By Rachel Kovaciny
Although their unit was involved in hundreds of skirmishes, altercations, and battles between 1870 and 1914, not one Black Seminole Scout was killed or even seriously injured while on duty. But it wasn’t because they kept out of the way of danger. These scouts were noted for their skill, courage, and canny fighting. Four of them even earned the Medal of Honor for extreme heroism, risking their lives to save others.
Who were the Black Seminole Scouts? Were they Seminole? Black? Both?
The answer to all those questions is… yes. Because history is complicated.
From the late 1700s until the American Civil War, many African-Americans escaping from slavery in the Deep South found their way to Florida to seek sanctuary among the native peoples. Until 1822, Florida belonged to Spain, and the Spanish guaranteed freedom to all escaped slaves, so Florida was a safe and legal haven for them.
Multiple native tribes made up the Seminole people in Florida, including the Creeks, who moved farther and farther south after Europeans settled along the East Coast. The Seminoles accepted African-American newcomers and let them form their own communities within their territory. The Seminoles named them Estelusti, which meant Black People, but they were commonly called Black Seminoles, Seminole Freedmen, or Seminole Negroes.
Occasionally, the Estelusti and Seminoles intermarried, but they mostly lived in separate towns near each other. Black Seminole men were expected to join native Seminole warriors during warfare, and their communities also paid work or goods for living on Seminole land. This arrangement continued for twenty years after Florida became a United States territory in 1822. However, slave owners continued to lose slaves to the refuges, and pressured the government to remove both the native Seminoles and Black Seminoles.
In 1842, the government moved the native people to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). By then, the Black Seminoles numbered in the hundreds and feared they would be re-enslaved if they followed their native friends and relatives, so they migrated to Mexico instead. The Mexican government welcomed them and let them build communities south of the Rio Grande. There were pro-slavery forces trying to annex that part of Mexico to create a new slave state for the United States, and the Black Seminoles helped the Mexican military fend off these intruders. Eventually, some native Seminoles joined them there, as well as Black Cherokees and Black Creeks.
In 1870, after the American Civil War ended slavery across the United States, it was safe for Black Seminoles to rejoin their native friends again if they wanted to. The U.S. Army in the Southwest faced a lot of unrest between settlers and native tribes, and many outlaws were hiding in Indian Territory and Mexico, crossing into peaceful communities to rob, steal, and murder, and running back to their hiding places to avoid arrest.
U.S. officials invited the Black Seminoles to return to the States and live with their native friends in Indian Territory. They offered the men jobs as Army scouts as an incentive. About two hundred Black Seminoles agreed and moved across the border. Enough of them accepted the invitation to scout for the military that they were formed into their own unit. For the next decade, they mainly worked in Texas, operating out of Fort Duncan or Fort Clark. Sometimes, they went on missions as a unit, but most of the time, they supported regular troops as scouts. They moved ahead of the main body of soldiers and watched for danger, good traveling routes, and watering holes, and serving as trackers and interpreters.
The Black Seminole Scouts never numbered over fifty at a time. They and their families lived at Fort Duncan or Fort Clark with the Army regulars. The scouts were often attached to all-black Buffalo Soldier units. As scouts, they signed up for six-month tours of duty at a time, rather than the much longer terms regular soldiers signed up for.
For forty years, these scouts served their country bravely and faithfully. They defended settlers from raids, protected ranchers and their homes and livestock, and defended the Texas border from outlaws and renegades. They were considered by many of those they fought alongside to be the best scouts the American military had ever seen.
In 1914, the Black Seminole Scouts disbanded. The Southwest had been tamed, with outlaws and renegades fading into memory as civilization conquered the wilderness. Some of the Scouts became Army regulars or Buffalo Soldiers. The Scouts maintained their own cemetery in Kinney County, Texas, near historic Fort Clark, so veterans and their families could be buried near their brothers-in-arms. Among those resting in that cemetery are all four Medal of Honor recipients: John Ward, Pompey Factor, Adam Paine, and Isaac Payne.
Many descendants of the Scouts still live in that area. Although their ancestors took a long and circuitous route to get there, the Black Seminoles eventually made homes for themselves in Texas that have lasted for generations. ♦
