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

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.