Comanches
 
In an interesting twist, one of the officials Duval contacted for aid was
John Horse’s acquaintance from Florida, Gen. George M. Brooke, commanding the
Department of Texas at San Antonio. In 1826, Brooke had christened John Horse
“Gopher John” after the 14-year-old boy re-sold him the same two gopher
tortoises each day for a week.* Brooke had been sympathetic to the Seminoles in
Florida, distributing rations on his own authority after a drought and
petitioning the government to assist them.
In late 1850, Brooke received requests from Duval and Gov. Bell to send the Army
after the Seminole allies. Brooke refused. Duval, he wrote, had offered no proof
of ownership to the blacks he claimed. To use the Army in their recovery would
be unprecedented. Brooke’s actions were not pro-Black Seminole: he did order the
Army to detain blacks at the border until they could prove their freedom, and he
authorized the Indian agent, Rollins, to broker with the Comanches for the
bounty on Black Seminoles. But Brooke stood up to the ultimate requests of the
slaveholders.**
  
Sources:
Tyler 4, Mulroy 66, Montgomery 74.
©
Part
4, Freedom:
l
* See the for an account of the 1826 episode. Both the nickname and the story that gave rise to it were
well known on the frontier, appearing in U.S. Army reports and
even in Cora Montgomery’s memoir of life in Eagle Pass, where
she makes passing reference to the fact that “John does not
look as dishonest as his character runs, but might very well
have earned his pre-name of ‘Gopher’ in the way it is told of
him.”
**Mulroy 66 writes that, “Brooke effectively had taken
preventive action only after the main body of emigrant
Seminole maroons had entered Mexico.” |
