Osceola

Osceola (1804 - January 20th 1838) was an Indian war leader Séminole in Florida. Osceola led a band of warrior (approximately a hundred) during the resistance which its people carried out against the the United States which tried to take its grounds to him. It had a great influence on Micanopy, the chief of the Séminoles.

Its childhood

Osceola was born in 1804 with Talahassee in the Alabama. His/her mother, Polly Coppinger was the girl of Ann McQueen, a mongrel Indian Muskogee. Many sources indicate that the father of Osceola was the English merchant, William Powell, but about others speak about an Indian Creek who died after the birth of Osceola and William Powell would have done nothing but marry the mother of Osceola then. The child was however a long time called Billy Powell.

Osceola claimed, him, being Muskogee of pure stock. A test DNA, on what seemed to be the hair of Osceola, reveals an interbreeding however.

The grandfather of Osceola, James Mc Queen, was the first white has to make trade with the Indians Creek of Alabama in 1714 where it remained during more than 80 years as merchant.

In 1814, Osceola and its mother moved in Florida with other Creek Indians. At the adulthood, it accepted the name Osceola which is the anglicized form of the name Creek Vsse Yvholv , a combination of vsse , the ritual drink and Yvholv , which means the lamentation or that which deplores.

Resistance and the war leader

In 1832, some Séminoles chiefs signed the treaty of Payne Landing by which they agreed to yield their grounds in Florida against terrese to the west of the river the Mississippi. Five important chiefs, including Micanopy of Séminoles Alachua, however did not sign this treaty. In reprisal, the agent detached with the Indian question Wiley Thompson, declared that these chiefs would be deposed of their position. Whereas the relations with Séminoles remaining worsened, prohibited Thompson that it to them is sold weapons.

Osceola, young person warlike that the white had started to notice, was particularly insult by this prohibition, judging that was equivalent making of Séminoles of the slaves. He declared: “ the white man will not make ego a Black. But I will make the man white red of blood, and will blacken it under the sun and the rain, and the corbels will eat its flesh ”. In spite of this type of assertions, Thompson regarded Osceola as his/her friend and made him even gift of a rifle.

Later, however, Thompson made it imprison in Fort King for one night. In order to obtain its release, Osceola agreed to sign the treaty and to make it respect by its warriors. The December 28th 1835, Osceola and its men killed Wiley Thompson and six other men in a Embuscade at the exit of Strong King

Treason, captures and dead

The October 21st 1837, on order of the general Thomas Sidney Jesup, Osceola was captured at the time of a Fort Payton appointment to which it went for false négotiations. He was imprisoned with St Augustine in Florida. The method used for this capture caused strong reactions even among the white. It is in prison that the painter George Catlin obtained to make pose Osceola for a portrait, whose original inspired many other paintings, engravings and even of the representations on cigars. Osceola died of the malaria the January 20th 1838, three months after its imprisonment and was buried with the military honors. Many places were thereafter named Osceola in the United States. After his death, Doctor Frederick Weedon seized the head of Osceola and embaumer did it. The head burned in the destruction of a museum in New York in 1866. The Séminoles Indians repurchased many objects belonging to Osceola at the time of bidding with Sotheby' S in 1979.

Books and films

Freedom Land by Martin L. Marcus.

Osceola (1859) by Thomas Mayne Reid.

Naked in the Sun 1957 is a film on the life of Osceola and the war against Séminoles.

References

Random links: