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John Horse
John Horse, also known as Juan Caballo, John Cowaya and Gopher John, was born in
1812 in Florida of a Black mother and an Indian father. He was described as six
feet tall, muscular, and powerfully built. "Straight as an Indian," he walked
with a self-assured air. Regarded as an expert marksman he could "follow a trail
by moonlight at a gallop over a burnt prairie." He was cool under fire,
courageous, brave and cunning. Striking in person, he dressed in Seminole Indian
fashion. He wore a brilliant turban with plumes over his long straight hair, a
hunting shirt gathered at the waist with a sash and silver clips on the lapels.
His leggings were decorated with ribbons.
There is an interesting legend as to how John Horse acquired the nickname,
"Gopher John." One day, a U.S. Army camp commander bought some turtles from John
and asked the youth to keep him supplied with fresh ones. Over the next few
days, the commander paid for more turtles thinking that they were being added to
the pen. At the end of the week when plans were being made for a banquet
featuring turtle meat, the commander was stunned to find out from his cook that
there were only two turtles in the pen. The officer realized that he had been
tricked into repeatedly buying the same turtles. At first angry, then mollified
by John's ingeniousness, he made the youth supply the turtles paid for and
nicknamed him Gopher John to serve as a constant reminder of his prank.
As leader of the Black Seminoles, John Horse struggled for almost half a century
to obtain land and a permanent home for his people. He was a warrior against the
United States during the Second Seminole War. To gain his freedom, he served the
U.S. Army as a guide and interpreter. In the Indian Territory, he founded the
village of Wewoka for his followers and made several trips to Washington, D.C.,
to lobby government officials on their behalf. John Horse, as second-in-command
to the Seminole Indian Chief Coacoochee (Wild Cat), led more than one hundred
Black Seminoles from Indian Territory to Mexico. From 1850 to 1870 he was head
of the Black Seminole community in Nacimiento, Coahuila, Mexico, and took some
of them back to Texas for service as scouts with the U.S. Army. The men were
promised land after their service as scouts, but this promise never
materialized. John Horse, old and recovering from wounds following an
assassination attempt, returned to his home in Nacimiento. He died in Mexico
City in 1882 while on a mission to settle a dispute over their land.
The
Indispensible Man
John Horse and Florida's Second Seminole War
John Horse
Forgotten African - American Leader of the
Second Seminole War
©2001-Present
Linda
Simpson
08/02/2015
