Brackettville, Texas

The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts, based at Fort Clark in Brackettville, served the U.S. Army from 1870 to 1914. Four members earned the Medal of Honor, the highest per-capita rate of any military unit.

Born in Spanish Florida of a black mother and Seminole father in 1812, John Horse (also known as Juan Caballo, Juan Cavallo, or Gopher John) was a prominent leader of Seminole blacks during the 2nd Seminole War. After a valiant fight alongside Seminole Chief Coacoochee (known as Wild Cat), and emancipation by Gen. Thomas S. Jesup, John Horse was removed to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) with hundreds of his people in June 1838, but within a short time John was back in Florida serving the U.S. Army as interpreter, scout, combatant and as a mediator with Seminoles in the latter part of the war. For his services, John was officially granted his freedom by future President Gen. Zachary Taylor. From his new home in Indian Territory John Twice journeyed to Washington, D.C., to plead his people’s case to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Years later John claimed he and Gen. Jesup met with Pres. Polk to discuss the plight of the Seminoles. In late 1849, oppressed and hunted after their freedom was withdrawn by the federal government, two groups of Seminoles and blacks, led by horse and Coacoochee, slipped out of Indian Territory into Texas, en route to freedom in Mexico. The band rested briefly here at Las Moras Spring in early July 1850. In time, John settled his group at Nacimiento on land made available by the Mexican government. In exchange, the Seminoles provided protection from Apache and Comanche. When the Seminole Scout Detachment was formed at Fort Duncan in 1870, John returned to Texas. In 1876, while living in the Seminole Camp at Fort Clark, John survived a third attempt on his life in an ambush near this site. After recovering, he returned to Nacimiento, Mexico. Following a trip to meet with Pres. Porfirio Diaz to plead for his people’s permanent land rights in Nacimiento, he died in Mexico city in 1882 at the age of 70.

On August 10, 1862, Confederate soldiers killed 34 German Texan Unionists who were trying to flee to Mexico via the Nueces River. A monument in Comfort, Texas reads 'Treue der Union.'

Fort Clark was established on June 20, 1852, at Las Moras Springs in Kinney County by companies C and E of the First Infantry under the command of Maj. Joseph H. LaMotte. The name Las Moras ("the mulberries") was given by Spanish explorers to the springs and the creek they feed. The site was long favored by Coahuiltecan Indians and later by the Comanches, Apaches, and other tribes. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the big spring was a stopping place on the eastern branch of the great Comanche Trail into Mexico. In 1849 Lt. W. H. C. Whiting , during his reconnaissance for a practicable wagon route between San Antonio and El Paso, recognized its military potential and recommended the location as a site for a fort. The post was originally named Fort Riley in honor of the commanding officer of the First Infantry, but on July 15, 1852, at Riley's request, it was renamed in honor of Maj. John B. Clark, a deceased officer who had served in the Mexican War . A formal military lease for Fort Clark was made on July 30, 1852, when Lt. Col. D. C. Tompkins signed an agreement with Samuel A. Maverick , who owned the land, for a period not to exceed twenty years. The fort was strategically located as anchor to the cordon of army posts that had been established along the southwest Texas border after the Mexican War. The fort's purpose was to guard the Mexican border, to protect the military road to El Paso, and to defend against Indian depredations arising from either side of the Rio Grande. By November 1852 Fort Clark had two companies of the First Infantry under the command of Capt. W. E. Prince, and for the next three years officers of the First Infantry and Mounted Rifles served as post commanders. Bvt. Lt. Col. W. G. Freeman inspected Fort Clark on August 1, 1853, as a part of his tour of the Eighth Military Department, and reported it to be "a point of primary importance...from its salient position looking both to the Rio Grande and Indian frontiers." Freeman was the first to recommend the fort as being "well fitted for a Cavalry station." The quartermaster, according to Freeman, had only eight wagons available for hauling the materials needed to build the post. This was an inadequate number since the depot at Corpus Christi was 280 miles distant and wagons required thirty days, under favorable conditions, to make the round trip. Mail came to the post from San Antonio, "being brought weekly by special express." From their campsite near the spring and from tents pitched along the banks of Las Moras Creek, soldiers began construction of the fort on an adjacent high limestone ridge. The first barracks and houses were Mexican-type jacals and crude log huts of palisade construction. A few buildings of limestone, some of which are still standing, were begun in 1856-57. The ruins of the old post headquarters building has the date 1857 over the doorway. With the establishment of Fort Clark, a neighboring settlement of Las Moras came into existence when Oscar B. Brackett established a supply village for the fort. The town's name was changed to Brackett in 1856 and later to Brackettville. The stage from San Antonio to El Paso ran through the settlement, and for almost a century the town and the fort remained closely identified. In the summer of 1854 the Indian menace in Texas prompted Gen. Persifor F. Smith , the department commander, to make a requisition to Governor Elisha M. Pease for six companies of Texas Rangers to conduct a campaign against the raiders. Two companies of these Texas military volunteers, under captains Charles E. Travis and William Henry, were sent to Fort Clark, where they assisted the regulars in patrolling the road. Col. J. K. F. Mansfield inspected the post in early June 1856 and reported the presence of one company of the First Artillery and two companies of Mounted Rifles under the command of John Bankhead (Prince John) Magruder . Mansfield observed that although the adjutant's office, guardhou

Claron A. Windus, Medal of Honor recipient, was born to George and Mary Windus in Janesville, Wisconsin. Sources give his date of birth variously as January 10, 1850, and as 1851. He received his education in the Janesville public schools. He married Agnes Ballantyne in Brackettville, Texas, on February 3, 1877, and was the father of at least three daughters. Windus ran away from home in 1864 and joined the Fifth Wisconsin Infantry as a drummer. He saw action during the Civil War when the Fifth Wisconsin participated in the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. He was mustered out in July 1865. He then joined the United States Army in October 1866, having lied about his age, and saw lengthy service in Texas with Company L, Sixth United States Cavalry. He was court-martialed in February 1868 for desertion and theft and was sentenced to twelve months of hard labor. In July 1870 Private Windus was a member of Company L, Sixth United States Cavalry. Under the command of Capt. Curwen B. McLellan, a mixed troop from Companies A, H, K, and L was dispatched to recover the mail from Indians who had attacked a mail coach sixteen miles west of Fort Richardson on July 6. The force of fifty-eight men, led by guide James Dosher, followed the trail of a small group of Indians until July 11, when nightfall found them on the south bank of the North Fork of the Little Wichita River, some forty miles northwest of Fort Richardson. On July 12, after they were unable to cross the river because of heavy rains on July 10 and 11, they were attacked by a band of Kiowa Indians. The ensuing battle came to be known as the battle of the Little Wichita River . Windus was bugler and orderly and assisted the wounded army surgeon, George W. Hatch, in caring for the soldiers. He also assisted in the clearing of enemy snipers from prominent elevations. On the morning of July 13, Windus, Dosher, and Sgt. George Eldridge volunteered to go to Fort Richardson for help. They eluded the Indians and brought relief to the beleaguered command. Windus and twelve others were recommended for the Medal of Honor by McLellan for "conspicuous acts of bravery." The awards were presented at Fort Richardson on October 13 and 23, 1870. Windus was discharged on October 12, 1871, and worked as a teamster and mail agent until 1875, when he was appointed deputy sheriff at Brackettville, Texas. In 1877, while attempting to arrest four fugitive felons, Windus shot and killed Adam Paine, a Black Seminole scout who was also a Medal of Honor recipient. This is the only known incident in which one Medal of Honor recipient was killed by another. Resigning his Brackettville duties in 1877, Windus became a mounted customs inspector from 1879 until 1884. He served as a deputy United States marshall until 1896, during which time he served in the Garza War . Windus reentered the military in 1898 as a captain in the Ninth Volunteer Infantry and was in Cuba in late 1898. He contracted malaria there and was returned to the United States. He was discharged in May 1899 and returned to Texas, where he again served as customs agent from 1900 until 1920. Windus entered the hospital at Fort Sam Houston after becoming ill on September 20, 1927, and died there on October 18. He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Windus was buried in the Masonic Cemetery at Brackettville, Texas.

Henry "Hank" Fletcher Kendall, a career U. S. Army cavalry officer, was born on June 18, 1855, near Paris, France. The youngest of four siblings, he was the son of George Wilkins Kendall , a career journalist and founder of the New Orleans Picayune , and Adeline Suzanne (de Valcourt) Kendall. His parents were married in France following his father's exploits during the Texan Santa Fe Expedition and his coverage of the Mexican War as America's first war correspondent. About 1856 the family moved to Texas and lived at Grape Creek where his father owned 10,000 acres in areas of present-day Blanco County and Boerne in Kendall County, which was named after Henry Kendall's father, George. Henry arrived in the United States from France with his maternal grandparents on November 27, 1858. As he grew, he honed his skills as a hunter, fisherman, and horseman on his father's sprawling ranch which supported the sheep and wool industry for many years. In 1867, when Kendall was twelve years old, his father died of pneumonia and dysentery. Kendall received his early education at St. Mark's Episcopal School in San Antonio, the Coronal Institute that offered military training to boys in San Marcos, Texas, and the Coliseum Academy in New Orleans near his father's newspaper headquarters. He then worked as a page in the Texas State Senate and in the Texas State Law Office's Patent Department prior to entering the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1874 when he was nineteen. After graduation from West Point in 1878, Kendall was initially assigned to the Third Infantry Division but was soon transferred to the Twentieth Infantry Division and assigned as a second lieutenant to Fort Clark in Brackettville, Texas. He was initially under the command of Col. Ranald Slidell MacKenzie and shortly thereafter was transferred to Troop E, Eighth Cavalry at Fort Clark, where he remained for the next ten years. Cavalry was the only assignment he ever sought in the military, and an associate described him as well-qualified because he was a "splendid rider, tireless in the saddle," was often used for scouting and hunting, and was a "remarkable wing shot, probably the best in the Army, a sharp shooter with the Cavalry carbine...." He had a keen sense of direction, rarely used a compass, and could lead his troops anywhere. Texas Ranger Capt. Leander H. McNelly once said of Kendall: "Lord, what a Ranger was lost when Kendall went into the Army." Fort Clark was one of many forts traversing the U. S.-Mexican border and dealt with border incursions by raiding American Indian groups and Mexican bandits. Kendall often led troops and Black-Seminole Indian Scouts in military campaigns in the field. His cavalry used several camps while they guarded both the border at the Rio Grande and railroad operations: San Diego, Texas near Corpus Christi; Fort McIntosh ; Meyer Spring; Willow Spring; Kickapoo Springs; and Eagle Pass. During this time, he lived under harsh conditions and maintained a poor diet. Malaria and a wanting diet in the field were common complaints for the troops there. Kendall was put on leave several times for medical reasons and recuperated from the harsh conditions he faced in the field. On April 4, 1885, Kendall was promoted to first lieutenant. In 1886 he and his troops were ordered to Arizona to help deal with Indian Chief Geronimo and his tribe, and Kendall took an active part in that campaign. Henry Fletcher Kendall married Mary Ann Adair Jordan at Fort Clark on March 3, 1887. She was the Fort Clark schoolteacher and the daughter of Col. William Henry Jordan who was in command of the Nineteenth Infantry assigned to Fort Clark. They later had three children; their first child, daughter Elizabeth, died within hours of birth. On May 15, 1888, Kendall and the entire Eighth Cavalry were ordered to march north from Eagle Pass to Fort Concho near San Angelo, and then north-westward. From San Angelo they started what was considered an experiment to see if ca