BLACK SEMINOLE ARMY SCOUTS
IN THE TEXAS BIG BEND

Marilyn Dell Brady

***

Many stories have been told about the United States Army's struggle to remove the Indian tribes from Texas. Some of these stories focus on the Buffalo Soldiers, African-American men who were critical in fights against the Comanches and Apaches in the Big Bend region, but less known are the Indians who fought with the United States Army against other Indians.

The original "Seminole Indian Negro Scouts," a group of eighteen. Archives of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas

The army sometimes used Native Americans to help locate and fight other Native Americans. For example, they used the Crows as scouts against their traditional enemies, the Sioux. Also hired to search the mountains and deserts of the Texas Big Bend region were men known officially as "Seminole Indian Negro Scouts.”¹

The black Seminoles have deep historical roots and a cultural identity all their own. African slaves from the British colonies of Georgia and the Carolinas began running away to Spanish Florida in the late 1600s. By the 1700s, some of them had allied themselves with the Seminole Indians also moving into the region. During the American Revolution, Florida was especially important as a haven for slaves using the chaos of war to gain their freedom.²

Africans and Seminoles lived in nearby villages, but they worked and fought together. Africans might give Seminole leaders some of their crops as tribute, but chattel slavery, as it existed in the British colonies, later in the United States, and among some Native American tribes, was never established. Instead, Africans and Seminoles intermarried, and the customs and traditions of the two groups blended.³

When the United States formally gained possession of Florida, the army sought to remove the Seminoles and their black allies in hopes of eliminating that state as a haven for slaves escaping from Southern plantations. After two hard-fought wars, the Seminoles and Africans were moved to “Indian Territory,”present-day Oklahoma. Once there, however, those of African descent risked enslavement by the so-called “civilized tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Natchez).” While some black Seminoles remained around the towns of Seminole and Wewoka, in 1849 others joined Seminole allies led by Juan Caballo (John Horse) in a dangerous escape to Mexico.⁴

Black Seminole Chief John Horse (Juan Caballo), painted by Katie Oliver Institute of Texan Cultures #68-1107

When the group reached Eagle Pass on the Texas-Mexico border, they negotiated with Mexican officials, who promised them land at Nacimiento, Coahuila. In return, the men were to fight the Comanches and Apaches who regularly raided deep into the interior of Mexico. Adapting to local customs, the black Seminoles accepted Roman Catholicism and the new Hispanic names assigned to them. They also continued their own religious practices that combined African legacies and a type of Christianity that included preaching and singing. Additional names proved no problem for them since both the Seminoles and the Africans already used a variety of names.⁵

Family and clan loyalty among the black Seminoles remained strong, with some individuals having more than one wife or husband. Responsibility to the extended family meant simply that those in need received care. Property and family identity sometimes passed through the mother rather than the father. Because of the flexibility of the black Seminole families, Hispanics, other blacks escaping slavery, and members of other Indian tribes were easily absorbed into the community.⁶

All was not well for the black Seminoles in Mexico, however, as pressure from Hispanics and the nearby Kickapoos plagued the community of Nacimiento de Negros. When the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, some black Seminoles were ready to return to this country. At the same time, the U.S. Army was seeking to end raids by Indians along the Rio Grande and in far west Texas. Both black and white troops had been brought in, but the Comanches, Apaches, and Kickapoos consistently evaded the U.S. soldiers. Realizing their problems, army officers recruited black Seminole men from Nacimiento to serve the army as scouts. They knew that the black Seminole men had been fighting the same tribes in Mexico and had the tracking abilities that other soldiers and officers lacked. Using one minority group against another served the purpose of the U.S. Army, which sought to make all of Texas open for Anglo settlers and businesses.

Fay July, son of Black Seminole Indian Scout Sampson and Mary July, was a scout like his father. Institute of Texan Cultures #68-1010

Today we assume that African Americans and Native Americans will be allied together against Anglos, but, in the late 1800s, the black Seminoles viewed the nomadic tribes of West Texas and Mexico as their enemy and were willing to fight against them. They believed that an alliance with the U.S. Army would result in land to have a permanent settlement in the United States.⁷

In 1870 a large group of black Seminoles arrived at Fort Duncan near Piedras Negras, where they were given land on Elm Creek and rations. The army enlisted the men as Seminole Negro Indian Scouts. Initially the black Seminoles were treated as Indians rather than as African Americans, and officers foresaw their eventual removal to Indian Territory. The scouts served shortened enlistments and were not required to follow the regime and discipline required of other soldiers, black or white. During their period of greatest usefulness, the men were not even required to wear uniforms. One of the scouts wore a headdress of buffalo horns into battles.⁸

Unlike regular enlisted men, who were usually single men living in barracks, the scouts arrived at Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass with wives, children, and elderly relatives. After 1872 the scouts were stationed at Fort Clark near Brackettville, and the principal black Seminole community was established there south of the fort along Las Moras Creek. Following traditions dating from Florida and perhaps Africa, they built their houses of mud and straw with kitchens located in separate buildings. The small dams and irrigation ditches that they built provided water for gardens. Children were educated in traditional lifestyles and did not attend the army schools.⁹

Home of Sampson and Mary July (seated) at Las Moras Creek, 2½ miles below Brackettville, with son Ben July, 1st Sergeant of the Black Seminole Indian Scouts. Archives of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas

At first the army gave provisions for the entire community at Las Moras, but in 1873 they stopped this practice. Active-duty scouts continued to receive rations; wives, children, and elderly relatives did not. The women worked as domestic servants and raised gardens. The men who were not scouts hunted and fished. Nonetheless, poverty and hunger were widespread at Las Moras.¹⁰

Meanwhile, the scouts quickly proved their value in the field. Their first task was to help stop Kickapoos and Apaches who lived in Mexico from crossing the Rio Grande between Del Rio and Laredo, where they raided ranchers and settlers in Texas. Often their work as “scouts” was riding out from the fort or camp to look for raiders or signs of their presence. Sometimes conflicts with Native Americans resulted, and sometimes no raiders were found.

John L. Bullis, U.S. Army commander of the Black Seminole Indian Scouts Institute of Texan Cultures #68-1093

In 1873 Lieutenant John Bullis became the commanding officer for the Black Seminole Indian Scouts. Bullis would remain in his position for eight years and lead the scouts in their greatest victories. Unlike some white officers of black troops, Bullis had great respect for the scouts and never treated them as inferior. His willingness to share the hardships and dangers of his men meant that he was greatly respected and loved by the scouts. The number of scouts enlisted at any one time remained small, from six to about twenty in the 1870s. For all their daring and endurance on the long, arid journeys, none of the scouts were ever killed or seriously wounded during their eight years of active duty under Bullis.¹¹

John Jefferson, Black Seminole Indian Scout Institute of Texan Cultures #68-932

Following information the Black Seminole Indian Scouts provided about raiders from Mexico, they and a large group of other soldiers ventured deep into the mountains of Coahuila to the Kickapoo and Apache village of Remolino in 1873. Their destruction of the village resulted in a decline of raids along the Rio Grande and the gratitude of Anglo settlers who lived there.¹² In 1874 the scouts played a major role in a U.S. Army campaign against the Comanches, Kiowas, and other tribes who were leaving their reservation in Indian Territory to attack settlers in northern Texas. This “Red River War” in the Texas Panhandle climaxed with an army victory in Palo Duro Canyon. The scouts were honored for having found a way to enter the canyon and having fought bravely.¹³

Returning to the Rio Grande, the Black Seminole Indian Scouts continued their patrols to keep Native Americans from entering Texas and attacking settlers. On one expedition, Bullis and three scouts found a herd of about seventy-five stolen horses near Eagle's Nest, where the Pecos River enters the Rio Grande. Although twenty or thirty Comanche warriors were on guard, the scouts opened fire and attempted to recover the horses. When they were finally forced to retreat, Bullis was left separated from his horse and men and at the mercy of the Comanches. Only the daring and willingness of three scouts to risk their lives for him saved his life. These scouts later received the Medal of Honor for rescuing him.¹⁴

Black Seminole Indian Scouts at Ft. Clark, Texas, c. 1885 Institute of Texan Cultures #74-1110

The Black Seminole Indian Scouts often scouted and fought alongside the Buffalo Soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry, who were stationed at West Texas forts such as Fort Davis, Fort Stockton, and Fort Concho. In the 1870s, this territory was virtually unknown and unmapped. Benjamin Grierson, commander for the region, realized that if the Comanches and Apaches were to be removed, the region's water holes and hiding places needed to be located and recorded.¹⁵ The Black Seminole Indian Scouts were a key part of this demanding project. Along with Buffalo Soldiers in 1879-1880, they helped build the military road between Fort Clark and Fort Davis and the buildings at the Camp Peña Colorado at a spring where the new military road crossed the Comanche Trail just south of the present town of Marathon.¹⁶

Throughout the 1870s, Black Seminole Indian Scouts and Buffalo Soldiers continued to track and fight Indians in Texas. Because of the weakness of the Mexican government and their inability to stop Apaches living in their country from raiding into Texas, the scouts crossed the Rio Grande to destroy Apache villages in Mexico. Some of the black Seminoles' greatest successes came in the Big Bend region and in the region adjoining it across the Rio Grande. They tracked Apaches in the Sierra del Carmen, lofty Mexican mountains visible to the east of present-day Big Bend National Park. Sometimes they passed through land that would become part of the park. On one of their most dangerous encounters, Mescalero Apaches caught them on a high narrow trail on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, but the scouts escaped to safety.

In a second venture into the Sierra del Carmen, the scouts killed the Apache leader Alsate. Their successes allowed early settlers to move into the Big Bend region in the 1870s and 1880s.¹⁷ The Anglo newcomers showed their gratitude by naming a small mountain range south of Sanderson and a crossing of the Rio Grande for Lt. Bullis and presenting him with a ceremonial sword. No local recognition was given, however, to the brave black Seminole men who served with him.¹⁸

Black Seminole Indian Scouts Institute of Texan Cultures #68-1098

In 1880 Bullis and the scouts accompanied prospectors and miners in the Chinati Mountains and set up camp on Cibola Creek. They also looked for Apaches in the region and assisted surveyors preparing to build the first railroads from El Paso to San Antonio and other cities to the east of the Big Bend. For the next five years, the scouts continued these tasks.¹⁹

Major warfare against the native peoples virtually ended in far west Texas with the 1879-1880 campaign against the Apache leader Victorio. After one last battle against the Apaches in the Devil's River region and across the Rio Grande in the Sierra Burros, Bullis was assigned other commands. Although the Black Seminole Indian Scouts' scouting missions and protection of prospectors and railroad men continued, they no longer encountered Native Americans.

Geronimo(mounted on right) with Nachez (mounted on left) and his son Institute of Texan Cultures #68-170

The scouts were still responsible for the border territory along the Rio Grande, all the way from the Big Bend to the Gulf of Mexico. During the campaign against Geronimo, they guarded river crossings at Presidio and San Vicente in the Big Bend region to keep the Apache leader from slipping away from his pursuers. As the number of Indians in the Big Bend declined, Black Seminole Indian Scouts policed the border for bandits slipping back and forth between the United States and Mexico. They also were called on to find the bandits who had killed the Petty family at a mining camp south of the Rosillos Mountains in 1884. After that incident, the scouts and soldiers from Fort Davis established a camp at Neville Springs, now in the Big Bend National Park, and built buildings there. From the Neville Springs location, the black Seminoles made regular trips all the way back to Fort Clark to receive their rations and visit their families. The Neville Springs location is still marked by a big cottonwood tree, visible miles north of the Panther Junction Ranger Station.²⁰

Ruins at Neville Springs in the Big Ben National Park, c. 1982. Photograph by Vidal Davila. Courtesy of the National Park Service

In 1891 the Black Seminole Indian Scouts shifted their camp from Neville Springs to Provo, Texas, located west of the park and known today as Redford. About the same time, the army left Fort Davis and Camp Peña Colorado. A woman who grew up about 1900 remembered uniformed African-American scouts patrolling the Rio Grande.²¹

When the black Seminoles joined the army and cast their lot with the United States, they believed they were promised land in return for their service. The army, however, never granted them any land. Although the officers for whom they fought strongly supported such a grant, confusion existed over whether the army or the Bureau of Indian Affairs was responsible for their welfare. Even more basic, the issue of whether they were “Indians” or “Negroes” surfaced. Racial categorization dividing all Americans into “black” or “white” categories was very severe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Native Americans and Hispanics, although often separated from Anglos, were officially white. Hostility was widespread toward individuals with any African-American ancestry. Intermarriage was illegal between blacks and whites (including the “white” Hispanics and Indians), and any one with “Negro blood” back three or less generations was defined as black. The diverse racial identity of the black Seminoles was unthinkable, and their claims for land were denied.²²

As early as the mid-1880s, efforts were made to disband the “Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.” By this time, most of their work involved checking and repairing fences and other maintenance duties at Fort Clark and keeping hunters off the military reservation. When the unit was officially disbanded in 1914, black Seminoles, many of them widows and orphans of scouts, were still living at Las Moras. Some of the ex-scouts found work in or around Brackettville. Their traditional skill with horses made them welcome as cowboys along the border and in the Hill Country. Women of the community continued to work as servants. Other black Seminoles returned to Nacimiento, Mexico, where they settled near the Kickapoos.²³

Jesusita and Monroe Payne at home on their porch near Marathon. Archives of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, Texas

After 1900 some descendants of the “Seminole Negro Indian Scouts” returned to the Big Bend region and became widely known for their skills as ranch hands. Natividad Mariscal was a black Seminole scout from 1875 to 1883. He married Antonia Payne, and they had several children born at Las Moras. After Mariscal ended his service, the family returned to Nacimiento, where the children grew to adulthood. In 1904 their son Monroe went with his family to the Big Bend region where his father had served. They lived in an adobe house at Bone Springs just south of Persimmon Gap in the present-day national park. Monroe Payne, as his Anglo neighbors called him, worked on the ranch of Lou Buttrill in the Rosillos Mountains. Later the family moved to a large house in Marathon, and Payne engaged in a variety of money-making enterprises, including hauling supplies, renting property, bootlegging, and selling water from his windmill to his neighbors.

During the Mexican Revolution, Monroe's older brother, John, and his family joined them. John worked on the Combs Ranch south of Marathon for many years. His son, Blas, followed in his footsteps and, late in his life, lived in and cared for the buildings which remained from Camp Peña Colorado. On the census roles, their descendants sometimes claimed to be Hispanic and at other times, African American.²⁴

Charles Daniels, Black Seminole Indian Scout, with wife, Mary, and daughter, Tina Institute of Texan Cultures #68-1013

For the U.S. government in the 1870s and 1880s and for many people today, the word “race” indicates a strict line between black and white, between those of European and African descent. In reality such a definition leaves out many Americans and ignores the rich heritages of Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. It denies and forgets the interracial identities and stories of groups like the black Seminoles, who played a key role in the opening of the Big Bend for settlement.