Each September hundreds of Black people from many locations gather in Brackettville, a small town in southwest Texas near the Mexican border, to celebrate “Seminole Days”. These folks are Black Seminole, part of a Black Indian tribe originally from Florida, forced to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1842, and later made an exodus to Mexico where they fought Indians for that government. In 1870, they returned to the United States, after agreeing that their young men would fight for this country in the Indian Wars. The unit was called the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.
The Bullis Years 1873-1881
For years Texans had been appealing to Washington for help in stopping Indians from raiding across the Mexican border stealing their cattle and horses. Texasranchers lost $48 million in 1868, which equals billions today. This led to the formation of the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts who agreed to fight in exchange for money, farmland, and equipment. Alwynn Barr, a History Professor at Texas Tech University says, “clearly they’re very important, they’re successful scouts, they know how to track and find people, they’ve lived in a sense in various frontier settings all their lives in going back generations before them.” In 1873 under Lt. John Lapham Bullis, from Macedon, New York, the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts engaged in a historic eight-year military campaign, fought nearly thirty battles, many skirmishes, and raids, defeating the west fiercest Native American tribes: the Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Kickapoo.
Four Medals of Honor
The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts were an elite tracking, scouting, and fighting unit-in modern terms they were commandos. ”They very rarely carried more than just a few supplies so they could move quickly move with stealth, catch their foe, strike their foe and then retreat quickly,” said Paul Carlson, the author of “Bad Hand: Ranald S. Mackenzie”. The Scouts ability led to incredible situations and bravery. Four of them received the highest military accolade in America, the Medal of Honor. The first Seminole Negro Scout to earn the award was Adam “Bad Man” Payne, who single handedly fought a band of Comanche warriors, saving his comrades near Palo Duro Canyon, Texas in 1874. The following year three scouts turned back and fought dozens of warriors to save Lt. Bullis on the Pecos River. On May 28, 1875, the United States Congress awarded each Seminole Negro Indian Scout, Sgt. John Ward, Trumpeter Isaac Payne, and Private Pompey Factor, the Medal of Honor. Black Seminole, Col. Steve Warrior, a retired Air Force Pilot and Air Force Academy graduate says, “that’s an extremely coveted medal, and also to get it and not be dead is something extraordinary also cause a lot of guys get it on their way out.”
Unique Ancestry
The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts aren’t the only distinction Black Seminole can brag about! There are three other unique factors within their ancestry.
Black Seminole are part of the only successful African-American maroons in U.S. History. Maroons are a group of people who escaped from the majority culture (slavery) and live in their own separate and autonomous community. Descendants of Black slaves who escaped from plantations in Georgia and South Carolina, fled to the Spanish territory of Florida in the late 1700 and early 1800’s. They co-existed and co-mingled with the Seminole tribe, who at the same time left their Creek tribesmen in Alabama. In 1812, U.S. military and pro-slavery militia attacked Seminole and Black Seminole villages, igniting the first of the “Seminole Wars.” The two groups fought several “Seminole Wars” against slave-owning, land-grabbing American troops, and were eventually forced to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in the early 1840’s. Chief John Horse led the Black Seminole into Coahuila province in northern Mexico in 1850, where they lived for 20 years, fighting Indians for Mexico. Once again they were living as free people, this time south of the border, when most blacks in the U.S. were slaves.
The original language the Black Seminole spoke Gullah (what some people refer to as “Geechee”) is a direct, distinguished linguistic link to West Africa. “ When I came to live in this country I learned pretty much about the Gullah people on the Carolina and Georgia coasts and become friendly with some Gullah speakers and was really surprised at how similar deep Gullah is to the West African Creole,” says Dr. Ian Hancock, of the University of Texas. The older people call the dialect “Seminole”. Hancock, a linguist, has been coming to Brackettville for years. “My main interest is in the Seminole language, which is on its way out unfortunately. But historically it connects a lot of links in Black American History, in American History that so far, doesn’t make it into the text books.”
The third unique factor about the Black Seminole is the fact they have a direct link to a Native American tribe. Tony Burroughs, author of “Black Roots: A Beginners Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree”, one of America’s leading Black Genealogist, says one problem with Blacks who claim they have Native American ancestry is oral history. “As we know from research of Oral History is that stories change from generation to generation, especially during long periods of time.” He added, “later I saw DNA results, only 50% of Black people who said they had Native American ancestry was verified in DNA.” So why do so many Blacks claim Indian ancestry? According to Burroughs “African-Americans did not want to admit that they had partially white blood in them, I guess it was a shame to know that they were part white.”
Why are the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts unknown?
Why haven’t most Americans heard about these amazing brothers? At times the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts fought along side or scouted for Buffalo Soldier units, the 9th and 10th Cavalry. But when white Texas Historians wrote about the Indian Wars of the 19th century, they didn’t call the scouts who fought under Lt. John Bullis, Col. Ranald S. MacKenzie, Col. William R. Shafter, or Col. Benjamin Grierson, Seminole Negroes or Black men, they called them “Seminoles”. An intentionally misleading phrase suggesting that they were Native Americans. Texas is still racist when it comes to telling the truth about Black contribution to history, currently the state school board is ignoring the Civil Rights movement. Whites who wrote the books in the early to mid-20th century weren’t about to portray black men as brave warriors. But to add insult to injury- in Brackettville, members of Seminole Negro Indian Scout Association changed their name to Seminole Indian Scout Association revisionist history, because they don’t like the term “Negro” thus also omitting the “blackness” of their ancestors.
The Distortions Continue
S.C. Gwynne’s recent book, “Empire of the Summer Moon”, about Comanche Chief Quanah Parker doesn’t even mention the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts! Yet, it was the scouts under Col. Mackenzie who led the charge at Palo Duro Canyon, the final defeat of Parker’s Comanche band. His great granddaughter Juanita Pahdapony says “the Comanche people were very good warriors. We lived our lives on horseback, and we were nomadic people.” The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts took part in the slaughter of 1,400 Comanche horses at the canyon.
There are white historians associated a large institutions in Texas are making other misleading statements about the Black Seminole. One is that they were slaves of the Seminole, which the Black Seminole don’t agree. “What is major here is the fact that their ancestors, as they see it, never were slaves,” says Professor Hancock. Granted there where a number of references by whites in the 18th and 19th centuries who called the Black Seminoles slaves, but what would they call them at that time “free black men”, they were fighting wars to stop that from happening! The blacks such as Abraham and John Horse were the interpreters and diplomats for the Seminole, because they spoke the white man’s language and knew their customs. “It was not quite slavery as you had on the plantations in the south, they had their own independent villages. Theywere armed, the men were armed and they had their plantations and they had their own lives,” says Alcione Amos co-editor of “the Black Seminole.” The emphasis on the Black Seminole being slaves is another attempt to dehumanize them, implying that they couldn’t think for themselves and were not independent people.
Their Legacy Today
The Black Seminole have distinguished themselves in many professions, including the military, education, and law enforcement to name just a few! Black Seminole Lee Young, the first Black Texas Ranger and model for the character on the television show “Walker Texas Ranger”, just published his book. “Lee Young: Memoirs of a Black Seminole Texas Ranger”.
“I played on the all Air Force Basketball Team and we had a tournament in Washington D.C. We took a Pentagon tour and in there they have a wall of all the Medal of Honor winners and we were all there looking at the wall. I see the Indian Warriors knew there’s four Medal of Honor members and I went up there and I found those four guys on the wall there and that was amazing,” said Col. Steve Warrior, Ret. U.S. Air Force.
Perhaps Alcione Amos, summed it up best! “Recognition that’s very nice, but I think is that how they survived and this spirit that they have kept all along and the unbelievable courage of the old people, you know to keep trying to be free against all odds. I think that’s what they are all about.”
