Miss Charles July Wilson

Others stayed in the Brackettville area to forge an existence, and through time many also married into the local black populace or found mates in Nacimiento. After being forced to leave Las Moras in 1914, their homes now destroyed, many black Seminoles purchased land and remained in the Brackettville area. Some of the men became cowboys on neighboring ranches. Miss Charles Wilson’s mother, Rebecca, started a little restaurant.

Two Black Seminole Cowboys, Institute of Texan Cultures, 88-76

The exodus of the black Seminoles that began in Florida in the late 1830s ended in West Texas and Mexico some 40 years later. The homeland they sought so fervently never materialized, and, after the frontier outpost of Fort Clark had completed its mission, many black Seminoles dispersed, searching for a better economic future for themselves and their children.

Alice Fay Lozano makes tamales at Seminole Days. 1999

Today, after more than 125 years have passed, the black Seminoles of Mexico and Texas continue their attempts to maintain ties between their various groups, and Brackettville and Fort Clark/Las Moras Springs represent their historic roots in the state of Texas. The Seminole Scout cemetery survives as a dramatic symbol of historic time and place and a link with the Seminole ancestors. At yearly reunions at Fort Clark during Seminole Days and Juneteenth, it remains the focus for numbers of descendants from both sides of Texas’s borders and elsewhere in the United States (Mock 1995).

The Daniels Family meeting at Seminole Days in Bracketville, 1999