Seminole Camp

Kinney County, TX

Status: Located – Needs More Research

Year Established: 1870

Council of Governments: MRGDC

Public History: Seminole Camp was a frontier Black Seminole Indian community on Las Moras Creek south of the site of what is now Brackettville in Kinney County. Around 1870 some 150 Black Seminoles formed the nucleus of a community located south of Fort Clark. Several members of this population were enlisted as scouts in 1871 by Zenas Randall Bliss and organized into a company of Black Seminole scouts stationed at Fort Clark. Around 1874 several hundred Black Seminoles from Mexico moved to Seminole Camp, bringing the total population of the community to an estimated 500. A Mount Zion Baptist Church, built to resemble the First Church of Salem, Massachusetts, was established in the community soon thereafter. Seminole Camp was abandoned after the closing of the Fort Clark reservation in 1914. Many Seminole Camp residents moved to Brackettville, taking their church with them. By the 1950s some descendents of the original inhabitants of Seminole Camp were still living near Brackettville, and the Black Seminole scout burial ground had become a tourist attraction. By 1977 the Seminole Indian Scout Association, whose membership included descendents of the original Fort Clark scouts, was holding annual fund-raising events for the preservation of the Seminole Cemetery.

Community History: “There are several sites that cumulatively makeup Seminole Camp or Bracketville. The point is associated with the Indian Scout Cemetery. Some 200 Black Seminole Scouts served. At one time, Brackettville was said to have a community that was 75% African and Native American. Their Congressional representative, Gallegos read the story of this area, including Bracketville and Fort Clark, into the Congressional record in 2014:

For many years, Fort Clark was the headquarters of the famous Buffalo
Soldiers made up of African Americans. At that time, Brackettville had
a large proportion of Black Seminoles, who were people of mixed African
American and Seminole ancestry, which originated in Florida. The Black
Seminoles were recruited by the U.S. to act as scouts for the Buffalo
Soldiers, and they settled with their families in Brackettville. During
slavery years, the Black Seminoles began living in a settlement in
northern Mexico in order to escape conditions in the U.S. Their
language, Afro-Seminole Creole, was developed in Florida. Impressively,
even today, Afro-Seminole Creole is still spoken by some in
Brackettville. After the Buffalo Soldiers moved out to Fort Clark with
the waning of the Indian Wars, Brackettville became a cavalry post.
In 1914, the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts were finally disbanded, but
these scouts had an amazing history of service. In fact, the Seminole
cemetery near Brackettville has the highest number of Congressional
Medal of Honor winners resting there per capita than has any other
cemetery in the country. …Because of the families of soldiers at the fort and the African
American veterans and the descendants of those who had settled in
Brackettville during the war, the U.S. Government funded the
construction of a high school for Black students. The school opened in
1944 so that the children of these veterans could be educated. At that
time, Texas was still racially segregated. This high school is believed
to have been the only federally built school of its kind between San
Antonio and El Paso.”””