Seminole Indian Scouts' Cemetery
Brackettville, Kinney County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Founded on Fort Clark Reservation, Sept. 1, 1872) Burial site of heroic U.S. Army men, families, and heirs. These Seminoles came mainly from Florida about 1850; lived in northern Mexico or Texas; joined Lt. (later a general) John L. Bullis and Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie in ridding Texas of hostile Indians, 1870s. (1971) Incise on plate on back of marker: The following are among the many scouts buried here: John Bowlegs, Elijah Daniels, Pompey Factor, Renty Grayson, John Jefferson, Billy July, Sampson July, George Kibbit, Issac Payne, Pompey Perryman, Joseph Phillips, Billie Wilson, Issac Wilson, Kelina Wilson.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The cemetery honors a remarkable community of Black Seminole scouts whose service links the histories of Native peoples, African Americans, and the U.S. Army on the Texas frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the Civil War, the western reaches of Texas were among the most contested ground in North America. The U.S. Army was returning to a string of frontier posts it had left during the war. Along the Rio Grande border, raids and counter-raids made life dangerous for everyone who lived there. Fort Clark, near Las Moras Springs in present-day Kinney County, was one of the key posts guarding that stretch of country.
The Army needed people who could read that dry, broken landscape: track a trail across bare rock, find water where none seemed to exist, and survive for weeks in the brush. Few soldiers from the East could do it. The men who could were often people the rest of American society had pushed to its margins.
One of those groups was a community of Black Seminoles. Their story ran from Florida through years of removal and migration, and around 1850 they crossed into northern Mexico. By the early 1870s some of these families had returned to Texas, and the Army enlisted their men as scouts. On September 1, 1872, a burial ground was founded for them on the Fort Clark reservation.
This was the Reconstruction era, when the country was arguing bitterly over what freedom and citizenship would mean for Black Americans. On the Texas frontier, the scouts and their families were living one answer to that question. They were valued for their skills, and at the same time uncertain of their place.
People & events
The scouts' roots were in Florida. There, people who had escaped slavery lived alongside the Seminole people, allied with them and in many cases intermarried. Removal broke that world apart. Around 1850 a group of these families went south into Mexico, looking for a place where they could live free and keep their community together. Their descendants later lived on both sides of the border.
In the 1870s their men went to work for the U.S. Army. They served under Lieutenant John L. Bullis, a young officer who later became a general, and under Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, one of the Army's most aggressive frontier commanders. The scouts rode ahead of the troops, read trails, and led columns through country that could kill the unprepared. Their officers came to rely on them completely.
Four of the scouts received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration. Two of them are named on this marker: Pompey Factor and Isaac Payne. In one well-known episode in 1875, Factor and Payne, together with a fellow scout, turned back under fire to rescue Lieutenant Bullis when he was stranded during a fight near the Pecos River. That act of loyalty became central to how the unit was remembered.
The plate on the back of the marker lists more names: Bowlegs, Daniels, Grayson, Jefferson, July, Kibbit, Perryman, Phillips, Wilson and others. Several family names appear more than once, which tells you something important. This was never just a military unit. It was a community of parents, children, and heirs, and generations of them came to rest here together.
Its place in the American story
Very few places in America bring together so many threads of the national story. The people buried here connect the history of slavery and freedom, the removal of Native nations from the Southeast, the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, and the Army's role in the West. You can't tell their story without touching all of these.
The scouts also complicate the familiar picture of the frontier. They were Black and Seminole. They served a government that had not always treated their people fairly, and they did it with such skill and courage that four of them earned the Medal of Honor. Their lives show how people on the margins shaped events that textbooks often credit to others.
The scouts' campaigns were part of the Army's wars against Native peoples of the southern Plains and borderlands. Those wars ended with the defeat and displacement of other Native nations, and that history deserves to be remembered honestly as well. The story here is not a simple one of heroes and villains. It is a hard and human account of people making their way through a violent era.
Finally, the cemetery is a place of living memory. Descendants of the scouts' families have kept its story alive, and it has become a touchstone for Black Seminole heritage across the region. That continuity is its own kind of history.
If you visit
This is a burial ground, and it feels like one: quiet, open, and shaped by the South Texas brush country around it. Walk slowly and read the names on the stones. Then compare them with the names on the plate at the back of the marker. The repeated family names say more about this community than any summary could.
Look for the graves of the Medal of Honor recipients. Take a moment to think about how far these families traveled, from Florida to Mexico and back to Texas, before they came to rest on this spot.
Treat the grounds with the respect you'd give any family cemetery, because that is exactly what this is. Descendants still care for it and still come here to remember.
The cemetery pairs naturally with a visit to the Fort Clark area in Brackettville, where the scouts were based. From there it's easy to continue west or south to explore more of the Rio Grande borderlands, the country these scouts knew better than anyone.
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
- · John L. Bullis
- · Ranald S. Mackenzie
- · Pompey Factor
- · Isaac Payne
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Seminole Scout Camp on Fort Clark
Brackettville, TX
For decades the descendants of Africans who had fled slavery for Spanish Florida — where they joined the Seminole people and forged the distinct Black Seminole community — carried their hard-won freedom across the continent. After removal to Indian Territory and a sojourn in Mexico, one group crossed back into Texas in 1870 to serve the U.S. Army as the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts. They made their home at 'the camp' on Fort Clark, building jacal houses and digging irrigation ditches along Las Moras Creek while scouting the border country until their disbandment in 1914.
John Horse
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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.
Fort Clark
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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.
Seminole-Negro Scouts
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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.