The word seminole comes from cimarron, which is runaway in Spanish, and so Cimarron became semihlo, and then that became seminole, and so we were the wild ones, you know, like we broke off and went down to Florida to fight and to get away.
In this episode, we're going into the deep water, paddling through some hard hitting history, rife with controversy injustice, highlighting the spirit of resistance and the ferociousness of a man when it comes to family and land. We're trying to understand and celebrate the life of a Seminole Indian War leader Osceola born in present day Alabama, he fled under duress to spend most of his life in Florida and died in a prison in South Carolina at the age
of thirty four. He received a global fame in his lifetime, and the people of America toasted celebratory drinks to the long life of Osceola. But why this vibrant relegade leader fought against the United States and the only war on American soil that it didn't win. The bigger story, the one behind the man, is the unconquered tribe of the seminoles. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one.
I'm intrigued by your choice of the word controversy, because there certainly exists controversies concerning Ossiola to this day, which is part and parcel of the fact that he's still in the national consciousness and the international consciousness. Do you see that little figurine sitting right over there. That's a
statue of Assiola. And about ten years ago a friend of mine in South Florida was in Belgium and she found that statuette really Belgium, in Belgium, and it was made in Italy, so he was famous all over the world.
My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Please use that glass ashtray as a coaster. There you go for you, Drake, Yeah, that's okay. I have been known to leave a ring or on my furniture, and I'd much rather blame me than you.
Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll do the same thing when people come over like he's the coaster. I'm in the home of historian and author doctor Patricia Wickman in Tallahassee, Florida. She's a generous and kind woman, but you better be on your a game. Of all the people I've interviewed, from hillbilly's to PhD tote and academics, I've never interviewed anyone with more detailed knowledge, passion, and ability to communicate about their expertise more than doctor Wickman, and her passion
is the Seminole Ostiola. As a matter of fact, she was the senior historian for the State of Florida and the former director of the Department of Anthropology and Genealogy for the Seminole tribe of Florida. She's actually a Spanish Floridian whose family has been here since the seventeen fifties, but she lived with the Florida Seminoles for over a decade. She is going to help us immensely in this story.
I was up in Iowa one time some years ago, where they had a statue of a totem pole, a pseudo totem pole that had been carved for them by a man in Branson, Missouri, and it was supposed to be in honor of Osceola. And I found that absolutely fascinating. So I'm never surprised to hear anything about him. I'm never surprised that he exists in the national consciousness. Even
to this day. There are over twenty counties, cities. There's even a bridge and a mountain in the United States named after Ostiola.
Osceola's legacy, lasting into modern times almost two hundred years after his death, shows the impact of his life. But here is a mainstream American pseudo totem to, the Seminole Leader, and I bet you're gonna recognize him. John Anderson's song Seminole Wind was a straight up country hit was nominated for the nineteen ninety three CMA Song of the Year. And if you don't like this song, I'm not sure what to say, but it really hits its stride near the end. Listen who gets a call out by name?
And the last time I walked in the swamp, I sat up on a cypres tum.
I listened pul saying I heard the dose of Seo.
So he heard the ghost of Ossiola crying. That's powerful imagery. And there ain't a person who ever heard that song that didn't like that part. But do you even know who Osciola is what he did up until recently, I'd have to answer no, not really. But this brings up too interesting and old points that we've got to address at the top. Number one, Americans have always been enamored with Native American leaders, treating them almost like comic book
characters or mythical creatures. In the eighteen hundreds, even while our government was at war width and systematically moving them to Oklahoma, America couldn't read enough and see enough about Indians. This trend rolled into the twentieth century. It's an odd philosophical position, idolizing people you were displacing and trying to kill. If you remember to Kumsa, the Shawnee had national fame in his life and was viewed as a noble foe
of America. At the end of his life, when he was in prison, the nation's most famous painters were lined up at the door ten deep to paint his portrait, and when he died, his possessions, and even parts of his body were stolen, sold and touted his showpieces, including his head, which is still missing. It seems like America liked the golden egg but didn't want the goose. The romantic idea of a free people unaffected by modernity, living
independently and harmoniously off the land was appealing. We actually grafted some of that into American identity, which differentiated us from the stuffy aristocracy of Europe from which we'd come. But we couldn't have unassimilated people who didn't want to be part of America living here. We'd rather just have stories about how they used to live here, and we couldn't have him living here, especially if they owned land. And did the Native Americans ever own some prime real estate.
The second consideration I said there were two, is how Americans were constantly in search of individualistic heroes that validated our national value system. We are so enamored with individualism that we don't know that there is even another way to view the world. But the Native people didn't have this individualistic view. I was helped to see this by Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes a couple of years ago when
we did that to comes the series. He basically said, you people are always trying to sensationalize individuals, but we see them as a product of their community, standing on the shoulders of others that they can't be separated from. Do you remember the grammatical structure of the Shawnee language, giving precedents to verbs rather than nouns, like actions rather than people, meaning They're most interested in what God done,
not who did it. In English, you would say Susie made the soup, with an emphasis on who did it. Susie did it. They might say the soup was made, and who made it? Really wasn't that important. I'm attempting to not tell Osceola's story through these historic tropes, but it's almost impossible not to. I just want to learn who this guy was and why people today are still so interested in him. I do know one thing, and that's that I've found some great people to help tell
this story. One of them is my friend from Oklahoma, Muskogee Creek and Seminole Sterling Harjoe. I asked him when he first would have known about Ostiola.
I don't remember when I first heard about him. It's early enough that I don't remember I just knew that he was our leader. He's our number one leader that we think of. Even though there were a lot of other leaders, he was the one that was very popular. Ewoch Kelly Haynes's a painter. He painted the painting who was also a former chief. He painted the painting of Oceola stabbing the treaty and I remember that being a
very striking painting that I always remembered growing up. But you know, just sort of this ultimate just some I mean like he died under like a banner of you know, flag of truce, you know, which supposedly outraged people that he was tricked. He's the ultimate sort of he. I mean, he died for me to be alive. I think that that's a part of the fabric of whether that was ever said to me or not. I felt that.
There's a famous moment in Osceola's life when he went to sign Paynes Treaty with the United States government in eighteen thirty two, but rather than signing it, he stabbed a knife into the paper contract. It's interesting because many historians say that this actually didn't happen, but the Seminoles say that it did. And you're in lies the trouble with history. But Sterlin did answer my question. This leader's legacy was built into the everyday lives of the Seminoles.
And I'd like to introduce you to Jake Tiger, a twenty six year old Creek Seminole living in Oklahoma. He's got something to say about history.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of Anglo history is kind of mostly written documentations, and with American Indians ours
is just oral traditions. So that's why there's always a big discussion of yeah, authenticity, what's what's reputable and then what's you know, what's a legit source and so, and some people are actually coming around to that, you know, they're they're starting to understand that these you know, PhD you know, ethnologists, anthropologists there, their stories don't line up with the tribal communities actually have to say stuff that
actually happened. Because we have to remember also at the same time, when whenever these different anthropolgy and different Indian agents of the time, they didn't understand the culture. They're just writing down what they're seeing, and so that's most of its kind of speculation too. So even though as historians we do like to refer back to first hand documentation, and we always kind of take with a grain of salt.
There are many problems when comparing oral history to written documentation, but I think we have to acknowledge that it's a real thing. Let's do it hypothetical. Imagine someone from a far away country, let's just say it's in Asia, who did not speak English, came to your house, went to church with you, watched you eat, marry, discipline your children, and observed your politics, and then they got to be the ultimate authority on your culture and history. How accurate
could that even be? And what if they actively wanted your land and had the power to take it. Could a narrative be crafted that was advantageous to their goals? But at the same time, many observations don't need cultural interpretation. They simply happened or they didn't. And we all know that oral stories have a tendency to change over time, get exaggerated, and can also be crafted into complementary narratives. Most non Indian historians believe Osceola actually didn't stab the
treaty paper, but Sterling saw the painting. Whether it happened or not, it imprinted him with a cultural doctrine. Doctor Wickman has dedicated decades of her career to understanding Ostola. She is not a seminole, nor does she speak for them, but she's undoubtedly a national authority on the known details of his life. She's now going to get as started in understanding the historical context. This story starts with the Muskogee Creek people in Alabama and a figure familiar to bear Grease.
First and foremost, I think we have to look at the collision of the man and the times. I think those two elements are exceedingly important. So my elder son fusses at me. He said to me one time, how come I ask you for the name of that flower and you have to begin by giving me the geology of the hill.
That's perfect. We're going to get along gray.
So that's what I do. But if you understand the setting, if you have the matrix, then nothing is going to seem irrational to you, and you're going to make better sense out of the whole entire story.
All right.
There was the War of eighteen twelve, which touched the southeast. There was to Kumsa and his movement to try to push white people off the continent, and in eighteen eleven, to Kumpsa came down to the Mushkogi or the Mushkogalghi people in the southeast in order to bring them the word of his brother Tinshguatua. Now the Seminoles say that
Tenshquatua means the open door. But he came to a town called Tugibaji, and it was literally right across a creek from the little village of Tarashi, which is the village where Aciola was born. What he was preaching was that white people had no business here and that they were going to destroy the world for the Indians, and they wanted He wanted all the Indians to rise up
against them and push them out. Unfortunately for the Mushkogalghi, the Mushkogi people, there was a white government agent in the lower portion of what we diday called Georgia and Alabama. His name was Benjamin Hawkins, and he was preaching peace. He wanted the Indians to stay calm, to build houses, to become an agrarian society, to assimilate. Unfortunately for him and for the Indians, there was a large number of the ancestors of Osceola who took the talk of Tukumsha.
Talking the talk of Tecumsa meant one thing. War. Tecumsa led a nativist revival, traveling like an evangelist from the Great Lakes to Alabama, preaching with ground shaking conviction that the Indians should not assimilate and should go back to their traditional ways. They should quit wearing white man's clothes, use bows and arrows for hunting, even start making fire in the traditional ways. He garnered a Pan Indian multi tribe confederation that was the largest Indian army to ever
stand against the United States. To this day, he's considered one of the greatest orators in American history. Though there are no recordings of his voice, there are transcripts of speeches, but it was primarily gauged by how he could move people to action. I'd like to remind you that to Come to was a twenty twenty two inductee into the Bear Grease Hall of Fame. It appears Osceola's life was influenced by him. Here's more from Jake Tiger.
Yeah, and I've talked to you A couple of people here in similar nation. They even talk to my Shawnee friends, you know, the importance that to come fifth, his impact had on Muskogee Creeks. He played a pretty big role.
He came to the different towns and it is documented and then they're most likely would have been a young Osceola kind of sitting out there listening to it to come to give kind of delivered his message, and that kind of resonated probably with him, and so it's kind of cool to think about we see those kind of it's kind of like a spiderweb of different stories and
historical aspects. He would never think about until you kind of really fall down a rabbit hole that he might have been present when to come to had come to that troubled town to give his speech.
Tecumsa came to the Alabama Creeks in eighteen eleven, two years before his death. Osciola was likely born in eighteen oh four, so he would have just been a child when Takamsa was there, but undoubtedly his family took the talk of the Nativist revival at a critical time in Osceola's life. Recent human development research has highlighted the years of nine to thirteen as critical years for building lifelong identity, maybe the most important period of a young person's life.
This time period for Ostiola would have been the years seeing his family implement the talk of Tkumson, and we'll see that impact throughout his life. He would rather die than assimilate, and he did. Here's something really interesting from that you might not have seen coming.
So I'm related to Usia Hoola through my mother's side through her father from our Powell family. Because Oscilla's original name, or his English name, I should say, was William Powell. So he had a son that came to Indian Territory after removal, John Powell, and he had some children, and then we all kind of settled in the Holdenville area here in Indian Territory and we've been here ever since.
So we draw that that that direct descendancy from Osceola through William Powell and John Powell and people like Susie May and Sissy Katcha, people like those. That's how we we come from them.
Jake just dropped two interesting things on us, the first being that he's a direct descendant of Ostiola. That is very cool. I've also learned that there is controversy around who Ossiola's descendants actually are, as is often the case and war torn displaced people, record keeping becomes complicated. Some claim that Osciola had no direct descendants, others claim to be them. Secondly, he told us that Osciola's other name was Billy Powell. That is surprising, and we're gonna have
to come back to that. But I want to get back to Jake.
Some people will say his name is Ossi Yoholo or I think that's more of a might be more of a make a sicky way to say it, given the name he is Muskogean because he came from Alabama, and so his true name would be Aussi Yohola, like two words, yeah, yeah, because it's Ossia.
Yeah.
Here, I hear a pause in there.
Yeah, so it's Ussi Yohola.
And then it was anglicized to.
Yep. Yeah, so now it's it's more people will call it Oceola. But his original name is Ussi Yehola, the black drink singer. Yeah, but what with they're referring to the black drink And all the Southeastern people have this this plant, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, muskoge Creeks, u cheese, they all have this plant. But the black drink is from the English term yopon holly, but the Miskogean people we call it osio bokshi. That that's the only caffeinated
plant here in North America. That's only found in the southeastern part of the United States. Some of you can find here in Oklahoma. Indian Territory doesn't grow that well because the climate's here a little too hot for it, it's a little too dry. But that that plant is plays a significant role in our ceremonies.
Here's doctor Wickman with more detail on his name. In this black drink.
The man who brings this to the medicine man at the height of the green corn ceremony has to chant the song of the wolf. The wolf is Yaha. So his wolf's song is Yahola, and he is called Ashen Yahola. And that's why English speakers heard it later on, and they were never allowed to know his baby name. They knew an English name, Billy Powell. But when you go through Gingkorn, you get an honorific title, and that's how you're going to be known from then on. So he
was Ashen Yahola. And when English speakers heard it with their standard penchant for rearranging everything, they heard Ashen Yahola became Ashola, and then it became Osceola.
So he was named by his leadership in that ceremony.
He was named by his position. Don't use the word leadership, Okay, okay.
He was by carry the drink to the medicine man. He was the Yeah.
Think of an acolyte in a Roman Catholic mass who brings up the censor that has the incense in it, or he goes to the priest and he takes in the patents that are going to be given out as community.
Would that name have been common in the seminole, So it would have been.
Not common, but there would be a lot of other people who had gone through their rites of passage.
Who have been called the same thing. Yes, a person's name is always important, especially with the American Indians. This is complicated, but it's now time to understand his genealogy, whose parents were, and why his name was originally Billy Powell.
One of the white men who came among the Indians in the Lower Southeast was a man named James McQueen. And I've tried very hard to fix on him and find out exactly who he is, and I think I know, but the fact is that he was probably a sailor on a British ship who got into an altercation with an officer and struck the officer and realized very quickly that the better part of valor was to get out
of dodge, and he did. But he started moving across the southeast, and he, as the phrase was in those days, he sat down with an Indian woman, all right, and very shortly he became a part of the life of a little village called Talassia.
James McQueen was Osceola slash Billy Pal's great grandfather who sat down with an Indian woman around seventeen sixteen. He was one of the first European traders to the Creeks. These are matriarchal societies, so the children are heavily influenced by their mother. James's son, Peter McQueen, Ossiola's grandfather. Half Indian, half Scottish, but one hundred percent culturally Indian. Are you with me? You awake this? Peter, his grandfather, was one
of the firebrands, heavily influenced by Tecumsa. He had a daughter named Nancy, who had a daughter named Polly, who married another Scottish trader dude named William Powell. They were the parents of Billy Powell, later named Osceola. And folks, this is going to be on a bear grease render quiz see, you better remember it. I have some questions about this though. It would it have been common for a person of European descent to sit with an Indian woman and be grafting into the tribe like this.
Well, it's all situational, because depending on how you march into town, you might be dead before you could get out. If you came in and required things of them that they didn't like, you wouldn't come back. And that's a fact. If you came in the right way, if you wanted to trade, if you were helpful to them, if it looked like you might learn their language and stick around for a while, then there it's a good possibility that they would be kind to you. Yeah, so yes, that happened.
Beside which a lot of these were traders and they wanted the trade. They became addicted, as you can imagine, to iron pots and not having to flake flint arrows and having accouterments that they had never had before mirrors.
So it's tom for some interesting math. So Billy Powell, who would become known as Osceola. He was not. He was like one eighth Indian. Is that correct.
It's surprising, isn't it.
Most historians agree that Osceola was one eighth Muskogee Creek and seven eighths European. And from my limited understanding, most of the tribes except this, and what we're going to learn is that the Muscogee Creeks become the Seminoles. It's interesting when you look at the blood quantum requirements of the tribes today, which it really isn't entirely fair for us to compare today, how they regulate who's in the tribe. It's just interesting. So we're going to talk about that.
But this next section just a little heads up for any young ears in the audience. We are going to use the term sex a couple of times.
The minimum for citizenship in the Seminole tribe of Florida is one quarter all right, one quarter Q. We refer to it quantum blood quantum.
So I'll steel that wouldn't have qualified.
He wouldn't have qualified today, No, not entirely, not solely on the basis of blood quantum. No, he wouldn't well, and yet there was not a person who ever met him, who ever knew him, who knew what he was about, who had the vaguest idea of what he was doing, would have ever called him anything except an Indian. Right, And it doesn't matter, because you're focusing on something that non Indians focus on. And you have to understand what they focus on, because I've seen this before.
They're more focused on the I mean, culturally, he was one hundred percent Indian.
You got it.
I'm getting two thumbs up, you got so. Yeah, So they were less focused on the natural, the physical, which is what our society might.
Look in the first place. Sex wasn't the serious kind of problem for them that it is for white people. They're not as prurient in their interests, and as a consequence, they have a system for pairing people off and for creating husband wife really chips. But the fact of the matter is that if a man came in, if the Mago allowed him to stay, if for any reason he wanted him to stay, he might see to it that
he had a woman, all right. It might be one of the migo's own sisters, or her daughter, or his daughter, and it didn't bother them. What mattered was that it was an Indian woman, because the child would only have a clan if it was his mother, who was an Indian, all right, And it mattered that this child stayed with the tribe. The child was hers. In the Mushkogi world, in the seminole world. If a man and woman separate, he has no right to those children. They're not his children,
they're her children. They stay in her camp with her people.
Okay, I got a question. I'm just I'm dying to ask you. Okay, Daniel Boone, he was adopted into the shop Ease and stayed with them for months, and there was there's very undocumented lore that he had an Indian wife and maybe even Indian children. As I'm hearing your story and I kind of discredit that, I'm kind of like, Nah, he didn't, Sure he did. Do you know much about Boone? Do you think no?
No, But I don't doubt that for a moment.
Just knowing what you know about the way that Yeah, because all the tribes operated.
Yeah, because sex isn't the big thing among them. I mean, it's a natural part of life and that's all there is to it. Okay, they had other more pressing concerns, and they had mother more important social tradition, social morays that required certain things of people, all right, and they weren't the same things that occur in the non Indian world.
Oh boy, that really stresses me out. I cannot hide it. A core component of my worldview. And Biblical doctrine places a high priority on fidelity to one's wife. And Boone met Rebecca at the cherry picking in seventeen fifty three and was married to her for fifty six years, and they stacked up kids like Cordwood. There is zero documentation that Boone took a Shawnee wife. It's just what they say.
So here we are again with no written documentation. And I think it's unfair to assume that Boone would have denied his own cultural value system and been unfaithful to Rebecca. Boone did read the Bible. We know that because his son Nathan Boone wrote about his father's conviction about the Bible. You know what I think now, I'm pretty certain that Osciola did stab that treaty. I don't care if a
white dude wrote it down or not. I hope you're picking up the sarcasm in that comment where I'm crafting the narrative to fit what I want it to be. But moving on, I think it's important to understand the wider community of oola. Here's doctor Wickman with the etymology of the name Muskogee Creek, which is functionally the same tribe, which we'll see is important in understanding who the Seminole tribe would become. This is a building block for our story. And maybe on the quiz.
Do you understand how the word creek came to be. Mushgogie is not a Mushgogi word, And it wasn't the Mushgogi people themselves who called themselves Mushkogi. Their enemies just up the road for them. And what we call the Carolinas were the Chilogate people. And the English didn't say Chilgate, they said Cherokee, all right. It was the Cherokee people who looked down at their enemies in the lower South
and called them the Mushkogi or the Mushkogogy. The people of the swampy ground, the people who traveled in canoes. And if you have as much swamp and as much water as we have in the Southeast, then a canoe makes much more sense than a horse does.
Okay, but what about the name creek.
There were two creeks that came together. One was the Ogeeche and the other was ocone Creeks. And so the traders would write back to Charleston and they would say, we're going out to see the Indians on the Oconee and Ogeechee creeks. And then a few years later they'd get tired of that, and they'd say we're going out to see the Indians on the creeks. And pretty soon
they just said we're going to the creeks. So the word creek was just a shorthand way of talking about the Indians who lived in great numbers in this particular area.
All Right, It's amazing how whittled down and simplified and unconnected that a name can become.
Absolutely and we look at it today, and because you don't know what's behind it, you don't know the trajectory of that of that term, then it's very very easy to ascribe new meanings to it and to change the whole entire history just because you don't have the opportunity to learn.
Now, this is a real digression. Is the phrase lord willing and the Creeks don't rise. Is that connected to the Creek Civil War?
Not that I know of.
Okay, I saw that on the internet and my gut told me that it wasn't true. But here's what's going on with the Muscogee Creeks in Alabama. And remember all this is building a foundation for us to understand Osciola's life, which could ultimately be summarized by resistance to assimilation and fighting for land. And remember Benjamin Hawkins was the Muscogee Creeks US Government Indian agent.
So Benjamin Hawkins was trying to keep the southernmost members of these groups peaceful. He was trying to get them to build houses, to build log cabins, and to become farmers. That did not work out well for most of them. The northern contingent wanted to go to war. And what happened in the midst of the War of eighteen twelve was an Internisne battle that began between there among the Creek people, and it's called the Creek War of eighteen
thirteen fourteen. It didn't help matters that there were among the Indians of the southeast many who went and fought with Andrew Jackson and those who fought against him with the British in the Treaty of Ghent that finally settled the War of eighteen twelve. The British required that one article of that treaty should require the United States government to return all of their lands to the Mushkoge people.
They were to give them back because they'd been terribly dispossessed in the battles and the warfare, and the fires and the death that were concerned with the War of eighteen twelve and the Creek War of eighteen thirteen fourteen. The United States government totally ignored that, totally ignored that, and began to hand out land to two white settlers.
This would not make life simple for Osceola and for his people, and as a consequence of that fact, by eighteen fourteen, his mother and he and probably at least one sister and maybe other sisters, they had already made it to Saint Augustine.
Bear Grease scholars this is critical chronology. Osceola, also known as Billy Powell, was born in eighteen oh four, but was pushed into Florida out of his native Muscogee Creek homeland in Alabama. By Andrew Jackson and the Creek Civil Wars. He arrived in Florida in eighteen fourteen, when he was about ten years old. Please take a moment, pause your listening device and recite those dates. Okay, thanks, welcome back. I'd like to weave in another interesting Bear Grease character.
David Crockett, who, if you remember, fought under Andrew Jackson in the Redstick War in Alabama. This is a gruesome story Crockett recounted in his autobiography when his regiment wiped out the creek village of Toulousahatchie, setting fire to a hut. Watching fifty creeks burn alive, he said, an old woman used her foot on the handle of a bow to shoot one of the Americans. This was the first man
Crockett ever saw die by an arrow wound. After the fire died down, Jackson's starving army ate the potatoes stored under the burned house. Crockett said, and I quote the oil of the Indians we had burned up on the day before had run down on them, and they looked like they had been stewed with fat meat. Crockett never
liked potatoes after that, and he was impacted by the brutality. Later, he would stake his political career against Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act, declaring that his decision would quote not make me ashamed at the day of judgment. This, my friends, is our conflicted American history. I interpret crockett stance on the Indian Removal Act to be a redeeming action in his life, showing his regrets from the Red Stick Wars.
Back to our story. Here is an insightful analogy. An interesting side note on Muskogee Creek life.
I have looked for years for some image that I could use to make sense out of this. For people who don't look at the details, and who don't need to have the details, I'll tell you the only image that I've been able to come up with thus far. Think of a pool table. Think of the balls when they're set up for the break. Think of the minute that the que ball hits those balls, and think of
the way they scatter. Now, think of those tribes all over the Southeastern United States, because that's the way they went. They did not have, at least as far back as we can tell, archaeologically and historically, they did not have any fixed villages. They didn't necessarily have to stay in
one place all their lives. We know, for instance, that if lightning struck a ballpole, and the ballgame was very very important for spiritual and for warfare, for military reasons, if lightning struck a ballpoll, they would pick up, oh, probably the major game, and I use that term advanced.
They had a poll.
Was it was the game. But ballgames were frequently a way of avoiding war, or they were used in place of war, because one village would play another village and people would die in this game. They settled disputes, had they settled disputes, or they claimed territory. And there were individuals who became such important ballplayers that they were a lot like the people in the limelight today, like our
sports stars today. They could travel from village to village in the province where they belonged, and they could be fed, they could be offered a night's lodging, They could be taken care of and treated like real heroes to the people.
Was that unique to the Creeks Muscogee's.
The ballgame occurs in a number of regions. It occurred among the estecs, and death was a part of potential death was a part of their game.
Also. Wow, so it's not I interrupted you that's fascinating, But so if lightning struck one of their ballpoles. You were talking about how they used the land.
They'd move, they'd move, they'd leave the village.
I did not know that they used sports like this, having something similar to like professional ball players moving from village to village. I now want to hear from Sterling Harjoe about his tribe. He's going to tie the Muscogee Creek to the Seminole and wrap this all up for us in a nice little bundle.
Growing up, that's all I knew was, you know, we were Seminol and Creek. Every a lot of people are Seminol and Creek, you know. And I'll interchange creek and Muskoge, you know, or say Muskoge Creek, but you know, the Muscoge Creek was a It was a confederacy of people that had the same spiritual views and customs, and I
just grew up knowing some of the Seminoles. We basically fled assimilation and European contact and was sort of sparked out of a rebellion from the Muskogi Creek Nation, and then we went down into Florida to sort of get further away to come to sort of helped spark that.
Yeah, yeah, his philosophies. And we're skipping ahead a little bit, but you kind of have to understand this now to piece it all together. But today, as I understand it, there are two Seminole nations, one in Florida and one in Oklahoma. We'll learn that some Seminoles never left Florida while others were forcibly removed to Oklahoma.
Muscoge Creeks were dealing with that, and you had Upper Creeks and lower Creeks who are very divided in how they upper Creek towns and lower Creek towns who are very divided, and what they thought culturally we should do with sort of European influence, and you know, the Red Sticks formed out of the Upper Creeks, and there was a rebellion like let's you know, let's fight this and
let's not assimilate. Well the Seminoles, which I'm sure people have told you this, but Cimarron, I've always been told, you know, we don't have ours. In our language. They sound like lah and so the word Seminole comes from Cimarron, which is runaway in Spanish, and so Cimarron became Simichlo, and then that became Seminole. And so we were the wild ones, you know, like we we broke off and went down to Florida to fight and to get away.
I like that, the wild Ones. Here's Jake Tiger summarizing and setting up for us the second part of Osiola's life.
And when his people, his mother's family had left Alabama during the rest of war and had settled into what is now in president Day of Florida. That was essentially because Florida was at that time a Spanish territory. Wasn't you know, the United States territory until eighteen eighteen, And so they're leaving what was essentially United States Alabama and
jumping the border going into the Spanish colonies. Is because the lower Creeks had signed these lands away to the United States, and so that enraged a lot of the traditional Creeks. Yeah, you have a ruthless administrator that's running the nation and he's just going on a whole blood campaign. He wants the Southeastern and American Indians to be annihilated. They want them assimilated, they want to removed, and so that was his whole policy. So you have a young,
young individual, he's a young man now. Elstiola has seen what the ties of war have done to his people countless time with removal and conflict, and so there's a point where he just puts its foot down and takes the reins.
When Ostiola and his family make it to Florida, the story really begins to take shape. I don't try to understand it, but American Indians highly valued medicine people in their culture for many things, including war, and these people were believed to have great supernatural power. This next tidbit of information will set us up for understanding Ostiola's involvement in the Seminole Wars of Florida, which would be a thorn in the side of America that was never removed.
We know that Aziola was studying medicine and he was being taught I one of the quite possibly by the oldest and most important and most honored medicine and people in the entire Southeast. In the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards first out here and they began to find out across the country and create maps. When the explorers were
going through. On one of their maps, they fixed a town that they called Abeca, but it's a bicca, and that word affixed it translated from generation to generation with medicine people who were the descendants of that original medicine person who was so honored and so powerful that the entire village was known by his name. So that when we get down to the time of Asciola, we find that there is a medicine person named Abaepki, and he is the medicine man who was teaching Assiola. So we
know that he had war medicine. It was a source of great pride to him. Fine ego. Nobody has a problem with that.
He did.
But he was an exceedingly intelligent person. He had been raised in an area where he had access to some very fine social and cultural and intellectual affairs that were passing in front of him and around him every day. And he cared about his people, and he took to himself part of the responsibility to be a warrior and to fight for them. Well, there's an old controversy, in another word, an old argument over whether the man makes
the times or the times make the man. In his case, it was a collision of the two, and he was viewed by the American public as a noble warrior, as a man who was fighting for his people, and a man who was treated unjustly at the end of his life and unjustly in a situation which created the end of his life, and as a consequence, he has never been forgotten.
This has set us up well to understand the war years of Osceola's short life. I can't thank all of my guests enough, Sterling, Doctor Wickman, Jake, thank you for sharing what you know about this striking figure in American history. The next episode is going to be even wilder. We'll be having some trivia on the render, so be ready. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease
and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Please share our podcast with a friend this week leave us a review on iTunes. Until next time, keep the wild Places Wild.