Seminole Negro Indian Scouts
Photograph, 1889, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

By the 1870s, poverty and opportunity drove Black Seminoles north, where the U.S. Army wanted their services. The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts became a crack unit, playing a lead role in the Indian Wars of the 1870s, when the West was won in Texas. Like their comrades the Buffalo Soldiers, they left a distinguished but complex legacy.

• Scouts: How the West was really won
• Sidetrack: More sites on the scouts

Next >>