pass lent itself to becoming the headquarters of the notorious outlaw John “King” Fisher. Yet John Horse himself would regularly visit from the Mexican side to engage in business and get drunk.

From the book The Black Seminoles, and at least the second time Horse was shot…..

”Capt. Horse, as Gopher John terms himself… an impudent and troublesome negro, and from his own accounts….. made many white men bite the dust.”

Early in November 1852 a fiesta, culminating in the evening with a boisterous fandango, was held in the little Mexican border town [of Piedras Negras across from Eagle Pass]. During the party, John Horse fought with one of the [US] boundary survey party. The cause of the altercation is unclear.

Fortunately, for John‘s opponent, one of the celebrants was a man named Ed Stevens, the mail carrier between San Antonio, and Eagle Pass. As John horse, knife in hand, lunged at the surveyor, Stevens whipped out a revolver and shot him in mid rush. Before the man could fire again, angry Mexicans seized him. After he was disarmed, Stevens was….. cast into prison.

He escaped during the night, swimming the river to Eagle Pass and safety, but had to leave his clothes and six shooter behind……. John Horse eventually recovered from his wound.

John Horse reported to be bragging about killing White men. Given Horse’s successful diplomatic initiatives with American and Mexican Officialdom at different times in his life, apparently it wasn’t all the time but if he did, it ain’t difficult to imagine the cause of the fight.

Ed Stevens was employed carrying mail between San Antonio and Eagle Pass, in 1852 yet. Whatever they were paying that guy it probably wasn’t enough.

LIKE

Backing up a year to 1851, the same year that RIP Ford took thirty Texas Rangers into Mexico after runaways and fought the Seminoles, Warren Adams, a professional Slave Hunter, arrived in Eagle Pass.

I can find no information on Adams but he must have been a big deal at the time. The Seminole Subagent Marcellus Duval had contracted with him to undergo this major operation. Texas Governor Peter Bell even issued a proclamation in support of Adams.

At that time John Horse and a companion crossed over into Eagle Pass, got drunk, and were promptly captured by Adams, which one imagines was a major score. The surprising thing is Horse was not promptly shipped out in irons. Within three days Mexican authorities contacted Governor Bell requesting his release as a Citizen of Mexico.

Wildcat crossed over to Eagle Pass, negotiated with Adams, and secured the captives’ release for $500 in gold and a promise to deliver up the Black Seminoles. The gold, when delivered, was soaked in blood, this was interpreted as a threat and Adams withdrew.

He returned two months later from San Antonio with a force of more than 100 men. This time it was the US Army at Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass who intervened, warning Mexican authorities of Adam’s intent.

Obviously the Feds did not approve at that time of Texas’s assorted cross-Border incursions. Federal misgivings could have been the reason John Horse was not immediately sent into slavery and/or trial.

Any element of surprise lost, and facing armed opposition on the Mexican side, Adams succeeded in capturing only a single unfortunate Black family. His career was finally put to a halt by US Army Second Lieutenant Daniel Huston, Jr. On February 5, 1852, the officer and his soldiers destroyed Adams camp, scattering his force and confiscating whatever weapons they could find.

Mexican authorities praised the work of the blacks and tribespeople, stating that “the immigrant Indians from the United States…. the Mascogos [Black Seminoles] and the Seminole have justified the Republic’s hospitality, contributing faithful and useful assistance to such military operations as an expedition against the barbarians and the defense of…..” Mexico.

The Black Seminoles weren’t going away and just as they had been in Florida and again in the Indian Territory, remained a thorn in the side of slaveholding interests. That and the considerable profit motive involved in sending 200+ people back into slavery.

(Just as an aside, James W Fannin, nominal commander of the Texian Army at Goliad in 1836, had in 1835 taken receipt of an illegal boatload of 200 Africans on behalf of his employer, McKinney & Williams of Galveston Island, which front company also funded the Texian Army at Goliad).

Three years after the failure of Warren Adams, the same Marcellus Duval, by this time (1855) former Subagent to the Seminoles tried again. Different Texas Governor, prob’ly different US Army Officers in command at Eagle Pass.

This time an offer of a share of any profits was made to Texas Ranger Captain James H. Callahan.

James Callahan was an original Texian having arrived in Texas twenty years earlier with the Georgia contingent of the Texian Army at Goliad. Callahan had narrowly missed the capture and subsequent slaughter of his companions by the Mexican Army in ‘36 on account of having been assigned to a work detail 40 miles away in Victoria.

After that war he had Captained a Ranger Company out of Gonzales and developed a reputation for ruthlessness in border warfare. In 1842 Callahan had been active in repelling that second invasion of the Mexican army.

He also had participated in and sometimes led a number of lengthy expeditions against the Comanches with varying levels of success.
Callahan was noted for his strong feelings against Mexicans and Indians (not unusual in Texas at that time) and a propensity for merely shooting captured horse thieves of any race, rather than the usual formalities of a hanging.

By 1855 Callahan had moved his wife and four children north of Bandera where they farmed, ranched and operated a store. He had quit active rangering some years earlier and, as events would transpire, was a popular man in the area.

If this was a TV mini-series from the 80’s he coulda been played by Tommy Lee Jones.

The Callahan Expedition, as it came to be called, left Bandera Pass on September 18th 1855. According to a public announcement by then Governor Pease the purpose of the expedition was to go against Lipan Apaches raiding into Texas.

Callahan, age 41, was joined by a party of men led by the notoriously mercurial Ranger Captain William R Henry, age 34. (Henry was an actual grandson of the Rev War hero Patrick Henry, that war at the time being only as remote as WWII is today). Henry mayy have been one of the thirty rangers RIP Ford had recently led into Mexico himself, he wrote of Henry He had rather exalted notions and was difficult to control. He was brave and possessed merit, but had the credit of interfering with his superior officers. He was not always wrong.

Henry’s party brought the strength of the combined force up to around 130 men. For an expedition publicly aimed at the Lipans, the expedition crossed the river at Eagle Pass hand headed swiftly and directly for the Black Seminole settlement of El Nacimiento (some irony here, Apaches, including the Lipans, at that time were one of the principal targets of the Seminole patrols protecting Mexico).

Ford again: If there is any one thing which will fill an average Mexican full to the brim of intense wrath it is the sight of an American. Source differ, but the party, travelling fast, made it about twenty miles inland Captain Callahan…. suddenly found himself confronted by a force of Mexicans and Indians more than five times greater than his own… Indications were… of a general rising of the people and an attack from an overwhelming force, so he moved to the Rio Grande.

He occupied Piedras Negras, set the town on fire, and while it was burning, he crossed into Texas.

Still following along.

Tks 🙂

It is unfortunate that we don’t have a detailed account of just what transpired on the Callaghan Epedition. Upon falling back to Piedras Negras across from Eagle Pass either Callahan torched the place on purpose or it caught fire. Texas History Online out of UT states they also looted looted the town which may be possible given the criminal nature of some Rangers at that time.

Although most folks in Texas supported Callahan’s actions, By burning Piedras Negras, he stepped on his Johnson in a Political sense, removing plausible deniability and creating an international incident embarrassing to the Federal Government.

Callahan’s forthright personality would contribute to his death the following year. He became involved in a somewhat sordid dispute with a neighbor, Woodson Blasingame. Callahan and three companions went to the Blasingames’ cabin to deliver an ultimatum, leave the area or face the consequences. In the ensuing shoot out, Callahan and another man were killed and a third man wounded.

https://www.txgenwebcounties.org/blanco/blass.htm

Blasingame turned himself in to authorities, feeling confident he would be exonerated. This proved to be a mistake, the following week an armed mob 100 strong, chiefly from Callahan’s old rangering ground at Gonzales, broke into Blasingames’ place of confinement dragged him and his son out, and shot them.

The personality of William R Henry, the other Ranger Captain involved, would also contribute to his demise. May 15th, 1862, feeling he had been passed over for command of a forming Confederate unit, Henry provoked a gunfight with one William Adams and was subsequently shot dead on San Antonio’s main plaza.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/henry-william-r

In both cases, it seems these men picked on the wrong individuals.

Still hangin' with you Mike'

During this time Wildcat and Horse’s band continued to actively intercept Apache, Comanche and Kiowa raiders. A economic incentive for this was they got to keep all recovered stock not identifiable as to ownership. Essentially, they were conducting raids against the raiders.

The Indian Seminoles were hammered by smallpox in 1857, which casualties included Wildcat. The Black Seminoles were also affected but for them the disease proved less fatal. Subsequent to the death of Wildcat, age 47, in this epidemic, most of his band returned to join the rest of the tribe in the Indian Territory.

A major scare from a potential Texan slave-catching expedition occurred as late as 1859. The Border remained unstable, the following year Governor Sam Houston and famed Ranger Ben McCullough would lobby hard for a war with Mexico hoping to unite the country behind that war and so avert the Secession Crisis.

1859 the Black Seminoles were ordered to remove 100 miles further south away from the Border, ostensibly to remove an incentive for Texan incursions. A major reason for this move however was the same as that behind the original land grant at Nacimiento; constant Indian raids had made the area uninhabitable so moving in people already traditional enemies of the raiders made sense.

A Texas Unionist en route to California gave this description of the Black Seminoles at this new location in 1861….

One evening, a dozen Negroes, once of the Seminole tribe, rode up to the Government house opposite our quarters; they had a scalp, and reported a fight they had with Indians, only a little distance from the town, right on our road. These Negroes are employed by the Mexicans to fight the Indians, and are very successful.

If the Black Seminoles hadn’t actually existed they would have been considered far-fetched fiction today.

With the Black Seminoles moved further south, the same Kickapoos that defeated a combined force of Confederate cavalry and Frontier Battalion men at Dove Creek in 1864 moved in to El Nacimiento onto lands formerly occupied by the Seminoles. Meanwhile, once the threat of Indian raids had subsided further south no land grants to the Black Seminoles were forthcoming.

Mexico was in a constant state of war and turmoil, with the slavery issue over in the US, there developed a contingent within the Black Seminoles that wanted to return to the Indian Territory.

At about this same time the US Army was reaching out to the Black Seminoles and Kickapoos in Mexico, trying to induce them to return to the US so as to remove the threat they posed to Texas from their present location.

US Army Inspector General Randolph B, Marcy wrote of the Border region this sector does not contain today so many white people as it did. When I visited it 18 years ago, if the Indian marauders are not punished, the whole country will become totally depopulated.

At that time the 25th Infantry Division, a Black unit grouped with the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ today, was stationed at Ft Duncan.The first Black Seminoles arrived at that post in July of 1870, agreeing to serve as Scouts for a Private’s wage while a land grant was arranged in the Indian Territory (this didn’t happen). The Kickapoos rebuffed the offer and continued to raid into Texas for many years.

The description of the Black Seminoles themselves by different observers was so constant it becomes monotonous. Major Zenas R Bliss (not the guy Ft Bliss is named after), then in command at Ft Duncan wrote of them as….

negroes having all the habits of the Indians. They were excellent hunters and trailers, and splendid fighters.

Their full potential in service to the US would not be realized until the arrival of John Lapham Bullis at Ft Clark in 1873.

The Black Seminoles weren’t the only Black people in South Texas of course, tho I have read different estimates of the number of Black cowboys.

Of interest tho was another group recruited as scouts…. presumably former slaves of Creek Indians…

By the fall of 1871, however, 20 more men were recruited. Nearly all were from the Elijah Daniels band of Black Creeks, who had been living and working at the Griffin Ranch on the Nueces River in Uvalde County. Daniels and Cesar Payne, his second in command, joined the unit, mostly because they had been working for people who did not pay them….

About this time, probably due to friction with the “pure Seminole” band, Daniels independent-minded, mixed Seminole and Creek group requested a transfer from Fort Duncan to Fort Clark, located about 40 miles to the north, and Brackettville, Texas.

So the Scouts arrived at Fort Clark, which became the location of their cemetery.

Could be that the difference between the two groups was largely semantic. Technically the Seminole Indians WERE Creeks, just a different band tho IIRC some Creeks had fought on the US side during the Seminole War.

I’ve generally regarded the reputation of the Buffalo Soldiers as a sort of historical hype. Not that they were bad, or worse than White cavalry troopers but they are generally described in glowing terms because they were Black, whereas we have no problem objectively assessing White troopers, Custer’s immigrant crew a prime example.

Well, some of the Buffalo Soldiers must have been good, good enough that a 2nd Lt Bullis would lead four of them into a fire fight against five to one odds.

on September 1, 1871, [two years before he would command the Scouts at Ft. Clark] Bullis and four black troopers of the Ninth Cavalry’s M Company encountered a group of 25 or so Indians driving several herds of cattle near Fort McKavett, Texas.

After a fierce fire fight with the hostiles who held the high ground, Bullis found it impossible to dislodge them with the number of men he had with him. Nevertheless, they recovered 200 of the stolen livestock. He ended his report of the action by saying “my men done well.”

Bullis himself would trend to clean-shaven and heavier during his later years, but in the 1870’s was described as Thin and spare…. a small wiry man with a black mustache…. his face burned red as an Indian.”

Black Seminole Scout Joe Phillips later said of Bullis He was a good man…. he look after his men…. he didn’t stand back and say, go yonder; he would say, Come on boys let’s go get ‘em

As to the Black Seminoles, photos taken in the 1880’s show the in regular US Cavalry uniforms, short hair. Upon arrival at Fort Duncan they presented a different appearance. The men usually dressed as they had while living in Florida and Mexico…. clothes good enough for an Indian…. Ebony faces, flat noses, full lips, but with the characteristic high cheekbones of the Indian……. long black crinkly hair…. There was a considerable range of physical strains in the group, from full blooded blacks to those with strong Native American strains.

During their time at Fort Clark, other non-Seminole individuals were added to the Scoutd…. Trinidad Mariscal, a Mexican, married to a Black Seminole…. William Miller, son of a German father and a mulatto mother “looked like a white man and acted like an Indian”…. Joe Remo, a black Cherokee…. had been a slave and was a Union Army veteran.

1878, the former Comanchero trader Jose Tafoya, the same guy who had been hung from a wagon tree in ‘74 by Ranald MacKenzie to convince him to guide them to Palo Duro Canyon, enlisted in the Scouts.

In 1873 the combat era of the “Detachment of Seminole Negro Indian Scouts” began… they would participate in nearly a decade of savage border warfare….

Adam Payne’s best quality was his aggressiveness, the other Black Seminoles admiringly called him a “bad man”. He carried a Colt pistol, a double barreled shotgun, and a large hunting knife. He also wore headgear adorned with buffalo horns, stood almost six feet tall, and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. He was so impressive-looking that one of the [4th Cavalry] troopers, J.A. Magruder, later said: “I shall never forget… a big black…. wearing horns.”

Colonel [Ranald] MacKenzie [who recommended Payne for a Medal of Honor] wrote that he deserved such recognition for his “habitual courage. This man has, I believe, more cool daring than any scout I have known”.

In those years the 4th US Cavalry (a White unit) was the chief instrument Ranald MacKenzie used to hammer the Comanches and Kiowas into submission.

A detachment of Black Seminoles…. Adam Payne, and [five] others saw action….

On December 10, 1873, forty-one men of the Fourth Cavalry, under Lt. Charles J. Hudson, and the six scouts… encountered a raiding party of nine Kiowas and twenty one Comanches near Kickapoo Springs. [in present day Tom Green County].

The warriors, who lived on a reservation near Fort Sill, Indian Territory, had been marauding on both sides of the border. In the ensuing battle, nine hostiles, including the favorite son of Kiowa chief Lone Wolf, were killed. The dead also included one of his nephews. Eighty-one horses were captured, and only one soldier was slightly wounded.

Good stuff Mike !!!

I just finished a couple books about the Seminole Wars because of interest in the battle and skirmish locations that are nearby. So this is very interesting as well. Can you name a book or two on the subject?

I’m mostly quoting from Porter’s book “The Black Seminoles”

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Seminoles-History-Freedom-Seeking-People/dp/081304488X

From Ranald MacKenzie again, 1874, likely referring to Adam Payne…

”Three parties of spies were sent out… one, consisting of two Mexicans, and three seminole negroes, to look about certain hiding places in the Staked plains…. These men, of course, take great risks… The Mexicans in one case before, I feel sure, laid up and came back and reported nothing, but they have with them now a Seminole negro, who is a very determined man on a scout, and they will be afraid not to go.”

The single action more than anything else that won Payne his MoH occurred in September of that year. Three Black Seminoles-James Bruner, George Washington (John Horse’s nephew), and Adam Payne-were dispatched to locate hostiles. Two Tonkawa scouts…. accompanied them…. they were only to find the enemy and not engage them unless absolutely necessary. Therefore, the group travelled light

Washington and, especially Bruner, were considered excellent trackers….

The five men left their base camp, each leading a spare mount. After riding for several hours, the scouts stopped around midnight.

They apparently made a cold camp in the dark, unaware that they were in close proximity to a large camp of Kiowas, who were likewise unaware of their presence. At first light things hit the fan….

…they found themselves surrounded by about forty Kiowas…with their families…. a hot fight ensued. Payne apparently positioned himself between the warriors and his companions…. Then the five scouts, all but Payne riding bareback, quirted their animals through the ring of attackers. They galloped southwest in the general direction of MacKenzie’s command and were obliged to run for their lives…. a running fight followed.

Adam Payne lagged behind… Immediately in front of him was George Washington…. to protect Washington, Payne turned around… Payne’s horse was shot from under him. He… crouched behind it as the Indians charged…

When they drew nearer, Payne killed the closest attacker…. he grabbed the slain man’s riderless pony, which had continued to head towards him… he leaped on its back and spurred after his comrades…

It is stunning how completely the Black Seminoles were written out of the script of Pop Texas history. As this thread progresses their significant role and successes, along with accolades from their commanding officers, will continue clear into the early 20th Century. They weren’t the only guys out there to be sure, but the Black Seminoles played a significant role, at first against and then for Texas, on the Texas Frontier for about sixty years beginning in the 1850’s upon their flight from slaver’s raids.

Case in point about them being written out of the script: Palo Duro Canyon, the famous culmination of MacKenzie’s Red River campaign. The 4th Cavalry was led into Palo Duro Canyon by six White scouts, twelve Tonkawas…. and thirteen Black Seminoles.

I will say that, had these guys not actually existed, they would be wildly improbable fiction. From the names of some of the Florida-era Black Seminoles, they had some Akan-speaking West African roots, the same people I lived among in Ghana. They were originally settled agricultural people, nothing like a Plains Indian lifestyle.

We know how our Indians were carefully schooled growing up in tracking and fighting skills, what we don’t get accounts of unfortunately is how Black Seminole youths likewise honed these skills over more’n half a century.

Neither Adam Payne nor George Washington served long in the Scouts, tho Washington was singled out as being an especially skilled tracker, even among that company.

How lawless things commonly were across much of Texas during the period of settlement is typified by the career of John King Fisher. Born in Texas in 1853, first arrested for horse theft at age 16, sometimes he rode against Mexican bandits, other times raided into Mexico with a mixed crew of White and Mexican thieves. A cowboy prodigy, he had his own ranch near Eagle Pass by age 19 (1872). Said ranch serving as a base camp for raids for a number of years.

Fisher dressed flamboyantly and carried two pearl-handled revolvers. He was good at killing and at some point before his own death by gunfire at age 30 was reported as claiming to have killed thirty-seven men “not including Mexicans”.

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

About Christmastime 1874 [Corporal Washington was] injured in an altercation with the notorious King Fisher gang in an Eagle Pass saloon. Fisher himself was creased in the scalp by a bullet, while Washington suffered a stomach wound that eventually killed him. Although the outlaw was indicted for the attack, he was cleared of the charges. Fisher reportedly hated the Black Seminoles thereafter.

That might have been the only time Fisher was hit in a gunfight. Until some years later Fisher met his own demise, in part because of the company he kept. Here in San Antonio he was caught in the crossfire during the 1883 assassination of his friend, the fellow gunman and professional gambler Ben Thompson.

King Fisher Grave at Uvalde Tx.

Adam Payne was born in 1843, meaning he was in his early 30’s at the time of his of his service in the Scouts. It is said that he did not take well to Military discipline, which may be why he is listed as a Private, the lowest ranking of the three Black Seminoles in the aforementioned Kiowa incident (the other two were Sergeant and Corporal) despite Payne’s leadership in actual combat situations.

By 1876 Payne had left the Scouts and was employed as a Teamster along the Border (or possibly as armed Security in that role). So it was Christmas Eve 1876 he was in Brownsville TX where he knifed and killed a White Cavalry Trooper in a Brownsville saloon. Doesn’t seem hard to guess what the fight might have been about.

Payne escaped custody, the following year as a wanted fugitive he joined company with a Border bandit named Frank Enoch (I can find no reference to Enoch’s race). Apparently Payne was apparently quite mobile during that time, so it was that at one point he was drinking in a saloon in Brackettville adjacent to Ft Clark and the Black Seminole community when the Sheriff of Uvalde County and a deputy attempted an arrest.

No explanation of how it was the adjacent Military personnel from Ft Clark did not attempt to apprehend Payne themselves. It could be they were unaware of his presence, the encounter with Payne by the Sheriff and deputy may have been accidental, the two men also looking to retrieve a fine horse stolen from the deputy at the time, allegedly by a Black Seminole.

… The former scout [Payne] reportedly was drinking in a Brackettville saloon. Sheriff LC Crowell appeared at one door, his deputy, Claron Windus at the other. Payne, glass in hand, elbows on the bar, coolly sized up the situation, and announced; “If you want a drink, come up to the bar and have one with me, if you don’t, give me one of the doors.” According to reports they gave him both doors.

Neither the Sheriff nor his deputy were strangers to gunfire, in fact Deputy Windus himself had been awarded a Medal of Honor during his service as a Trooper against the Kiowas (and had also been arrested for horse theft after leaving the service). An Adam Payne forewarned however, was apparently too dangerous a man to take on, even against two to one odds.

Payne’s public humiliation of Crowell and Windus likely sealed his fate.

…the next time the two lawmen met Payne, they gave him no chance to defend himself. Late on December 31, 1876, Crowell, Deputy Windus, a man named James Thomas, and teamster Jonathan May rode to the Black Seminole camp to arrest Adam Payne and Frank Enoch on felony warrants…..

Shortly after midnight, Adam Payne was dancing at a New Year’s Eve party in the Bowlegs’ yard at the Black Seminole settlement. Suddenly someone called out his name. As Payne turned towards the man, he was gunned down with a shotgun at such close range that his clothes caught on fire. He died instantly.

Ironically, the man who blasted him was Claron Windus, who himself had received a Medal of Honor in 1870. This is the only known incident in which one Medal of Honor recipient killed another.

In the Black Seminole cemetery Adam Payne’s grave is located some distance from the rest from those years, perhaps because of his criminal status. In life Payne had apparently been a role model and mentor of sorts to his eight years younger cousin Isaac Payne. Isaac was one of the three Scouts awarded a MoH for the rescue of Bullis at the Pecos River crossing.

The bond between the two was such that when Isaac himself died twenty-five years later, at his own request he was buried next to his cousin Adam.




Adam Payne, Isaac Payne, Claron Windus. While it’s true the MoH was handed out more freely back then, they didn’t give them away for nothing.

Good read Mike.

I was down in Bracketville TX a few years ago Axis hunting and we went over and toured the area around Ft Clark along Las Moras Creek - You can see why the Seminoles liked it as under the Live Oaks there it really did resemble a little area of their home in FL. Visited the cemetery as well as the existing neat buildings around Fort Clark like these - https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=65075

Pugs, you’ve seen more of Ft Clark than I have. Tks for the link, some great info there.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=55412

From that comprehensive roll of scouts we get

Miller, William. Sergeant 1874 - 1878

Miller was one of those guys one wishes we knew more about…..

…and William Miller, son, of a German father and a mulatto mother. Miller, who “looked like a white man and acted like an Indian”, became a most daring and successful scout….

In early February 1876, Sergeant William Miller boldly infiltrated a camp “of Comanches, Apaches, Mescaleros and Lipans” in Mexico. The mixed-blood Seminole scout stayed with them for five days to learn their plans. Then he slipped away and returned to Fort Clark. After Miller’s daring exploit, Lieutenant Bullis and his men were almost continually on the march or in action. They entered Mexico several times in 1876 in pursuit of marauders.

I can find no other info on Milller before or after his service with the Scouts. The last time the book The Black Seminoles mentions him was in reference to November of ‘78. On this occasion Bullis led a detachment of Scouts and more than 150 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers on an incursion into Mexico in pursuit of Lipan raiders.

The 162-man force reentered Mexico, and followed the Apache Trail, now, 23 days old. Because of the Black Seminoles exceptional tracking ability the command, “which suffered greatly from the cold… water in canteens frozen solid ….the men only had summer allowances of clothing”…. located the hostiles on November 29th.

During a sharp, running fight…. the men killed two tribesmen and wounded three others. The soldiers captured 23 horses and mules, one of which belonged to Bullis. Amid the action, three Black Seminoles…. including the intrepid Sergeant William Miller, were rescued. They had been ambushed earlier that morning while scouting the advance. The men “took shelter in a deep and rocky ravine and for some hours defended themselves against heavy odds, with the loss of one horse.”

Even Frederick Remington the famous artist had words of praise for Bullis tho I dunno where they may have met. Remington did go on a grizzly bear hunt in New Mexico in those years and IIRC, being warmly regarded by the Officer Corps, was a guest in Arizona during the 1880’s Apache Wars there when Bullis was also in that theater tho without such a prominent role.

” I have no doubt that Bullis pays high life insurance premiums”, said Remington,” the Indians regard him as almost supernatural…… with admiration as they narrate his wonderful achievements”.

Unfortunately, what the Indians said about his black warriors is unknown. Given the scouts’ impressive combat capabilities, their epithets were probably unprintable in any case.

With regards to Bullis’ famous interdiction of 30 Indians at the Eagle Nest Crossing (some accounts say Lipan Apaches others’ Comanches), wiki gives a good description.

Bullis left Ft Clark with the just the three scouts on August 5th 1875, the hottest time of year. They picked up the Indians’ trail with numerous stolen horses thirteen days later on August 18th.

Eight days after that they had gotten around in front the Indians in time to attempt an ambush at the Pecos River crossing. A pity Bullis never wrote a book, with just three guys he attacked about ten times that number of Indians and was very nearly killed in the attempt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Bullis

And it ain’t like such behavior was an isolated incident, in those years he was acting like this all the time. But……. ya don’t hear a word about him and the scouts in pop Texas history.

Clearly Bullis found his forte leading the Black Seminoles, reads like he was pulling stunts he didn’t have to.

On the night of October 16 [1875] Lieutenant, Bullis, Corporal Miller (the white-looking but Indian-acting, mixed-blood scout), and two others crept into an Apache camp at Laguna Sabinas (now Cedar Lake outside of Seminole TX). They stole some 35 horses and mules without being detected.

Most of the actions were against small groups of Indians, chased down after grueling pursuits, frequently south of the Border. Sometimes too these Border incursions involved groups of regular Black Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) to an extent I haven’t read elsewhere.

This reads like one of Bullis’ bloodiest actions:

on July 19 [1876], the scouts left their base camp on the Pecos River. They were part of an expedition sent across the border to punish Lipan warriors who had killed 12 Texans during raids in April and May. The troops entered Mexico on the 25th. Four days later, Bullis, 20 Black Seminoles with 20 buffalo soldiers from Company B,10th Cavalry, separated from the main column. They headed south, following the hostiles’ trail.

After riding 55 miles in about 12 hours, the unit [arrived near] the Mexican town of Zaragoza at 3 o’clock in the morning. At daybreak on July 30, they located the Lipan village of 23 lodges.

“We struck them about five in the morning” recalled the Black Seminole Charles Daniels…. the element of surprise proved decisive. According to Daniels his companions did not have the time to reload. The fight was hand to hand with clubbed carbines countered by long Lipan lances. The struggle lasted for about 15 minutes…. Daniel stated that there were 32 dead and wounded [Apaches], 94 horses were seized and the camp destroyed . Despite the fierce close quarters combat only three men from the detachment - all scouts - sustained light injuries.

The strike force rejoined [the main command] on July 31. They had been in the saddle for 25 hours, ridden more than 100 miles, and fought a pitched battle. During the trip back, the command was chased by many Mexican regulars…. The soldiers returned to Texas on August 4.

This should be the stuff of legend.

Thanks.

In 1877, John Lapham Bullis turned thirty-seven years old.

Lieutenant Frederick R.Phelps described the Black Seminoles, as “quite orderly and excellent soldiers”. He also said that Bullis was “a tireless marcher, thin and spare…. he and his men could go longer on half rations than any body of men that I have ever seen”….

On June 29, 1877, while returning from a grueling two month long expedition, during which they were once without water for 42 hours and “our animals suffered terribly”, Bullis and thirty-seven scouts spotted a fresh trail about 70 miles above the mouth of the Pecos River.

The next day they followed the tracks for 15 miles west to the Rio Grande. Bullis and his men quickly found where the Lipan raiding party had forded the “very high” river during the previous night. The Black Seminoles made a raft from logs strewn along the shore. They cross the swollen river that evening and camped on the opposite side. Two horses drowned during the crossing.

The unit continued the hunt for the next two days, but with 20 of their mounts no longer able to travel, Bullis left the horses with 13 scouts hidden near a water hole. On July 2 the reduced command found the hostiles’ camp and promptly attacked it. Three warriors were wounded, one mortally.

Bullis decided not to pursue the hostiles because both his men and their animals were exhausted. Still, they recaptured some twenty stolen horses. On July 4th the detachment re-crossed the Rio Grande on their crude raft. Bullis, despite his fatigue….. rode to Fort Clark ahead of his men. He arrived on July 7, at 2 o’clock in the morning, having covered 140 miles in 36 hours.”

Really cool thread!

My takeaway, they can still make a lot of excellent Westerns based on real-life adventures, and I hope they do.

I would watch "The Adventures of John Lapham Bullis" anytime!

You’re welcome.

One of the Scouts’more remarkable feats was a swing and a miss that resulted in no bloodshed at all but was possibly record-breaking nontheless.

January of 1879, in one of those incidents pop history says didn’t happen, Mescalero Apaches from New Mexico were raiding clear across to Fredericksburg Texas. At that time the Mescalero Reservation was centered around Fort Stanton, 450 miles west of Fredericksburg as the crow flies. I suspect there were Lipans in the bunch revisiting an area they had occupied a generation earlier. Also, 1879 was a late date for raids that far east.

On January 31, 1879, Lieutenant Bullis with 15 cavalryman 12 civilian Packers and 39 Seminole scouts, including Jose Tafoya and three Lipans rode after some renegade Mescalero Apaches stealing, some stock near Fredericksburg.

The column relentlessly trailed them for 34 days, moving west across the barren desert. The men and horses suffered severely from thirst. At one point nearly all perished. But on February 28, Sergeant David Bowlegs discovered a sleeping spring. With great care and skill, he successfully made the water flow freely again. Bullis gratefully named the place Salvation Spring.

Expert trackers trying to elude pursuit in part by covering the most hostile terrain possible trailed by expert trackers trying to catch them.

Although the troops traced the raiders to within 2 miles of the reservation, the Indian agent was unable to locate the guilty parties and refused to allow Bullis to search for them on the reservation. So the unit returned to Fort Clark empty-handed having been gone for 81 days and covering 1266 miles.

That had to involve at least 500 miles of tracking a single group of Indians, if there was anything else like it across our entire frontier history I dunno what it was.

Closest I can think of is a near legendary Indian account of an early 18th Century Chickasaw “Wizard” being chased hundreds of miles by a group of Seneca and killing some of his pursuers during the process.

Cool thread!

Thanks Birdy!

What I forgot to mention is that accounts say Bullis and his force arrived at Fort Stanton just hours behind their quarry. Must have been an epic chase.

Fascinating history! Thank you for posting this as I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

1873 to 1881, eight years encompassing some of the most notable in Texas history. Twenty-six patrols, many exceeding two months in duration. Incessant patrolling despite forbidding terrain and climate, bringing sure retribution against even small groups of Apache, Comanche and Kickapoo raiders. I can’t think of any other Western figure that was quite the equal of John Latham Bullis when it came to bringing some degree of law and order to the Frontier.

Much of his success was made possible by the services of the Black Seminole Scouts whose own frontier saga stretched more than seventy years from 1830’s Florida into the 20th Century serving along the Border.

Popular Texas Historians have been a particularly bone-headed bunch. Prob’ly true of most places but especially true of Texas where, in order to spin a particular cherry-picked narrative, much is ignored or written out of the script. Case in point; Bullis and his scouts. Even most Texans had never heard of those guys.

Prob’ly in a large part due to their activities, the frequency of Indian raids in the area was decreasing markedly by 1880. The Scouts remained active however…

Among their other duties, Bullis and the Black Seminole sometimes escorted civilian prospecting parties. During one such expedition in early 1880, he and his 30 scouts were closely observed by Burr G. Duvall who kept a diary of the trip to theBig Bend area [probably a descendant of the Burr Duval who died at Goliad, 1836].

“Bullis has made quite a reputation on the frontier as a scout. I was much impressed with his quiet determined look and would consider him a man who, as the Texans say, ‘would do to tie to’ “.

Duvall noted that the Black Seminoles religious element was highly developed. “Every night they have a sort of camp meeting, singing prayers and reading the Bible, which, among these lonely hills, sounds weird and peculiar.”

Bullis was among those Frontier heroes who was afterwards able to transition smoothly into a more ordinary mainstream existence. Likely as a result of knowledge gained during expeditions like this he invested shrewdly in regional mining concerns, accumulating a fortune in his later years.

He even got the girl too (actually he was married twice, his first wife, a local Latina out of San Antonio, died of some cause during his Texas years).

Louis L’Amour (not just a Texas Historian I know) really shoulda thrown a Sackett in the mix and wrote a book about these guys.

Next up, April 14th, 1881; the last Indian raid in Texas…

Just ordered Porter's book...

Was up near Real county, Campwood?

The book was a multi-decade effort from way back in the 1940’s at least, the stated author Porter died before it was completed, two of his peers published the book from his unfinished work in 1996, and it shows.

I have ordered “Our Land Before We Die” (2006) by Jeff Guinn, I’ll post a review here.

Some miles upstream of Leakey on the Frio, I dunno how far, I’ve visited Mrs McLauren’s gravesite in the Leakey Cemetery years ago, I didn’t think to look for young Allen Lease’s.

April of 1881 small group of Lipans, including at least one woman, apparently on a raid in their old haunts in the Texas Hill Country, break into a house to steal. Surprised, they shot a 14 year old youth in the head and a young mother a number of times (with a Winchester?) but leave a 6 yr old child unharmed. Here’s a pretty good link….

http://www.texasescapes.com/LindaKirkpatrick/Conflict-on-the-Frio-McLaurin-Story.htm

The date differs from other accounts but it does illustrate the circumstance of those people and the continuing hardship of life on a Frontier even at that late date.

The Apaches stole some stock and a local posse forms and pursues them for some distance. Either they lost the trail or maybe thought discretion was the better part of valor. Not everyone had the skills to press combat against Apaches in hostile terrain. Nearly two weeks later Bullis and the scouts were called in.

I dunno how doable it is to track 30+ horses after two weeks, I suspect Bullis and crew would proceed to where the Apaches would probably pass through rather than start all the way back on the Frio, especially given how quickly they picked up the track and the speed of the pursuit. What followed was the usual outcome…

A year later, the Seminole Scouts fought their last Indian battle, marking the final significant hostile raid in Texas. On April 14, 1881, a small Lipan band killed a woman and a boy at an isolated ranch at the head of the Rio Frio. The warriors also robbed other houses in the area and stole horses. Almost 2 weeks after the attack, Lieutenant, Bullis was ordered to pursue them. He immediately left Fort Clark with 32 scouts.

Despite the time that has elapsed, the Black Seminoles located the Lipan spoor on April 27. They tracked them over the rugged, precipitous mountains, and canyons of Devils River, where the warriors killed 30 of the horses, as they could not drive them through this terrible country.

After the hostiles crossed the Rio Grande, the scouts followed them into the Burro Mountains [AKA Sierra del Burro] of Mexico. On May 2 Bullis and his men discovered the Lipan camp, observing it until after sundown. Then, with seven scouts left behind to guard their mounts. The rest moved on foot and surrounded the tribespeople.

They attacked at daybreak, killing four warriors and a woman. They captured another woman, who was wounded, and a child. Twenty-one animals were seized. Only the chief, San Da Ve, escaped; but he was mortally wounded, as usual, the strike force had no casualties. The men returned to Texas on May 5.

The Sierra del Burro is the high ground you can see on the other side of the Rio Grande from about Quemado on up through Big Bend, rugged country apparently still mostly uninhabited today.

This was the last significant Indian raid. The country would remain hazardous for a long time. No Country For Old Men references a fictional Uncle Mack out by El Paso being shot on his front porch on his ranch by “seven or eight” mounted Indians in 1909. Surely such isolated murders on both sides continued until recent times. Might still go on, I’m recalling being told of incidences of individual oilfield guys and such shooting Wetbacks into the 1980’s. Dunno the truth of it.

Birdy,

Interesting story behind Burro mtns. ( My Grandpaw Marvin hunted them pretty extensively back in the 20’s). I believe the original spelling was "Buro" mountains. And the word "buro" is an archaic Spanish term for "elk".


Concerning Grandpaw Marvin. They had a black camp cook they always hauled with them on the hunts. Mexican border officials would not let him into Mexico due to his race. They would always tell the guards he was not black, but Indian. They then ( with a little mordita) let him in.

The internet has it that elk are found there to this very day, and prob’ly the source of our occasional West Texas black bears.

I remember seeing it when I was a kid around 75-76, oldtimer from Campwood pointed it out to us and told it was the site of the last raid or Indian fight. Had friends back then with property in Campwood Hills.

LOL, one of those Lipan could be an ancestor.

He also told us about a skull of a woman found with several arrowheads stuck in it near the little town just north of Campwood, said the Indians would tie up a captive and let the young kids use them for target practice.

I’m gonna nominate John Horse AKA Juan Caballo (~1812 - 1882) as the most remarkable Black man in our history, tho I will observe that his father was most likely of mixed Spanish/Indian ancestry (sorta coincides with the innate fallacy of evaluating individuals by “race”).

The guy lived his whole life amid really rough company, came out of it literate and fluent in English, Spanish and a number of Indian languages. A notably skilled horseman, hence the name. A skilled tracker and hunter, a noted marksman with a rifle.An accomplished warrior with the Seminoles, fought US troops in the Second Seminole War. I’m always impressed by his and Wildcat’s feat of fasting while imprisoned in Fort Marion Florida in order to slip out a small window and escape.

Rapidly becomes a trusted interpreter, wins the respect and support of General Jessup, Commanding Officer of his adversaries. Met with four Presidents in his life, two in Washington, two in Mexico City, negotiating on behalf of his band (people?).

Instrumental in convincing the Seminole holdouts, including Wildcat, to accept the inevitable and remove to the Indian Territory. From the swamps of Florida he adapts quickly to the arid Borderlands, displaying the fieldcraft and combat skills his band becomes famous for. One of the premier fighters of any race on the Frontier, a hammer of the Comanches and Apaches.

He was subject to at least two assassination attempts, shot both times, once by a different Seminole faction in the Indian Territory. The second attempt occurred May 19th, 1876. John Horse and another Black Seminole were shot from ambush by unknown parties at Fort Clark. The other man died, John Horse, shot four times, escaped on his wounded horse.

That wounding left Horse physically impaired, tho his strength of will remained intact. He did remove to the Seminole land grant in Mexico subsequent to his injury.

An aging, crippled John Horse in action….

In those days, the houses in Nacimiento were still loopholed for rifle fire, and connected by a palisade. Every night the Seminoles drove the horses into the sheltering village enclosure. But at daybreak they would occasionally find some animals riddled with arrows, discharged by frustrated attackers, who had been unable to catch them….

One group of Indians was especially notorious for its regular and extensive raiding. From the earliest days of Black Seminole residence in Coahuila, the people of San Carlos, Chihuahua, had aided hostile Comanches, Lipans, and Mescaleros. In exchange, for sharing the spoils with the village authorities, the warriors receive their protection….

John Horse declared that peace would prevail only if every last marauder was killed or captured. A local Mexican Official, Don Jose Maria Garza Galan collected Mexican troops and John Horse the Black Seminole Warriors.

They swiftly rode to the traitorous village and surrounding it. The posse seized the mayor, and then posted sentries to prevent anyone from warning the Indians. Inspecting the steep trail to the enemy camp, John Horse observed that the troops could not approach the hostiles undetected. The only thing to do was to get the Warriors drunk and then take them by surprise.

John forced the mayor - by threatening to kill his family - to ride to the hostiles’ camp with enough liquor to incapacitate them. As a signal that the camp was vulnerable, the mayor would release a mare whose nursing foal remain behind. The horse would trot back to her foal, and the attackers would know it was a time to strike.

Things went as planned. After the mare returned, the Black Seminoles and the Mexicans climbed the steep trail. They found all the men in an alcoholic stupor and massacred them. The women and children were seized, taken to Muzquiz, and jailed….. all were eventually shipped south. Never again did the Indians of San Carlos trouble Coahuila.

John Horse, aged about seventy, finally perished from pneumonia in Mexico City in 1882 where he had gone to negotiate the ongoing status of the Nacimiento land grant. He was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

He was, however, successful in this last mission. Apparently some Black Seminole descendants live in Nacimiento to this very day.