Warrior, John, aka John Ward

Source:

 African American National Biography

Warrior, John, aka John Ward

(1848–24 May 1911),

a Seminole Indian Negro Scout in the U.S. Army and Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Arkansas. Warrior's family background was a mix of Seminole Indian and African American heritage. This resulted when either his father or mother, like many who were enslaved in the pre-Civil War South, ran away from his or her master and found refuge and freedom with the Seminole Nation in Florida. Here they would stay and marry within the tribe. Beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century, the Seminoles fought a series of wars with the Spanish and U.S. governments to retain their tribal lands; among those who fought in these wars were many Black Seminoles. It may be speculated that Warrior's family name was derived from their fighting abilities. When the second Seminole War ended in 1842, many among the Seminoles except for a few holdouts were forcibly removed to territory west of the Mississippi River, and it is likely that John Warrior's parents were among this group that traveled the Trail of Tears. Many Black Seminoles, fearful of being reenslaved, went further south to Mexico and formed their own settlements, and it may be that John Warrior was born during the forced migration from Florida. Whatever the case may be, by the late 1860s John Warrior was living in Mexico and earning a living as a farmer.

When John Warrior returned to the United States, enlisting in the army at Fort Duncan, Texas, in August of 1870, he arrived in the United States with ten other Black Seminoles, including their leader, John Kibbetts. These men were the first Black Seminoles to return to their native land after the army authorized the recruitment of Black Indians as scouts in the ongoing conflict with native peoples in the southwest. While little is known about John Warrior, who was enlisted under the shortened name of John Ward, he and the men who enlisted with him were highly skilled horsemen, trackers, and hunters, who well knew the native tribes the army was then fighting. Though Warrior and his fellow scouts spoke English and resembled in appearance the black soldiers serving in cavalry and infantry regiments at that time, the Black Seminole Scouts were anything but conventional soldiers; they sometimes wore Indian war bonnets along with their army uniforms and did not take kindly to the mundane soldier chores of everyday life, such as chopping firewood and standing guard. However, the army needed scouts, and the Black Seminoles were the best there were. By 1871, so many Black Seminole Scouts had joined the army that a settlement grew up at Brackettville, Texas, near Fort Clark.

In April 1875, having risen to the rank of sergeant, John Warrior was attached to the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment performing scout duty, along with fellow soldiers Isaac Payne and Pompey Factor, under the command of Lieutenant John Bullis, a white officer who was loved and respected by his men. On 23–24 April they were searching for Indians near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers in an area now encompassed by the Seminole Canyon State Park, and the following day came across a Comanche war party consisting of nearly thirty warriors armed with repeating rifles. In the ensuing fight, which lasted nearly an hour, the Seminole Scouts under Bullis killed three men but were close to being surrounded and separated from their horses. In an effort to escape, the scouts made it to their horses, but soon noticed that their commanding officer was in trouble. With Indians rushing Bullis, his horse became spooked and he had no way to escape, but Sergeant Ward rallied his scouts, yelling to Factor and Payne “Boys, don't let us leave him” (Schubert, p. 36). While leading the effort to save Lieutenant Bullis, Warrior's rifle was shattered by enemy fire, but no matter. He galloped through the Comanche warriors, covered by the gunfire of Factor and Payne, and Bullis was able to jump on his horse and ride to safety behind him. For this action Lieutenant John Bullis recommended Warrior, Payne, and Factor for the Medal of Honor, commenting about all three that “they are brave and trustworthy” (Schubert, p. 36). As a result, all three men received the Medal of Honor in March 1876.

The service of Black Seminole scouts like John Warrior, Isaac Payne, Pompey Factor, and Adam Paine is significant for a number of reasons. Being Medal of Honor recipients alone makes these men worthy of remembrance. However, their Black Seminole heritage also makes them both interesting and somewhat contradictory figures in the U.S. Army's long-running battle to subdue the native peoples of the southwest in the last decades of the nineteenth century. That these men were brave and honorable soldiers is beyond question, but the fact that they were also the descendants of those formerly enslaved and of Native Americans driven from their homeland in an earlier age, and were now employed to drive Native Americans from their ancestral homelands is one of the many ironies that exist in the history of race relations in America.

Following the actions that earned him the Medal of Honor in 1875, John Warrior continued to serve as a scout, with only a few brief interruptions, for another twenty years. After spending a cold night as sergeant of the guard at Fort Clark in January 1878, Warrior contracted rheumatism, from which he suffered the rest of his life. So crippled by his ailments, Warrior could no longer mount a horse and subsequently received his final discharge on 5 October 1894. He continued to live in the Black Seminole settlement at Brackettville, Texas, with his wife Julia, and after his death in 1911 was buried there in the Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery.

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