Las Moras Creek

Fort Clark was officially established on June 15, 1852, to be garrisoned by infantry and mounted rifles as a frontier guard to keep the Indians in check. Las Moras Springs (named for the mulberry trees that lined its banks) flowed diagonally across the fort, emptying into the Rio Grande 20 miles away. This prime piece of real estate had long been a rendezvous for Indians, traders, and buffalo hunters, and later a resting place known as the El Paso Road in the early days of overland freighting. The springs were also located on the eastern branch of the Comanche War Trail into Mexico, and, even as late as 1906, bands of Comanches were camping along the banks of Las Moras Creek.

Commanche Indian Encampment Institute of Texan Cultures 68-2047

Abandoned in 1861 by federal troops because of the Civil War, Fort Clark was regarrisoned in 1866 by federal troops in response to escalating raids by Indians.

Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie would take over leadership of Fort Clark in 1873. He would later lead the Fourth Cavalry and black Seminole Scouts on a controversial invasion into Mexico. (Pirtle and Cusak 1985)

Lieutenant John Latham Bullis Institute of Texan Cultures, 68-1093

William (Dub) Warrior

Military figures from General Robert E. Lee to the more recent Generals George S. Patton and Jonathan Wainwright served at this remote outpost. Much of itsaction, including the patrols of the Seminole Indian Scouts, occurred under the command of Lieutenant John L. Bullis.

 

As William Warrior observes, “They thought the world of him. He was with them all the way—ate the same food, suffered just like they did” (Thybony 1991:92).

In 1870 permission to begin negotiations to enlist the black Seminoles as scouts was granted by Congress, their questionable role as runaway slaves now resolved by the Civil War. After 20 years of trying to make a living in Mexico, about 150 of the black Seminoles who had moved to Mexico with John Horse were persuaded to return to Texas (ANR, Dec. 20, 1913). Demoralized by a second smallpox epidemic, nonproductive land, and the continued raids of Indians, the maroons were attracted by the promise of provisions and land, in addition to funds allowing them to return to Indian Territory (Mulroy 1993:10). The first enlistments were begun in 1870 at Fort Duncan, Eagle Pass, 45 miles south of Fort Clark.

John Kibbetts, second-in-command to John Horse (Porter 1951:3, 1953:360) figured prominently in these negotiations. Known as Sitteetastonachy, or Snake Warrior, among the Seminoles, Kibbetts was one of the few maroons adopted into the Indian tribe, possibly as a reward for his valuable services (Mulroy 1993:114). John Kibbetts’s maroon community living at Nacimiento, Mexico, was recruited to serve at Fort Duncan, and later the Daniels band joined them, only to leave shortly thereafter for Fort Clark 40 miles to the north.

Headquarters at Fort Clark, Texas

There were other scouts already on Fort Clark, such as the Lipan Indian Scouts and Tonkawa Indian Scouts, but none ever reached the fame nor received the accolades of the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.

Fay July and William Shields Institute of Texan Cultures, 68-1011

Officially, the maroons were enlisted as Indian scouts, since the army had no provisions for blacks or maroons, an ethnic dilemma that would create later obstacles for the scouts in their quest for a homeland. For the first few years, the scouts’ duties were routine, and by 1871 more Seminole maroon families crossed from Mexico into Texas.

Although the Seminole Scouts never numbered more than 100 at one time, the entire community, including women and children, numbered between 400 and 500. By 1872 the black Seminoles became a unit on Fort Clark, the Detachment of Seminole Negro Indian Scouts, and fought their first military engagement in 1873 (Mulroy 1996:181).

The Black Seminole Community in Las Moras outside Fort Clark Institute of Texan Cultures, 99-150

The U.S. Army supplied the Seminole Scouts with arms such as Sharp’s carbines, ammunition, and rations. Although responsible for furnishing their own horses, the scouts received some monetary compensation and forage. They dressed in a “modified Indian style”; some were reported to wear “buffalo-horn war-bonnets” (Mulroy 1993:114; Porter 1952:363). The black Seminoles also drew on traditional agricultural skills brought from their sojourn in Florida, constructing irrigation systems and planting crops such as corn, pumpkins, cotton, corn, and sugar.

This family gathers in front of the grapevine-covered ramada from which hangs a scout saddle and trailing gourd vine Institute of Texan Cultures, 95-370

They built Mexican-style wattle-and-daub and brush homes, called jacales, with thatched roofs and wattle-and-daub chimneys on the outskirts of Fort Clark along Los Moras Creek.

Porter (1952:36) describes the Seminole Scouts’ unique method of campaigning:

“. . . it was a severe ordeal for soldiers from other commands to keep up with them. Their effectiveness, aside from their unrivaled trailing skill, was due in large measure to their rapidity of movement and their ability to stay on the trail for months at a time, both of which qualities were derived from their lack of dependence on the commissariat. They could subsist indefinitely on half-rations and, when necessary, live off the country—eating rattlesnake if no other game was available.”

Bill Williams, Black Seminole Scout Institute of Texan Cultures, 68-1012

The scouts were usually outnumbered five to one in most of their encounters with Indians, but not one scout was killed or seriously wounded over a period of eight years. One of the first and most famous border incidents was Mackenzie's Raid in 1873 into Mexico near Remolino.

Colonel Mackenzie, commander of the Fourth Cavalry at that time, was pursuing a band of Kickapoo and Lipan Indians illegally over the Mexican border. Accompanying him were 16 scouts of Eliijah Daniels’s band from Fort Clark under the command of Lieutenant Bullis (Porter 1952:365; Wallace 1951:79). Chief Costilietos, the Lipan chief (Porter 1952:365; Swanson 1985b:242-43) and his daughter, Teresita, were captured during the raid.

Chief Costilietos, the Lipan chief, and his daughter, Teresita photographed outside a black Seminole house in Las Moras. The Library of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas at the Alamo, San Antonio.

Later she would marry James Perryman. Their son, Juan Perryman, became a well-known and respected figure in the black Seminole communities.

In 1874 Adam Paine would become the first scout to earn a Congressional Medal of Honor by displaying remarkable courage in a confrontation with Kiowas. Adam was said to be a formidable figure, weighing 200 pounds, standing six feet tall, and wearing a buffalo-horn headdress (Amos and Senter 1996). Later Payne would become a refugee after killing a man in Brownsville, Texas. One evening, during a New Year’s party in the black Seminole settlement, Payne was gunned down by a sheriff’s deputy “with a shotgun at such close range that his clothes reportedly caught on fire. He died instantly” (Amos and Senter 1996:199).

One of the most famous events occurred in 1875 during a routine patrol by Lieutenant Bullis and his scouts Sergeant John Ward, Trooper Pompey Factor, and Trumpeter Issac Payne. Near Langtry at Eagle’s Nest Crossing on the Pecos River, they picked up and followed a trail of Comanche horse tracks leading toward the river. The small group of scouts attacked, and a skirmish ensued in which they were clearly undermanned. Bullis ordered a retreat, and the scouts started to flee; Bullis, however, had been separated from his horse and was being attacked by Comanches. Under heavy fire and at considerable risk of their lives, Ward, Payne, and Factor went back to rescue Bullis, Ward pulling him up on the back of his own horse (Porter 1952:366-67; Swanson 1985b: 279-80). For this action they were each honored with the Congressional Medal of Honor.

One Seminole Scout raid in 1879 was to gain the small group even more respect and accolades from military officials, who by now were fully convinced of the scouts’ utility in keeping the Indians in abeyance. Charged with apprehending Mescalero Apaches who had left their New Mexico reservation, 39 scouts tracked the Indians across the desert during the entire month of February in freezing weather. Ever resourceful, they were able to forage food but were unable to find water towards the end of the month. About to perish, they were saved by the discovery of an underground spring by Sergeant David Bowlegs and thus were able to complete their mission after 80 days in the field (Mulroy 1993:116).