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

👍

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.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

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.