According to researcher Michael L. Collins, in his book “Texas Devils,” Wild Cat, a Seminole Indian chief, led the Seminoles of Florida and later Texas in a fight against genocide. Wild Cat, whose real name was Coacoochee, befriended African-American slaves who escaped from the slave plantations of Georgia and elsewhere. 
As a result, the Seminoles became an interracial tribe. Wild Cat effectively fought Texas Rangers and others attempting to enslave Black people.
The United States government declared war on the Seminoles, beginning with attacks by Andrew Jackson, the most notorious racist villain of the Indian wars, and ending with William Sherman’s attacks in the 1840s. A federal order, known as the Indian Removal Act of 1830, was designed to remove Native Americans off their land by force.
The attacks by Sherman were aimed at recovering fugitive Black slaves and their descendants to force the Seminoles onto the “trail of tears” and to the reservations where they could be killed or controlled. This genocidal march to reservations was supported by most Whites but also opposed by other Whites that refused to believe in the cause of White supremacy.
Resistance was initially led by the Seminole Osceola in 1835, when his wife, Morning Dew was apprehended by slave catchers.  According to the historical record, he once marked a treaty by stabbing a knife through it and declaring, “I will make the white man red with blood, and then blacken him in the sun and rain, where the wolf shall smell of his bones and the buzzard live upon his flesh.”
Many of his band of Indians were Africans or of African descent.  He was captured by the army in 1837 when he came in under a flag of truce to negotiate.
His two main leaders were Wild Cat and the Black Seminole John Horse, who had been captured with Osceola. Wild Cat was quoted as saying, “We resolved to make our escape or die in the attempt.”
U.S. Colonel Zachary Taylor, Missouri militiamen, and 800 regular army troops pursued them without success. Wild Cat and his Black allies lured this force into an ambush in the Battle of Lake Okeechobee, and inflicted heavy causalities upon the troops.
Wild Cat and John Horse remained emancipated and for many years conducted an unbeaten guerilla war against the United States. However, eventually they surrendered and were herded like animals to Oklahoma.
Slavers continued to lock up and enslave Black Seminoles, despite government assurances of safeguards.  After the U.S. Mexican War of 1848, Wild Cat established a safe zone for Seminoles and other Indian tribes south of the Rio Grande River.
According to Collins, Wild Cat encouraged hundreds of slaves to flee to Mexico in 1850. Texas governors like James Henderson and Elisha Pease supported the war against Wild Cat.
John “Rip” Ford supported establishing a slave buffer zone on the Texas-Mexico border, which would cause havoc to the efforts of Wild Cat to secure freedom for Blacks. Ford and other Texas Rangers were thoroughly convinced that Blacks and Mexicans were inferior.
A Texas Ranger named James Hughes Callahan was hell-bent on killing Mexicans because of his outlook on being entitled to Mexican lands simply because he was White. He also viewed the killing of Whites as some sort of mortal sin that had to be avenged.
 Callahan carried out an expedition to root out runaway slaves, Seminoles, and Mexicans opposed to slavery from the city of Piedras Negras. In 1855, his forces reached an area near Eagle Pass, Texas where they encountered a fighting force of Indians, Mexicans, and Blacks determined to rid Mexico of these racist hordes.
Collins reports that no one knows for sure if Wild Cat was among the combatants that day, but Callahan was sent with his tail between his legs at the hands of the anti-slavery fighting force. Meanwhile, in Piedras Negras, Ford was forced to flee the city after a report of advancing Mexican troops. 
While retreating, Ford and his marauders set fire to parts of the town as a means to escape. While escaping they were covered by artillery fire from the U.S. of the border by Captain Sidney Burbank commanding U.S. troops at Fort Duncan.
The effort to capture runaway slaves and the Indian warrior Wild Cat ended in failure. To the slave owners, Burbank, Ford and Callahan were “heroes,” but to the victims of their murderous support of slavery they were called “Texas Devils.”
Much of Texas history is slanted toward the racist White elite.  The history of Texas is filled with half-truths, lies, and the erasure of how and why Texas settlers actually came here.
The highly glorified  and embellished Texas Ranger story is yet to be fully told. Eventually, most Texans will come to understand that the people we were taught in school were heroes, were nothing more than killers not worthy of the title hero.