Under Spanish rule in the 1700s, Florida was a haven for freed or escaped slaves, and many who reached it integrated into the Seminole tribe through intermarriage and adaptation to Seminole culture. After Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821 and roughly 30 years of warfare followed, most Seminoles were forced to relocate to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. In 1850, the tribal leaders Coacooche, known as Wild Cat, and John Horse led a group to Mexico, where under an agreement with the Mexican government they settled and fought raiding tribes along the Rio Grande. In 1870, the U.S. Army offered this group pay and rations to move to Fort Clark, which had been established in 1852 to protect settlers along the border. There the black Seminoles served as army scouts during Texas' Indian Wars under officers including Lt. John L. Bullis, and the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts lived at the fort in a settlement called the camp. They built homes in the Mexican jacal style with wattle and daub walls and thatched roofs, and they and their families also built dams and irrigation systems along Las Moras Creek for farming. The Seminoles remained at the fort until the scouts were disbanded in 1914; afterward some returned to Mexico, many stayed near Brackettville, some moved to Oklahoma after the Seminole Nation was granted sovereignty, and others were buried in the scouts' cemetery established in 1872, including four scouts who received the Congressional Medal of Honor: Adam Payne, Isaac Payne, John Ward, and Pompey Factor.