John Horse (c. 1812–1882), also known as Juan Caballo, Juan Cavallo, John Cowaya (with spelling variations) and Gopher John, was a man of mixed African and Seminole ancestry who fought alongside the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War in Florida. He rose to prominence in the third year of what was to become a seven-year war when the first generation of Black Seminole leaders was largely decimated and the charismatic Seminole war leader Osceola (Asi Yahola) was taken prisoner by the American military commander, General Thomas Sydney Jesup.
Biography
Early life and education
John Horse, called Juan as a child, was born around 1812 in Florida. He was a Black American slave of Seminole, Spanish, and Black American descent. He lived initially in the region that came to be called Micanopy after the last head chief of the Florida Seminole in north central Florida. John assumed the surname of his father and nominal owner, the Seminole trader Charley Cavallo,Mulroy (2007), p. 35 his surname "Horse" being believed to have been a translation of Cavallo (or Caballo, the Spanish word for horse).Mulroy (2009), p. 188 His mother was likely of pure African descent, a slave acquired by Charley Cavallo in his travels. Charley was, himself, of possibly mixed descent (Indian-Spanish parentage.). The young John also had a sister, Juana (sometimes spelled "Wannah" or "Warner" in some sources). Not much is known about Charley Cavallo although it does not appear that he treated either of his two mixed-race children as slaves.
The War of 1812, the Creek War and the Patriot War in Florida were a series of related conflicts around the time that John Horse is thought to have been born. At that time he and Juana were probably living with their mother in one of the black settlements affiliated with, and under the jurisdiction of, the Alachua band of Oconee Seminole along the Suwannee River (see Bolek's "old town"). In 1818, when the American General Andrew Jackson invaded the area, he scattered the tribal peoples and their black allies in the region, destroying settlementsMurphree 2012, p. 215 and seizing blacks from among the Seminole for removal to the north to be returned to plantation slavery. John was probably displaced with his family by these actions since he first enters the historical record some years later as a young adolescent in the Tampa area.
John Horse spent his formative years among the Oconee Seminole, living like other Indian boys, learning to hunt and fish and developing tracking skills. He also became proficient with bow and arrow and with a rifle, developing a reputation in later life as a keen marksman with a steady hand in combat. Unlike many of his fellows, however, he also learned to read and write and acquired linguistic skills in English, Spanish and the Hitchiti tongue spoken by the Oconee and many other Seminole bands. We can presume that he was also conversant with Muscogee, the tongue of the Upper Creek Indians (see also Red Sticks) from whom the great Seminole war chief, Osceola hailed (see also Peter McQueen) because, in his adult years, he would be one of Osceola's main translators when dealing with the Americans (though Osceola, himself, spoke some English).
Seminole Wars
The First Seminole War (1817–1818) occurred during Horse's childhood and the youngster, along with his sister and mother, was probably among those displaced blacks who fled south of the Suwannee River toward Tampa Bay. There young John grew into adolescence and came into contact with American soldiers who had established an outpost, Fort Brooke, in the region with the formal annexation of Florida after the success of Jackson's incursions. John Horse first enters the written record in a short narrative by the officer in charge, Major George M. Brooke, who discovered the young Seminole black had been swindling his personal cook by selling him the same land turtle, or tortoise (a so-called "gopher"), multiple times for the major's personal mess. Discovering the young boy's fraud, Brooke opted for leniency and let John go on condition he make good on the missing turtles which he apparently did. This began a lifelong relationship between John Horse and the American military and vouchsafed him his nickname in later life, Gopher John.
He would go on to fight against the American army, on the side of his fellow Seminole, and, eventually, to work with the Americans. During the Second Seminole War of 1835 to 1842, which began when American settlers pressured for Indian removal to free up their lands for white settlement, John Horse served as what would be called, today, a field officer on the Indian side. At first a translator for the Indian leadersGlasrud Mallouf 2013, p. 221 (since few of them spoke English while their black allies did), he also became a lower level war chief. Because of his facility with languages and quickness of mind, John Horse eventually found himself in the midst of the Seminoles' negotiations with the U. S. Army as the war dragged on and open battles in the field gave way to guerrilla tactics and a long war of attrition.
In the spring of 1838, after several pitched battles, Horse finally decided the fight against the Americans was unwinnable and surrendered to US troops. This may have been prompted by the loss of his first wife, a Seminole woman said to have been a daughter of Chief Holatoochee, a brother or nephew of the chief Micanopy. The blacks in the war received promises of freedom if they would cease fighting as Indian allies and accept resettlement in the newly established Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.
Horse was later granted papers freeing him a second time by General William J. Worth for the services he subsequently rendered to the U.S. Army in the latter days of the Second Seminole War in Florida, as both translator and scout. But his initial decision to give up fighting had been in response to the offer of a prior general, Thomas Sydney Jesup, who had made the first promise of general freedom to all escaped slaves and their children willing to surrender and accept removal. Thus John Horse's claim to freedom from slavery would rest on at least two legal claims, via decisions by two different American military officers. This would eventually be important as events unfolded a few years later in the west. Unfortunately, Horse's second wife and their children, who were removed to Indian Territory with him, did not gain freedom through his later service and had only the earlier declaration by Jesup to fall back on, thus remaining at risk from the increasingly aggressive activities of slave catchers in the new Indian Territory.
With other Seminole, Horse was shipped across the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa Bay to New Orleans and north from there by way of the Mississippi to Indian Territory. There he and his family joined with the other Seminole and Black Seminole who had accepted removal to take up residence at one of two locations assigned to the Seminole inside the Creek area. Horse quickly rose as a leader among the Black Seminole because of his friendly relations with the Americans, his experience as a leader in the fighting, his linguistic skills and decisive cleverness.
Life in Indian Territory
New conflicts and old issues In the new territory, John Horse worked sporadically for the army as an interpreter and, sometimes, as an intermediary for the officers and the Indian leaders. Asked to help persuade the remaining Indian fighters in Florida to surrender and relocate to Indian Territory as he and others had done, he returned to Florida in 1839 to act as go-between with one of the last Seminole war chiefs, Coacoochee (Wild Cat), eventually convincing his old friend to accept the inevitable and come in, too. John Horse was sent back to Indian Territory in 1842, as part of a group of about 120 other exiles, once the army felt he had done what they needed.
In Indian Territory again, the exiled Seminole leadership finally voted freedom for John Horse, too, around the year 1843 in light of his services to the Seminole during their lengthy war. At the time the main chief, Micanopy (Mico Nuppa), had nominal ownership over him. It was Micanopy, in concert with his council, who finally granted the black warrior his freedom from any claims of enslavement against him which the tribe still had. Thus John Horse had been freed three times: by Jesup's original declaration, by General Worth who was Jesup's last successor (for services rendered), and by the Seminole leadership. Only the first of these actions applied to John Horse's second wife, Susan (daughter of the black leader July) and their children, however, and that action would soon come into serious question.
Conflict arose in the Territory because the transplanted Seminole had been placed on land allocated to the Creek Indians since the U.S. government had failed to recognize the tribal distinctions between the two peoples (the Seminole were a loose amalgam of Creek bands which had detached themselves from the Creek Indian federation a century earlier and relocated to then Spanish Florida, although they had continued to maintain ethnic and some kinship ties with their northern Creek brethren in Georgia, Alabama and part of the Carolinas). Because the Creek had adopted the American institution of chattel slavery while the Seminole had not done the same (they lived in very different ways), the presence of free blacks among the Seminole on Creek land and under the nominal sovereignty of the Creek tribal council, caused friction between the two groups. The free blacks threatened the Creek slave-holding status quo, because their very existence tempted the Creeks' own slaves to challenge their status, and provided a tempting target for Creek and affiliated groups seeking to acquire more slaves.
Creek slavers and those from other Indian groups, and some whites, soon began raiding the Black Seminole settlements to kidnap and enslave anyone they could get their hands on, and John Horse quickly became a focal point for organizing resistance to these encroachments as well as lead spokesman for his fellow Black Seminoles. In one case, when some slavers succeeded in capturing Dembo Factor,Littlefield 1977, p. 103 a veteran of the Seminole War, John Horse and his on-again, off-again ally, Coacoochee (Wild Cat), who had hopes of succeeding Micanopy as leader of all the Seminole and who opposed living under the Creek, protested. The Army, responding to their concerns, demanded and got Factor's release but neither they nor the Creek tribal council pursued charges of kidnapping against the suspected slavers. The slave raids continued as tensions mounted.
Seeking a solution