Medal of Honor Fight, 1875
Comstock, Val Verde County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the 1870s, the U.S. Army relied on Black Seminole (Seminole-Negro) Indian scouts in campaigns against raiding Native Americans along the Texas-Mexico border. In April 1875, Lt. John L. Bullis and three scouts -- Sergeant John Ward, Private Pompey Factor and Trumpeter Isaac Payne -- left Fort Clark to scout for raiders in this area. After four days, they found a fresh trail and on April 25, within a half-mile of this site, they engaged a party of about 30 Comanche Indians with dozens of horses. Outgunned and outnumbered, the scouts withdrew, but Bullis' horse bolted, stranding him. Factor and Payne provided cover fire, and Ward rescued his Lieutenant. The three Seminole scouts later received Medals of Honor for their gallantry. (2006)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the spring of 1875, the Texas-Mexico borderlands were still contested ground, and the U.S. Army leaned on the skilled Black Seminole (Seminole-Negro) Indian scouts to track raiders across the brush country. On April 25, Lt. John L. Bullis and three of those scouts caught up with a far larger Comanche party near this spot and were forced to withdraw under fire. When Bullis's horse bolted and left him stranded, the scouts turned back into danger to save him — a rescue that earned all three the Medal of Honor.
Why it matters
The action honors the Black Seminole scouts, among the few African American and Native-descended soldiers of the Indian Wars to receive the nation's highest decoration for valor.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1870s the Texas–Mexico borderlands were among the most contested ground in North America. This was the tail end of the Indian Wars on the southern plains, and the brush country along the Rio Grande was crossed and recrossed by raiding parties, cavalry patrols, and the tracks of stolen horses. The U.S. Army held a thin line of frontier forts and relied heavily on men who could read that country like a book.
Among the Army's most valued trackers were the Black Seminole scouts — often recorded as Seminole-Negro Indian scouts — descendants of people of African and Seminole heritage whose history wound through Florida, the Indian Territory, and Mexico before some returned to serve at posts like Fort Clark. They knew the land, the water, and the sign left by moving raiders, and their skill made them indispensable to campaigns in this rugged corner of Reconstruction-era Texas.
It was dangerous, unglamorous work. A scouting detail might ride for days on short rations, far from support, knowing that if they found what they were looking for they would likely be outnumbered.
People & events
In April 1875, Lt. John L. Bullis rode out from Fort Clark with just three scouts — Sergeant John Ward, Private Pompey Factor, and Trumpeter Isaac Payne — to look for raiders in this stretch of country. Four men, alone in hostile territory. After four days they cut a fresh trail, and on April 25, within a half-mile of this site, they came upon a party of roughly thirty Comanche driving dozens of horses.
The arithmetic was brutal: four against about thirty. Outgunned and outnumbered, the scouts had no choice but to break off and withdraw. In the chaos of that retreat, Bullis's horse bolted and left the lieutenant stranded on foot — in that country, and against those odds, very nearly a death sentence.
What happened next is why there is a marker here at all. Factor and Payne turned and laid down covering fire while Ward rode back into the danger they had just escaped, pulled his lieutenant up, and carried him out. All three scouts — Ward, Factor, and Payne — later received the Medal of Honor for their gallantry that day.
Its place in the American story
The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest decoration for valor, and only a small number of the soldiers who served in the Indian Wars ever received it. That three of them earned it in a single desperate action on this ground is extraordinary — and that all three were Black Seminole scouts makes the story rarer still.
The American frontier army was not only the blue-coated cavalry of popular imagination. It included Black soldiers, Native soldiers, and men like these scouts whose heritage bridged both, serving a country that did not yet grant them full citizenship's protections. Their courage on April 25, 1875, is a fact of the record, honored by the government they served.
The rescue also captures something timeless about soldiering that runs beneath the larger, painful history of the frontier wars: three men who could have kept riding to safety chose instead to go back for the one who was stranded. That is the human core the medal recognizes, and it is why this half-mile of Val Verde County brush is worth marking.
If you visit
You are in the wide, thorny brush country of Val Verde County near Comstock, not far from where the land breaks toward the canyons of the Rio Grande. Stand at the marker and look at the terrain itself — the low cover, the broken ground, the long sightlines — and you'll understand both how a small party could track raiders across it and how badly the odds tipped once a fight began.
Think about the distances. These four men were days out from Fort Clark with no relief coming. Picture the moment a horse bolts and a man is suddenly afoot in open country, and picture the decision the other three made in the space of seconds.
This is a monument to a single act of courage rather than a developed site, so come for reflection. Read the names — Ward, Factor, Payne — say them aloud, and let this quiet stretch of Texas honor three soldiers whose valor here earned the country's highest recognition.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Lt. John L. Bullis
- · Sergeant John Ward
- · Private Pompey Factor
- · Trumpeter Isaac Payne
Related events
- · Texas-Mexico border Indian Wars
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Seminole-Negro Scouts
Del Rio, TX
From 1870 to 1881, roughly a hundred Seminole-Negro Scouts served the U.S. Army along the Texas border at Forts Duncan and Clark and Camp Del Rio. Mostly descendants of runaway slaves who had intermarried with Florida Seminoles before removal to Indian Territory, they were prized for extraordinary tracking skill, courage, and endurance on the trail. Under Lieutenant John L. Bullis they fought for eight years without losing a single scout, and four earned the Medal of Honor.
Seminole Indian Scouts' Cemetery
Brackettville, TX
Established on the Fort Clark reservation in 1872, this cemetery holds the graves of the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts and their families. Descendants of Seminoles and formerly enslaved people who had come from Florida around 1850 and lived in Mexico and Texas, these scouts served under Lieutenant John L. Bullis and Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie in the frontier campaigns of the 1870s, and four of them earned the Medal of Honor.
Fort Clark
Brackettville, TX
Established in 1852 beside the springs of Las Moras Creek, Fort Clark guarded the military road from San Antonio to El Paso and the border with Mexico. Nearly every U.S. cavalry regiment passed through, and its garrison — including the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts and the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry — played a decisive part in the Indian campaigns of the 1870s. Held briefly by Confederates during the Civil War, the fort remained a horse-cavalry post until 1946.
John Horse
Brackettville, TX
Born in Spanish Florida in 1812 to a Black mother and a Seminole father, John Horse became a leading figure among the Black Seminoles during the Second Seminole War, fighting alongside Chief Coacoochee before serving the U.S. Army as scout, interpreter, and mediator. Repeatedly pursued after his people's freedom was stripped away, he led followers out of Indian Territory in 1849 toward sanctuary in Mexico, resting near Las Moras Spring in 1850 and later settling at Nacimiento in exchange for guarding the border against Apache and Comanche raids. He survived an ambush near this site in 1876 and died in Mexico City in 1882.