Promise of Home
As soon as they crossed the river, John Horse left the group for present-day Zaragoza to confer with Mexican officials and receive their promises of welcome and title to land. The Mexican government gave the people food and supplies. For the Black Seminoles specifically, the Mexican government gave them the designation "Mascogos" the first official designation of their collective identity. The specific allotments, however, they would have to wait for.
The groups (Black Seminoles, Seminoles, Kickapoos) separated and made camp near the Rio Grande in and around towns like Monclova Viejo, Tuillo, and Piedras Negras. The Black Seminoles especially were not safe during this wait, being so close to the border and hence, kidnappers. John Horse and Wild Cat (the two groups still practiced the old tribute relationship) continually pleaded with the Mexican government for land deeper into Mexico where the Negros Mascogos would be safe from slavers.
The Mexican government, however, had its own interests and its priorities superseded the safety of the immigrants. Almost immediately after the first crop in Mexico had been planted (the men always prepared the land for planted, the women planted, harvested, and cooked), the Mexican army conscripted the men into a campaign against the Apache and other raiders in the borderlands.
In late 1851, the Mexican government finally honored the requests and granted 26.5 square miles in Hacienda de Nacimiento in the Santa Rosa Mountains to be divided between the Negros Mascogos, the Seminoles, and the Kickapoos. They were also given seeds and agricultural equipment. The Negros Mascogos continued their tribute relationship with the Seminoles, who they now lived apart from, by supplying them with agricultural goods.
Yet again, their newfound home was not the safe haven that was hoped for the Negros Mascogos. Nacimiento was at the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains, near the south end of the pass regularly used by raiders. While the men were away in other parts of Northern Mexico fighting other raiders, the women, children, and elders were left on their own in Nacimiento and regularly had to flee their village to hide up in the mountains.
They were also motivated by the constant threat of raids to build more permanent infrastructure. Learning from Mexicans how to build homes and livestock enclosures along side their log cabins and stick houses they learned how to construct in Florida and West Africa, they also built acequias, irrigation ditches for watering crops and gardens.
During the turbulent La Reforma or War of Reform from 1857-1861, the Negros Mascogos would be caught up in the civil war about, among other things, land. In 1859, a Mexican official rode into Nacimiento and ordered them to relocate to Laguna in southwestern Coahuila. Unknown to the people of Nacimiento, wealthy landowners were eyeing their farmland to add to their own holdings.
Forced Removal to Laguna
The people did not want to leave their promised home, but felt they had no choice. Laguna was a dangerous place, with even more risk of attacks from raiders than Nacimiento. John Horse complained persuasively to Coahuila governor Santiago Vidaurri they did not have the resources to fight the Indians in Laguna and the governor gave them ammunition and money. In April 1859 they departed Nacimiento in a mood of growing resentment of being trapped in bloody service to the Mexican government.
Records pertaining to the details of their journey and their wartime activities on behalf of the Mexican government did not survive the Mexican Revolution, but in 1861 Mexican officials denied their requests they be permitted to return to Nacimiento.
While in Laguna, the Negros Mascogos suffered under repeated raids. Entire families murdered, livestock killed or stolen, homes repeatedly burned to the ground--the situation for the Negros Mascogos in Laguna was dire.
Things only worsened with the invasion of the French and their installation of Ferdinand Maximilian as emperor of Mexico. French military operations swept through the Laguna region in 1864 and in 1865, those forces burned all the Mascogo homes to the ground, apparently confusing the Mascogos for Mexican peasants. John Horse confronted the forces and convinced them to at least leave the homes of Black people alone since they were more easily visually identified as "not Mexican."
In 1866 after having been defeated by General Porfirio Diaz, French forces began to withdraw and in 1867 Maximilian was executed. President Benito Juarez also confirmed the Negros Mascogos' title to the land in Nacimiento. It wasn't as simple as moving back, though. Kickapoos and others had moved onto the land during the turmoil of La Reforma, and the Negros Mascogos would have to staunchly defend their landrights over the next decade from opportunists who claimed they had abandoned it when they moved to Laguna.