Fort Clark

While military authorities appreciated the Black Seminoles, other white residents of Kinney County expressed less gratitude for their protection. In April 1876, 35 citizens complained to the secretary of war that unenlisted blacks living around Fort Clark were stealing property and encroaching upon the lands of citizens. Black Seminoles may have been stealing livestock to stave off starvation. Officers close to the maroons, like Bullis, had warned that this might result if the government continued to deny rations and land. It did not help that the maroons were squatters on private lands that the government only leased.

Just as importantly, the scouts had to contend with the legacies of slavery and the Civil War. They were armed, black militants living alongside former sons and daughters of the Confederacy in a state where slavery had only been outlawed for 11 years.