One of the toughest units in the U. S. Army was the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts. This elite group was recruited in 1870 from black people living in Mexico. The army selected them for their superbly honed frontier tracking skills, superior marksmanship and first rate horsemanship. They served gallantly in Texas during the Indian Wars, but today few people have heard of them.
Who They Were
The Seminole Negroes were descendants of escaped slaves who settled among the Seminole Indians of Florida. In the late l830s and early l840s, the U. S. government moved the Seminoles and Seminole Negroes to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Slave hunters and pro-slave Creek Indians persecuted them there. One band of Seminoles and a band of Seminole Negroes consequently moved to Mexico.
Seminole Negro Indian Scouts both retired and new recruits.
Although the Seminole Indians returned to the United States in 1858, the Seminole blacks did not. They feared kidnapping and a return to slavery back in the United States. Mexico prohibited slavery. As a result, the Seminole blacks were safe as long as they lived south of the Rio Grande. They drew on survival skills learned in the Florida wilderness and adapted those skills to the harsh and barren terrain of the Mexican borderlands. They learned as youths to ride, hunt, track, trap and shoot. These blacks became legendary frontiersmen. Some served as soldiers in the Mexican Army. They gained a reputation for being tough and daring.
Recruitment
Following the Civil War, the U.S. Army returned to western Texas. The army was called on to defend settlers and travelers against retaliation by Apaches and Comanches who were being displaced from their homelands. Military commanders needed scouts who were as skilled as their opponents at surviving and fighting in the desert borderlands.
In 1870, Major Zenas R. Bliss started recruiting Seminole Negroes from Mexico as U.S. Army scouts. In return for their services, the men received pay and rations. Their families were allowed to live at the forts where the scouts were stationed. On the fourth of July 1870, the first recruits crossed the Rio Grande to enlist for six months. The scouts operated primarily out of Fort Clark and Fort Duncan, Texas.
Scouts for the Army
In 1873, Lieutenant John L. Bullis, 24th U.S. Infantry, who had considerable experience leading black troops, became commander of the scouts. Bullis saw in the Seminole-Negro Scouts the type of highly mobile strike force that was necessary to be successful in confronting the elusive Comanches and Apaches. For the next eight years, the scouts served under Bullis. They saw combat in extremely rugged conditions on both sides of the border. During twenty-six expeditions they engaged in twelve battles without losing a single scout in combat.
In the Big Bend-Texas
In 1885, a detachment of Seminole-Negro Scouts garrisoned a camp at Nevill’s Springs in what is now Big Bend National Park. They served there for six years with troops from Fort Davis. The scouts were also stationed at Camp Pena Colorado near Marathon. They stopped there on regular trips between Fort Clark and Camp Nevill’s Springs.
Fay July William Shields
Medal of Honor
They never numbered more than fifty men at a time, yet the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts distinguished themselves. Four of the scouts received the Medal of Honor. Adam Paine earned the Medal of Honor for "gallantry in action" on the Staked Plains in the Battle of Canyon Blanco in 1874. John Ward, Pompey Factor, and Isaac Payne were awarded medals for their heroic rescue of their commander, Lieutenant Bullis in an expedition against Kiowas and Comanches in 1875; while Factor and Payne provided cover, Ward rode back into a volley of fire to rescue Bullis who had become separated from his mount.
The scouts were highly regarded and were praised by their commanders. Major Bliss characterized them as "excellent hunters and trailers, and splendid fighters." Colonel Edward Hatch Ninth U.S. Cavalry, described them as "fine trailers and good marksmen" and "superior to the Indians of this region in fighting qualities." They were considered to be experts at hand-to-hand combat and were well known for their incredible tracking skills. In one remarkable feat, Bullis and thirty-nine scouts trailed Mescalero Apache warriors for thirty-four days over 1,260 miles.
Promises Broken
The scouts amassed an impressive record of frontier combat. Meanwhile, their families faced discrimination, racial violence, and governmental indifference. At first, the army fed and housed the Seminole Negroes, thinking the government would resettle them on a reservation. That never happened. Some accounts say the Seminole Negroes were promised land in return for their service as scouts. No written record of that agreement survived.
Several prominent officers endorsed the scouts' claims to land, but the War Department had no land that it could legally give them. To make matters worse, registration for the rolls of the Seminole tribe closed in 1866. This left the Seminole Negroes in Texas and Mexico ineligible for Indian Reservation lands. Some returned to Mexico; others tried to stay on at Fort Clark and Fort Duncan. Without rations, some of them resorted to killing stray cattle for food. As a result, local citizens often distrusted and resented the Seminole Negroes.
Epilogue
The Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts received harsh treatment from civilians as well as Washington . In spite of this, they maintained a high level of effectiveness. They were loyal to the army in which they served and were proud of themselves. In the summer of 1914, the U.S. Army disbanded the scouts. At the same time, they were ordered to leave their settlement on Las Mores Creek and the gounds of Fort Clark, Texas. Without jobs or a place to go, they purchased a small piece of land near Fort Clark. This is where most of the group settled and where many of their descendants resided today.
