"Osceola, Great Seminole Chief"

Born around 1804, the great Florida Seminole
war strategist, known as Osceloa or (Assiola
"Black Drink Crier") was acutally raised as
a creek in Alabama or Georgia..

Like the upheavals of earlier Creek Indians
a half a century before which had produced
this new Seminole tribe. Unrest during the
Creek wars of 1813 14 drove the boy and his
mother ot flee for safety to the Florida
peninsula, quite possibly he fought in the
first Seminole war of 1817 - 18...

Osceola stood along side those chiefs who
refused to sign the subsequent Treaties of
Paynes Landing in 1832, and Fort Gibson in
1833. For they were being asked to quit
the region altogether, and remove to Indian
territory within 3 years..

Osceola antagonism toward whites became
personal; He watched his half Black wife,
the daughter of a Creek Chief, torn from
his side and clapped in irons by professional
slave catchers, who shipped her south..
When he next was confronted with a tready
demanding Seminole submission to removal,
legend has Osceloa angrily stabbing a dagger
through the document..

While the second Seminole war raged, from
1835 to 1842, Osceloa's hit and run warriors
cost the US Government an esitimated 20 million
dollars, as the Indians established hideaways
in the everglade swamps..

Finally lured from hiding under a flag of truce
in October 1837, Osceola was captured and
hastily imprisoned in South Carolina. Where
he died of a disease or poison 3 months later.

His head was cut off and put on display in the
Fort Moultine "Medical Museum". After his death,
the fighting continued, and many Seminoles were
in fact removed to Indian Territory..

By late 1850's, after the 3rd Seminole war,
fewer than 200 Seimole still ocuupied the
Southern Seminole Wilderness.
But they clung on, and intermarrying with other
Indian holdouts, they survived to become the
founders of the Seminole and Miccosukee Indian
settlements. Where their descendents
still live today...

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