Osceola (1804 - January 30, 1838), born as Billy Powell, became an influential leader of the Seminole in Florida. Of a mixed parentage including Creek, Scots-Irish, African American, and English, he was raised as a Creek by his mother, as the tribe had a matrilineal kinship system. When he was a child, they migrated to Florida with other Red Stick refugees after their defeat in 1814 in the Creek Wars.
In 1836, Osceola led a small group of warriors in the Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War, when the United States tried to remove the tribe from their lands in Florida. He became an adviser to Micanopy, the principal chief of the Seminole from 1825 to 1849. Osceola led the Seminole resistance to removal until he was captured on October 21, 1837, by deception, under a flag of truce, when he went to a meeting spot near Fort Peyton for peace talks. He was imprisoned first at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, then transported to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina,where he died a few months later of causes reported as an internal infection or malaria. Because of his renown, Osceola attracted visitors in prison there as well as portrait painters, including George Catlin, who painted perhaps the most well-known image of the Seminole leader.
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Early life
Osceola was named Billy Powell at birth in 1804 in the Creek village of Talisi, now known as Tallassee, Alabama, in current Elmore County. The inhabitants of the town of Tallassee were an admixture of Native American, English, Irish, and Scottish ethnicity, while some were African-American blacks. Powell apparently had ancestors in all of these groups. His mother was Polly Coppinger, a Creek woman, and his father was most likely William Powell, a Scottish trader. Molly was the daughter of Ann McQueen and Jose Coppinger. Because the Creek had a matrilineal kinship system, Polly and Ann's other children were all considered to be born into their mother's clan; they were reared as traditional Creek and gained their status from their mother's people. Ann McQueen was also mixed-race Creek; her father, James McQueen, was Scots-Irish. Ann was probably the sister or aunt of Peter McQueen, a prominent Creek leader and warrior. Like his mother, Billy Powell was raised in the Creek tribe.
Billy Powell's maternal grandfather, James McQueen, was a ship-jumping Scottish sailor and in 1716 became the first recorded white trader with the Creek tribe in Alabama. He stayed in the area as a fur trader and married into the Creek tribe and became closely involved with this people. He was buried in 1811 at the Indian cemetery in Franklin, Alabama, near a Methodist Missionary Church for the Creek.
In 1814, after the Red Stick Creek were defeated by United States forces, Polly took Osceola and moved with other Creek refugees from Alabama to Florida, where they joined the Seminole. In adulthood, as part of the Seminole, Powell was given his name Osceola ( or ). This is an anglicized form of the Creek Asi-yahola (pronounced [as:i jaho:la]); the combination of asi, the ceremonial black drink made from the yaupon holly, and yahola, meaning "shout" or "shouter".
In 1821, the United States acquired Florida from Spain, and more European-American settlers started moving in, encroaching on the Seminoles' territory. After early military skirmishes and the signing of the 1823 Treaty of Moultrie Creek, by which the US seized the northern Seminole lands, Osceola and his family moved with the Seminole deeper into the unpopulated wilds of central and southern Florida.
As an adult, Osceola took two wives, as did some other Creek and Seminole leaders. With them, he had at least five children. One of his wives was an African American, and he fiercely opposed the enslavement of free people.
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1830s resistance and war leader
Through the 1820s and the turn of the decade, American settlers kept up pressure on the US government to remove the Seminole from Florida to make way for their desired agricultural development. In 1832, a few Seminole chiefs signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing, by which they agreed to give up their Florida lands in exchange for lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. According to legend, Osceola stabbed the treaty with his knife, although there are no contemporary reports of this. However, Donald L. Fixico, the American Indian historian, says he made a research trip to the National Archives to see the original Treaty of Fort Gibson (also known as the Treaty of Payne's Landing), and that upon close inspection, he observed that it had "a small triangular hole shaped like the point of a knife blade".
Five of the most important Seminole chiefs, including Micanopy of the Alachua Seminole, did not agree to removal. In retaliation, the US Indian agent, Wiley Thompson, declared that those chiefs were deposed from their positions. As US relations with the Seminole deteriorated, Thompson forbade the sale of guns and ammunition to them. Osceola, a young warrior rising to prominence, resented this ban. He felt it equated the Seminole with slaves, who were forbidden to carry arms.
Thompson considered Osceola to be a friend and gave him a rifle. Osceola had a habit of barging into Thompson's office and shouting complaints at him. On one occasion Osceola quarreled with Thompson who had the warrior locked up at Fort King for a two nights until he agreed to be more respectful. In order to secure his release, Osceola agreed to sign the Treaty of Payne's Landing and to bring his followers into the fort. After his humiliating imprisonment, Osceola secretly prepared vengeance against Thompson.
On December 28, 1835, Osceola, with the same rifle Thompson gave him, killed Wiley Thompson. Osceola and his followers shot six others outside Fort King, while another group of Seminole ambushed and killed a column of US Army, over 100 troops, marching from Fort Brooke to Fort King, in what Americans called the Dade Massacre. These nearly simultaneous attacks began the Second Seminole War.
Capture
On October 21, 1837, Osceola and 95 of his followers were captured by General Joseph Hernández on the orders of General Thomas Jesup, under a white flag of truce, when they went for peace talks to Fort Peyton near St. Augustine. He was initially imprisoned at Fort Marion before being transferred to Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island, outside Charleston, South Carolina. Osceola's capture by deceit caused a national uproar. General Jesup's treacherous act and the administration were condemned by many congressional leaders and vilified by international press. It tainted his reputation for the rest of his life and stands as "one of the most disgraceful acts in American military history."
That December, Osceola and other Seminole prisoners were moved to Fort Moultrie, Charleston, South Carolina, where they were visited by various townspeople. The portraitists George Catlin, W. M. Laning, and Robert John Curtis, the three artists known to have painted Osceola from life, persuaded the Seminole leader to allow his portrait to be painted despite his grave illness. Osceola and Curtis developed a close friendship, conversing at length during the painting sessions; Curtis painted two oil portraits of Osceola, one of which remains in the Charleston Museum These paintings have inspired numerous widely distributed prints and engravings, and even cigar store figures.
Osceola, having suffered from chronic malaria since 1836, and now with acute tonsillitis as well, developed an abscess and died of quinsy on January 30, 1838, three months after his capture. He was buried with military honors at Fort Moultrie.
Legacy and honors
- Numerous landmarks, including Osceola counties in Florida, Iowa, and Michigan, were named after him.
- Florida's Osceola National Forest was named for him.
- Mount Osceola, located in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire.
- Lake Osceola, a lake located on the campus University of Miami.
- Battery Osceola at Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida is named after him.
- Several colleges and universities, among them Florida State University and the University of Central Florida, have buildings named for Osceola.
Legacy and descendants
- Direct descendant (great-great-great grandson) Chief Joe Dan Osceola who is Ambassador of the Seminole Tribe.
Relics
After Osceola's death, army doctor Frederick Weedon persuaded the Seminole to allow him to make a death mask of Osceola, this being a European-American custom at the time for prominent people. Later he removed Osceola's head and embalmed it. For some time, Weedon kept the head and a number of personal objects Osceola had given him. Later, Weedon gave the head to his son-in-law Daniel Whitehurst. In 1843, Whitehurst sent the head to Valentine Mott, a New York physician. Mott placed it in his collection at the Surgical and Pathological Museum. It was presumably lost when a fire destroyed the museum in 1866. Some of Osceola's belongings are still held by the Weedon family, while others have disappeared.
Captain Pitcairn Morrison sent the death mask and some other objects collected by Weedon to an army officer in Washington. By 1885, the death mask and some of Osceola's belongings had arrived in the anthropology collection of the Smithsonian Institution; the death mask is presently housed in the Luce collection of the New-York Historical Society.
In 1966, Miami businessman Otis W. Shriver claimed he had dug up Osceola's grave and put his bones into a bank vault to rebury them at a tourist site at the Rainbow Springs. Shriver traveled around the state in 1967 to gather support for his project. Archaeologists later proved that Shriver had dug up animal remains; Osceola's body was still in its coffin.
In 1979 the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma bought Osceola's bandolier and other personal items from a Sotheby's auction. Because of the chief's significance, over time some people have created forgeries of Osceola's belongings. Rumors persist that his embalmed head has been found in various locations.
Related Media
- Literature related to Osceola
- Light a Distant Fire (1988) by Lucia St. Clair Robson
- In the Wilds of Florida: A Tale of Warfare and Hunting (1880) by William Henry G. Kingston.
- Freedom Land: A Novel by Martin L. Marcus. In this version, Osceola was the son of a respected British officer and his Creek consort.
- Osceola (1858) by Thomas Mayne Reid.
- Tourist Season and Nature Girl, novels by Carl Hiaasen, both give an abbreviated history of Osceola's capture and imprisonment, as well as that of his contemporary, Thlocklo Tustenuggee.
- Captive, by Heather Graham (1996), historical novel features Osceola as one of the protagonists.
- War Chief of the Seminoles (1954) by May McNeer. Part of the Landmark Books series for children.
- Osceola, Häuptling der Seminole-Indianer (1963) by Ernie Hearting, novel in German based on historical sources.
- Osceola His Capture and Seminole Legends (2010) by William Ryan.
- Osceola was an early pen name used by the Danish author, Karen Blixen, most known for her works set in Kenya. She also published as Isak Dinesen.
- Osceola "Ossie" Bigtree is the name of a character in Karen Russell's novel Swamplandia!, based on her short story Ava Wrestles the Alligator, about a family of alligator wrestlers in the Ten Thousand Islands.
- Osceola (1889) is a poem by Walt Whitman, featured in Leaves of Grass.
- In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith, in which the United States becomes a Libertarian State after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Osceola served as the ninth President of the North American Confederacy from 1842 to 1848. He was the second Native American to hold the office of the presidency, with the first being Sequoyah Guess, who served from 1840 until his death in a battle in 1842. Osceola was succeeded by Jefferson Davis, who served as the tenth president from 1848 to 1852.
- "A People's History of the United States" (1980) by Howard Zinn
- Film related to Osceola
- In the mid-1930s Nathanael West wrote a 17-page treatment entitled Osceola, but failed to sell it to a studio.
- Seminole (1953), highly fictionalized American western film directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Anthony Quinn as Osceola.
- Naked in the Sun (1957), the life of Osceola and the Second Seminole War, starring James Craig as Osceola.
- Osceola - Die rechte Hand der Vergeltung (1971) by Konrad Petzold, an East German western with Gojko Miti? as the Native American leader.
- Television, Music, Sports, Art related to Osceola
- 1957 "Jim Bowie" TV-series episode "Osceola" When the army attempts to move the Seminole Indians from their own lands to a tract that is much less desirable, Jim steps in on their behalf. [IMDB] Osceola played by Abel Fernandez.
- The song "Seminole Wind", the title track of the album by John Anderson, refers to hearing the ghost of Osceola. The song has been covered by James Taylor and Gravemist.
- Osceola and Renegade represent the Florida State Seminoles football team. Before every game a student dressed as Osceola rides a horse onto the field and plants a flaming spear at the 50-yard line. The use of Osceola and Renegade as a symbol is approved by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
- The Sedgeford Hall Portrait, once thought to be of Pocanontas and her son, Thomas Rolfe, is now believed to be of Pe-o-ka (wife of Osceola) and their son.
References
External links
- "Osceola". The New Student's Reference Work. 1914.
- "Osceola". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
- Osceola at Find a Grave
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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