Indian Killers

Early in the 1850s, the threat of slavers and filibusters convinced the Mexican government to relocate the Seminole allies further south. On July 26, 1852, the Seminole, Black Seminole, and Kickapoo leaders signed a treaty with the Mexican government granting them four “sitios de ganado mayor,” about 27 square miles of land, at the Hacienda de Nacimiento on the headwaters of the Rio Sabinas, near the town of Muzquiz. The maroons moved four miles from their Indian allies near the hill of Buena Vista. The communities settled in, building homes, cultivating crops, and raising livestock. The main body of Kickapoo warriors had defected from the confederation in July of 1851, but a small Kickapoo community remained at the new location.

The settlement offered some of the most fertile land in a forbidding region of deserts and mountains, a fact that would later create problems for the allies. The site was also strategically located close to the mountain passes that hostile Mescaleros and Comanches followed on their raids deep into Mexico.