That was one of the most surprising things to me that I learned. What was that that enslaved people escaped and were running and assimilated into the Seminole tribes. That no, no, no, will you tell me about it? Thing?
No?
Okay, talk about a big myth, honey, Okay, let me tell you.
In this episode, we're into the war years of the Seminole leader Osceola. This is part two of our series. In the first part we talked about Osiola's childhood, but now we're talking about how him and his people, both in the swamps of Florida, were masters of guerrilla warfare, stretching the American army then for over forty years during the Seminole Wars, as America tried to bribe, trick, kill, and capture the Indians to get them out of Florida.
We're searching for the true legacy of Osceola, an important figure in American history, and I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one.
They also knew because they had been told by their medicine people, and some of those people were called wal It, which means a seer, was that there was an end to Florida and that they would be pushed all the way to that end and they could go no farther because there was nothing beyond there but water. They knew it, and that's what happened, and that's what happened. The good news is they're still here today.
My name is Clay Knukem, 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 there.
Life lives close to the land presented by f HF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.
There's all these stories that we grew up hearing of when we were in battle. Well, first of all, I grew up with this idea that the Seminal Nation was the only we were the only people that didn't get defeated by the US government. And it was the first time that the US government ever had gorilla warfare used against them. These are the stories I heard growing up.
This is Sterling Harjoe. He's a Creek Seminole living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He's a famous filmmaker too. You guys know who he is.
I mean, that's pretty bad when you're growing up as a kid and you're like, oh, yeah, you know, because, like I mean, I grew up just like y'all were not that far apart, and the differences. My grandma was seminal and told stories about babies being killed on the trail of tears, and you know, on the other side
of my family, my grandma's white. But to grow up with that knowledge of like there was people that I'm supposed that I have to stand up every day and salute the flag and say the you know, the pledge of allegiance, which I did proudly, but also knowing that part of your ancestors were in direct defiance of that same flag for survival and to save our culture and to also protect me.
I think it's really interesting when people find themselves living in conflicted places. I think it helps keep us humble when we realize how rare black and white answers actually are, and to put this whole thing into cond text. In eighteen fourteen, the US annex twenty three million acres extending from Georgia to Mississippi, which was Indian land, and it
scattered them like balls on a pool table. Many of the Creeks and some other tribes were pushed into the Spanish territory of Florida, and this assortment of Indians would become the Seminoles, a name derived from the Spanish word cimarron, meaning wild, untamed, or runaways. Sterling's ancestors would walk from Florida to Oklahoma in the wake of Andrew Jackson's eighteen thirty Indian Removal Act.
However, some of his tribe.
In defiance of the United States government, stayed in Florida. Perhaps the biggest gift and curse of living conflicted is the feverish self reflection. It kind of sounds like an internal war. Here's doctor Patricia Wickman getting us up to date on Osceola.
You'd better pay attention.
We know by eighteen eleven Cumpsa had come, as I said, and by eighteen fourteen the world of the Mushkogi people in the lower Southeast was so fragmented because of the Creek War of eighteen thirteen fourteen that people were moving everywhere. There's going to be another war here in Florida, the beginning of a series of three wars here in Florida.
In eighteen seventeen that will occupy essentially the entire first half of the nineteenth century, and they were reported day by day, by night by day in every newspaper across the country. There were reports from the troops, there were reports from the soldiers, and it wasn't until much late, until eighteen thirty five, that Ostiola began to rise to prominence. But in the meantime he was surrounded. He was growing up in warfare. War.
For those of us who've not been to war, assumption of how it affects a human is a mere intellectual exercise, and war on your land, as in the case of Ostiola, is very different than inflicting war on someone else's land. Ostiola would gain national and even global fame in his short life. It's really interesting to me how we pick our heroes. Doctor Wickman is from Tallahassee, Florida, and she's a national expert on Ostiola, having written a heavy hitting
book called Ostiola's Legacy. She was the senior historian for the State of Florida and the former director of Anthropology and Genealogy for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. She has some serious credentials and She's a wonderful and kind woman. When she talks, you listen to understand Osceola, you acknowledge his entire life was dominated by war, which also means death and hiding and running away and fear and disease
and hunger. I bring up this word fear not because we saw this as external evidence in Osceola's life, but it just had to be there. He was a human. Fear of losing land and culture and family, fear of moving. This fear had to have fueled this indomitable resistance that we see in the Seminole people. It made them fight for their lives. As a timeline catch up, Ostiola was
born in Alabama in eighteen oh four. Fled the Creek Wars with his mother and family to Florida in eighteen fourteen, and what was known as the Seminole Wars started in eighteen seventeen and lasted until eighteen fifty eight, over forty years long, like two generations of people. A Spanish philosopher once said only the dead have seen the end of war. Osceola's war would end with his death in eighteen thirty
eight at the age of thirty four. Here's doctor Wickman with a high level overview of the history of Florida that preceded this war. This is very important, folks, and might be on the bear Greece render quiz.
Florida had been Spanish dominated from fifteen sixty five until seventeen sixty three. In seventeen sixty three, the Seven Years War in Europe ended, and as a part of that, the Spaniards had to leave Florida and leave it to the British. So the Second Spanish occupation began in seventeen eighty four, all right, And by this time the American Revolution was was, you know, in not on in progress, but the United States was coming into being, was in
its earliest years. And as a consequence, they knew they were going to need Florida. It had too much coastline, It was too easy for people for other countries to get here. You needed the Atlantic Gulf current. You needed the Gulf, all right. And as a consequence, even for just for military protection, you needed the whole territory of Florida.
The Seminole Wars was America's attempt to de Indian Florida by relocating the tribes to Oklahoma. In eighteen eighteen oh Hickory himself. Andrew Jackson would kick off the First Seminole War by illegally going into what was then Spanish Florida to try to stamp out the Indian problem. In eighteen nineteen, Florida would be given to the United States by Spain. These wars were just battle after battle, too many to talk about. Out of the US pursuing the Seminoles, pushing
them further and further into Florida. Ostiola would have been a teenager during that first war, but likely would have fought in eighteen twenty three. The consensus of history is the Seminoles were bribed and intimidated into signing the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, which seated twenty eight million acres of land and allotted the tribe of four million acre reservation, all sold for the big amount of two hundred and twenty one thousand dollars that went to the Seminoles. That's
not even one cent per acre. So they were trying to put the Seminoles on a reservation even back then, but they wouldn't have it. Later, Andrew Jackson, as President of the United States, passed through Congress the Indian Removal Act, of eighteen thirty, which undid the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. It erased, and the Seminoles sure couldn't take that. Here's doctor Wickman describing the type of warfare that was seen in these Seminole wars.
Every one of these warriors had the right to leave if he thought the war was going badly, if he thought the battle was going badly, because their method of warfare was a to strike at night out during the day, and to do what we would call hit and run. They would throw flaming arrows, they would throw spears, They would wait for the warriors to run out and kill them. They would capture the women, some of the men they captured to take back later on for a torture or
just to kill them later. And as a consequence, the idea of a pitched battle with lines of troops facing each other and firing at each other, and a pitched battle as a part of a larger set piece of a war, it just wasn't within their ken. It wasn't
something that they understood at all. And so all three of those wars are going to be the Indians prosecuting the war in their style, and the white people who are inexorable, and you know that, and there are many of them, as there were fleas on a poor animal. They're going to be prosecuting the war their way. There were more and more and more and more and more and more of them.
The height of the Seminole wars, there might have only been four or five thousand seminoles in Florida, is that correct?
Yes? I think probably at the highest point early in the war there might have been five thousand. So yes. And beside which, they knew these lands. As a matter of fact, they had names for Florida. The each of these speakers called Florida the Ichi bomen the nose of the deer, and the Mushkogi speakers called it egonfushged, which meant the sharp or pointed land.
Wow.
So they had a sense of the shape of Florida.
Yeah, they did.
And they also had I guess it's not really that surprising, but it's interesting, but.
They tunted it. They knew it.
They also knew because they had been told by their medicine people, and some of those meds of people were called wallet, which means a seer, someone who can see the future. One of the things that they told the people in Osceola's day was that there was an end to Florida and that they would be pushed all the way to that end, and they could go no farther because there was nothing beyond there but water. They knew it,
and that's what happened, and that's what happened. The good news is they're still here today.
It's no spoiler, but the end of this story is that the Florida Seminoles never signed a treaty with the United States were in search of Osceola's fingerprint on that resistance. He was not a chief, but rather a war leader who specialized in bad to the bone guerrilla warfare. Even after decades of fighting American Indians, the US still waged
war in these formal European style formations. I want to now read a description of a young Seminole warrior that was written by a guy named Clay McCauley, an early visitor to the Seminole nation. He wrote, Physically, both men and women are remarkable. The men as a rule, attract attention by their height, fullness of symmetry of development, and the regularity and agreeableness of their features in muscular power
and constitutional ability to endure. They excel. I noticed that under a large forehead or deep set, bright black eyes, small but expressive of inquiry and vigilance. The nose is slightly aquiline and sensitively formed.
About the nostrils.
Lips are mobile, sinuous and not very full disclosing when they smile, beautiful regular teeth, and the whole face is expressive of the man's sense of having extraordinary ability to endure and to achieve. We may pronounce the Seminole men handsome and exceptionally powerful. I always find these old descriptions really interesting. Here's doctor Wickman with the summary of things going on in Osceola's early adult life from eighteen eighteen to eighteen thirty five.
That period between eighteen seventeen and eighteen thirty five, which will be the opening the summer of eighteen thirty five,
will be the opening of the Second Seminole War. This is a period when Osceola went through his right of passage into manhood, when he was definitely calling ballgames, When he and his mother and his sisters moved down the peninsula of Florida and possible into what's called the cove of the with Lacuchi the with Lacuchi river makes a bend that's almost like a horseshoe, and the land that's in that horseshoe is called the cove of the with Lacucci and it's where Osciola had his camp during the war,
and it took a long time for the soldiers to figure that out and get in there. It's also undoubtedly a time when he took a partner. As a matter of fact, we know for a fact that you took it these two women at one time, because that was not unusual. Having several sisters or sorrow ratee polygyny it's called, was a standard, particularly in an instance where there were more women than men.
Osciola was described by many in writing. There were no TV cameras, but this period is characterized by detailed written descriptions of people as well as paintings, and the writing would describe their looks but also their demeanor. People were so desperately wanting to know who these people were. The head of the Office of Indian Affairs, Thomas McKinney wrote about Ostiola, saying the mind of Ostiola was active rather than strong.
And his conduct that of a cunning.
And ambitious man who was determined by his own exertions. His habits were active in enterprising, and to quote John Sprague said, he was about five feet eight inches high, with a manly, frank and open countenance. End of quote. Ostiola was rather small in stature. But his most striking characteristic, it seems, was his intelligence, his cunning, but also his ego. He seemed to be quite interested in looking good for some reason. It seems odd that an Indian leader should
have any kind of vanity, but why wouldn't that. They're humans, just like the rest of us. You guys probably remember the Creek seminole Jake Tiger over in Oklahoma. He's twenty six years old and a descendant of Ostiola.
Here's Jake.
So this is where history kind of gets befuddled a little bit. So you only have different historians that referred to Ocil as a chief.
He was never a chief.
They had chiefs at the time, but a lot of them were kind of, how should I say, not as aggressive as him working against removal. And so even though he was not a chief, he was a warrior, but he was a high ranking warrior, so it was kind of like, you know, like a general in the army, and his ideas were more aligned with what the seminar people than some of the chiefs had in mind. You know, his ideologies that had kind of resonated to everybody else
since they followed him. Because his narrative, which was not to be removed from traditional lands we had always been at, and so that was his whole struggle, was resisting removal because he knew that removal meant not only decimated our population, but also would have been a tragedy on our culture as well.
It's difficult to understand Osciola's authority in modern military terms. He wasn't a hereditary chief, but a war leader, given power simply by merit and being able to fight, gather, inspire, and lead men. This isn't the perfect analogy, but I recently described it kind of like Joe Rogan's influence versus an actual elected politician. Rogan has a ton of influence, often more than someone with official power, kind of like Osceola had more power than a lot of hereditary chiefs.
It's basically leadership by merit and charisma, not title.
This was Osceola.
He gained this authority through guerrilla warfare in the swamps, of Florida in the First Seminole War. But by the time the Second War started around eighteen thirty five, he was in his early thirties, hitting his prime.
Here's doctor Whickman.
We've now gone through the First Seminole War of eighteen seventeen eighteen. We've got the burgeoning Second Seminole War that's going to start in eighteen thirty five. All right, But lot going on, a lot going on in an entire the entire nation. What there was of the nation in those days was watching. They were paying attention. Why did Osceola catch their attention? This was a period when the nobility of war was a concept that was still in
common parlance, in common usage. I don't think that most of us living today would put those two words together in a phrase. There's nothing noble about war. Dead is dead. But in those days, you know that in the American Revolution, during the time when the Marquis de Lafayette had French troops here who were aiding the American columnists, he brought with him a brace, a pair of large dogs. The way they've been described to me, I think they sound
like Russian wolfhounds. He used to chew tobacco, and he's with his tobacco on the dogs. And there was one point in one battle when the dogs got away from him and the soldiers. The American soldiers stopped the whole entire battle and had a subalter and captured the dogs and deliver them back to Lafayette. All right, this is the nobility of war, almost like a game, Almost like a game, except that life was cheaper than and people
still died. The American image of the Indians then and now, and I can tell you experiences that proved to me that this is still the image. Most of it has to do with with John Wayne imaging.
All right.
People thought that the Indians were wild, they were free, they rode across the prairies, or they fought like wild people. They didn't have laws and taxes and all these other things, and they had no idea what Indians really were. But the image made them quote unquote noble savages. And that one is repeated over and over and over and over.
Just for the record, the word savages in reference to the American Indian is a no no word, similar to other derogatory terms describing certain ethnicities.
It's common in our movies and our.
Literature, but it's like not something you would say despite the perception. Just like the Americans, Indians were concerned with family security, land legacy. They cried when family members died, celebrated when they were born, struggled with insecurity, fear, and being misunderstood. They had deep rooted culture and laws and morality. There were good Indians, there were bad Indians, just like
every other human. These people were humans. They were separated from the Europeans by this perception of the use of technology and culture, which was really not a real thing. If there is one thing that humans have no excuse for not learning by even by this time, is that all humans have similar motivations and were basic all the same. Around eighteen thirty four is when Osceola's name began to
be talked about in America. Here's Jake Tiger with more details on probably the most famous story about Ostiola, and we briefly discussed it in the last episode. Though the details of this story are disputed, it really doesn't matter. It impacted the nation.
Well, there's all these really great stories that we hear
of Osceola during the Seminal Wars. One that really resonates with all of us, and it really kind of encapsulated the seminal mindset back then, and it still resonates what would most of us today, which is that famous story at the treaty signing of Fort Gibson Treaty where oh Still had walked up to the table and plunged his knife into the treaty and told them this is how I'll sign because he became so en rasia at all these different chiefs that were suing their names alway, so.
There were multip chiefs there and they were signing signing this treaty.
Yeah, yes, And he walks up to that table and it pushed into his belt and then pulls out a knife and insteads of a treaty and looks at all these army officials and tell them that it's it's it's we're going to war now. And there's there's a really good quote by by him that that was said to uh General Clinch and in February of eighteen thirty four.
You know, I always looking back at a quote now, like I said, that's those things that he says, it really resonates with our our mindset of being what the definitional term is as similar similaronies as being free people, and that's what he really encapsulated. And so he says, you have guns, and so have we. You have pattern lead and so have we. You have men, and so have we. You're a man will fight and solo ours to last drop of similar blood has moisten the dust
of his Honting ground. That was said the General Clinch in eighteen thirty four.
Everyone agrees that Ostiola was at that treaty signing and that he had a knife. Doctor Whickman doesn't fully buy that he stabbed it. She notes how a credible eye witness said that Ossiola waved the knife around but never stabbed the paper. However, she did say that the treaty does have a hole in it. That sounds like pretty good evidence to me. You can actually see that handwritten treaty online. It's pretty wild to me that someone with handwriting that bad could be responsible for such a huge
land transfer. Regardless, I'm standing with the Seminoles on this one. Me Sterling and Jake know that Osciola stabbed that treaty. Regardless, it doesn't really matter. This incident got Osciola's name into the American public. Here's the second incident that put him on the radar of the American public, and it involved the basically assassination of a United States Indian agent named Wylie Thompson.
So that one of the opening gambits had to do with a man named Wiley Thompson who was an Indian agent who had been sent down to Florida, and he was stationed his home and office were at Fort King. Fort King is now Okalla, Florida, and Wiley Thompson he had tried to schmooze it's a Yiddish word, but it's perfect here. He had tried to schmooze Asiola in order to get him and his people to give up and
commit to going to the West. And it didn't work, and they got into an argument, and Wilely Thompson, who had a gigantic ego on his own, decided that he had been insulted by Asiola, and he literally had Asciola clapped in irons and put in what passed for a jail, and that was the wrong thing to do to an Indian. And he finally told Osciola that if Asciola would agree, oh, he even gave him gifts. He gave him a silver
mounted rifle. But he finally said to Aziola, if you will promise me that you will agree to go to the West, I'll let you out so that you can go and call in all your people and you can all go together. And Aziola promised him. And I don't think that that promise meant a single thing to him. All that mattered was he was a warrior who was being held as a prisoner against his will and he had no right. Wiley Thompson had no right to do that.
And so Ociola got out and within a couple of months he waited for his moment, and the war council knew this, and the war council let him go and take revenge on Wiley Thompson. And Thompson had dinner one after late one afternoon, and then he went outside around the fort stockade to have a walk and he was killed, and Aciola killed him.
Ostiola wasn't messing around Wiley Thompson was a US Indian agent, not in the military. That's why him like cuffing up Ostiola was so upsetting. It's hard to understand, but there was no centralized Indian government, and people like Thompson would develop relationships with Indian leaders and try to persuade them to lead the people that they influenced.
Out of Florida.
So the Seminoles were this big tribe, but different leaders had different influence over different groups of people in the tribe. Ostola actually had many encounters and personal relationships with the United States military officials too, But we also see that he didn't do any favors to people just because they were Indians. In that same year, eighteen thirty five, the same year he killed Wiley Thompson, Ostiola assassinated Seminole chief Charlie Amathela was planning to move.
His people to Oklahoma.
This guy was an assassin and he was also known in battle to have a unique war cry that distinguished him from other war leaders. Here's Jake Tiger with an interesting story that continues to paint the picture of the time period.
Yeah, because you know, I said Ostiola and to come fifth, and they were They weren't just fighting for fighting because it was fun, because they're fighting for a way of life. These two we were so deeply rooted into their culture. They knew if we were taken away from these lands. It's kind of like they were ahead of their time. They knew what was going to happen afterwards, you know, this different assimilation of policies that were taking place, and
it's already happened to that time period. No, there's you know, there's different people and tribal nations that have already assimilated. Take David Moniac for example, he was the first Indian graduate from West Point who was a Muskogee Creek, and he fought for the US Army and he actually got killed during similar wars in the Battle of Wahoo Swamp. He was supposed to be a big thing for the United States, but his first actual combat, he was the first one
killed on the battlefield fighting against the Seminoles. And so it was all just because you know, those two different cultures are clashing. That's why William Penn was given a two row wamping belt. As those Northeastern American Indians, they told William Penn in the seventeen hundreds, they present the two or wamping belt, saying one person can't write in two canoes. At the same time, he said, you'll go on your path and we'll go on ours. But we
should never intersect. They should never collide. We should always go on our own pass.
This story of this Muskogee Creek Indian graduating from West Point Academy puts this time period into perspective. You could falsely get the idea that the Indians and Americans were just meeting each other for the first time, But this Euro Indian conflict in America had been pulsating for almost three hundred years.
This wasn't a new thing.
I now want to talk to doctor Wickman about one of the most fascinating aspects of the Seminole Wars in Florida, which is how enslaved people escaped into Florida and we're grafted into the Seminole tribes who were staunchly anti slavery, and the Seminoles made this big political statement about being anti slavery. The first book that I read on Ostola stated this is a fact, and so does the Osceola Wikipedia page. But let's see what the doctor has to
say about this. I'm going to learn that you can't believe everything that you read. We're jumping right in mid conversation. That was one of the most surprising things to me that I learned. What was that that enslaved people escaped and were running and assimilated into the Seminole tribes, and that became no, no, no, will you tell me about a thing?
No, okay, talk about a big myth? Honey, Okay, right, let me tell you.
I'm all heirs, Doctor Wigman, please forgive me. Perhaps the narrative is more complex than this little SoundBite that I grabbed off the internet. But how could historians get this so wrong?
Okay?
In this war, the white people who were prosecuting the war, who were trying to push the Indians out, actually were fighting two enemies. They were not only fighting the Indians, they were also fighting black ex slaves who had either been bought by the Seminole people or had escaped from up north anywhere and had run down into Florida. This had been going on while the Spaniards, called the First
Spanish Occupation was in process. And there is even a fort that was allowed them called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa demos Today it's just called Fort mo And they were on the north side of Saint Augustine in a position where they could be there to be part of the defenses of Spanish Saint Augustine. So by the time we get around the period of the Seminole Wars, particularly all the way to eighteen thirty five, when this had
been going on since the late sixteen hundreds. In the early seventeen hundreds in Florida, the blacks knew x slaves knew that Florida was a good place to run to, that it was outside offerrent country.
Well it was until to eighteen well.
Until eighteen nineteen and eighteen twenty one.
So it was a destination if you could get to Florida, if.
You could, and if you could, a lot of them went to the Indians thinking that they would be protected or that they could make common cause with the Indians. What they didn't understand is that the Indians did not see them automatically as friends, all right. But what the Indians did, even though there were some Indians who had actually had enough money to buy.
Slaves, would have been okay in their view of the world. Yes, oh yeah, no problem with that.
Oh no, no, not at all.
As a matter of fact, it becomes a major bone of contention when, as I said earlier, when the American army is trying to buy their cattle and their horses and their pigs and their slaves, all right, in order to push them out. They want to return slaves to their owners, where the slaves obviously don't want to go.
What the Indians did with these groups of blacks who congregated near them was they would give them a field or a piece of property that was near them, and they would let them plant, because these people had learned agriculture right in American settings, and as a consequence, they were more effective at growing foods than the Indians were
because the Indians were still essentially hunter gatherers. So essentially the deal was that the blacks would give a set portion of everything they grew to the Indians in the Indian community, and they were allowed to live there. And when the Indians went to war, there were blacks who wanted to go to war as well, and the Indians, the War Council of the Indians, allowed some of them to have the unit.
So it wasn't as clean cut as oho Enslave people escaped got here and were assimilated in because that's the way. That's the way it was portrayed, and some of the reading I've done well, of course, it was would that myth have been there, like abolitionists would have wanted that myth why would we.
Want to think that it was convenient?
It made them enemies to the US, like these these seminoles, these are bad people. They're they're harbor and our slaves, and.
Our slaves are bad people because they ran away.
Okay, So it was it was an impetus for war. It was it was demonizing in America. We needed to demonize them so we'd have a way to dehumanize them so we could kick them out of there.
That's right, absolutely, that makes sense. Now we are still to this day, and you know that because we are still bigoted to this day, and we are still carrying bigotries that are born out of nothing in the world except guilt and fear. And as a consequence, we're always afraid that the other, the cultural other, is going to do to us what.
We've done to him.
And as a consequence, we think if we let down our guard that it will be too late. We'll be out of power and possibly out of life. It's a very sad situation that we have to use fear as
a way of dealing with other human beings. So in the Second Seminole War, there were units or contingents of blacks who were allowed to fight under their ownly when the Indians fought, when the Indians attacked right, and it was a big bone of contention between the United States government, augmented by the United the power of the United States military and the Indians.
Forgive me for interrupting. No, No Ostiola. Also, I'm trying to think of why this myth persisted and why we liked it so much. The northern abolitionists, it helped them. And I'm on this quest of why Ostiola has lived so long in the American consciousness. If he was harboring slaves and he was adamant that these people be protected, I mean that was for their purposes, very beneficial to make him a hero if he was anti slavery. But you're telling me that he wouldn't have been.
No.
This is really confusing to some Americans. The Seminoles fighting the American army beside black was an anti slavery statement, making Astola an abolitionist hero. But to the Southern States and Andrew Jackson, it was an impetus for war, making him a villain, yet a noble one to be respected. It really seems like people interpret things according to the narrative in their own mind. But according to doctor Wickman, it wasn't that black and white, and it wasn't a
political statement at all. The joining of the blacks in the seminoles was simply two groups of people with the same enemy. It's interesting to me how such a small difference in a narrative can make the meaning so different today. The Wikipedia page on Ostiola says that he was fiercely opposed to slavery, that he even had a black wife, which was a common belief but probably isn't true. However, it really gets confusing because today these groups of blacks
who fought in Florida are called the Black Seminole. This is a complex topic and we have not exhausted it in this conversation, and I don't claim to know the nuances of it completely, but we just got to keep moving. We're continuing to examine why America loved Doceola even in his lifetime, and oddly America like the idea of this rebel fighting against an unbeatable system that's undeniable. Remember, America kind of had done this same thing about fifty years prior,
in seventeen seventy six. Maybe we saw ourselves in this seminole leader here's Sterling Harjoe on Rebels.
Right. No, but I mean also, you know we love book bank robbers.
I mean people that stand against the system.
Yeah, I mean Clyte, Bonny and Clyde. You know, they have captured the I mean, if you watch that movie, it was like one of the most popular movies that came out, Like a Warren Baby driving around Robin Banks.
I mean, yeah, there's.
I'm not saying we should all roll Banks, but I'm just saying, like, as a kid, it's kind of cool to go we thought to get something that was immovable.
Yeah.
Well, and man, that is exactly why Ostiola, even in his life, was nationally famous.
Right.
He was fighting against the United States government, the whole tribe was. He was just the one that the world kind of picked out of that group to highlight. And people loved him. I mean, like Americans, who their country is at war, they were toasting Ostiola, right, toasting Ostiola's life, and it's like, yeah, we kind of love an outlaw.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I mean I think that through history of popular culture, we think of Native people as very different, you know, like not we but like the America thinks of Native people is very different. If I'm to go ask the average guy, and I don't know Idaho.
Actually they might know Nias. But like you know what I'm saying, Like you asked somebody in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. There you go, yeah, and it's.
Like they got no culture up there.
So we're very We're viewed as very different, but we weren't.
We're humans, Pennsylvania.
I am very sorry for that cheap dig It was just too convenient. I actually love Pennsylvania. I have an aunt that lives there. Shout out to Aunt Karen and Uncle Tony. But I think Sterling's point is well taken. Doctor Wickman lived on the Seminole Reservation in Florida for over fifteen years. She thoroughly enjoyed her time there, and I thought this was really interesting. What she's calling BC is the big Cyprus reservation in the Everglades.
The first time I carried photographs, I know I'm getting off the track here and I'm going to get back on. I swear right soon. I would carry photographs out to them. When I moved into Hollywood and James gave me an office up in the Tribal office building, I would carry photographs out to BC, because I knew that this picture was in taken in BC, but I didn't know where, and I didn't know who, all right, And I would say to somebody, do you know who these people are?
They would never begin by telling me the names the people. They would begin by telling me about the trees. They would tell me that tree is right behind what's the water tower now, or that tree was on the property where they built the tribal office building, out here the field office.
Building, and way down the line.
In the discussion, i'd get them to get around to who are the people in this picture?
Surely there's some insight into the way that they viewed kind of the natural world.
Of course, that all of their sense of humor, all of their sense of humor, has to do with the visual world, the geography, the land around them. And if they make jokes that include people, it's usually a story about a man who tripped over a log and nearly shot himself one day hunting, or you know, somebody who fell in a river or something. But it starts out
with the land. It starts out because they live so closely with the land, because they've spent centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries, at.
Least their starting place.
Yeah, it's always, it's always. It's not just their starting place, it's their matrix.
It's where they live.
You believe that's still today?
Oh yeah, really, Oh honey, you better believe it now. I will tell you that it's at its strongest out in BC, because BC is the only res that's not terribly close to a white man's town. But BC is like, it's like the center of traditional life, and than that is getting pushed.
That is interesting. And don't forget that there are today two separate seminole nations, one in Florida and one in Oklahoma. But let's get back to the war. We're building a case for why America loved Alceola, but also why we killed him.
So throughout the war, I said that a lot of the problems had to do with the sickliness of trying to fight in Florida in the summer. In particular, the eighteen thirty five gamuts didn't work, And in eighteen thirty six we're going to see Osceola move to the zenith of his power, and his power isn't going to last very long. This is another interesting thing did the Americans keep thinking that they're going to end this war. It starts in late eighteen thirty five and it goes on
for seven years. Millions of dollars and thousands of troops who come in to prosecute this war, and the Americans never managed to end it. So Osceola is going to have his role and his visibility over about eighteen months, and that's it. That's all he gets. It's highly possible that during the late eighteen thirty six or eighteen thirty early eighteen thirty seven, that he became ill with malaria, because malaria was a problem. Dysentery was a terrible problem
for the white soldiers. There were a number of instances down here when a regiment was so sickly, had so many men on sick call, that they couldn't go out and fight.
You know, because they would have had to have drank the water.
They would have drunk the water, they would have short rations. They were living in the heat, and the bugs with mosquitos, you know, with snakes. And so he's gaining publicity in the papers. Every bad thing that happens, every strike, every Indian and strike, every battle that doesn't go the way it should. Osciola becomes the foil for every story. He's seen here. He's seen at Tampa one day, and the next day he's all the way over it at Fort Millon, at Daytona Beach.
He kind of becomes larger than life to the American people.
He does absolutely when he becomes the real tragic hero, the noble savage. Is when we.
Get to late eighteen thirty.
Seven and Ociola's stance was we're not leaving, yes, I mean that was if you could boil him down to his message during this was.
The whole entire fight. This is what this man's life was all about. This is our land, This is where our mothers gave birth to us. This is where our we would say umbilical cords are buried. This is where we are, This is who we are, and no white men are going to push us out. There's an incredible instance in the middle of the war where he actually went into a camp to have a parley with General Harney and wound up spending the night in General Harney's tent as his guest.
Yeah.
That was a different time of war, wasn't it. There was some very very DearS were.
Well the whole entire point, as I discerned it is that the Whites were absolutely positive that somehow they could convince the Indians to just quit this fighting and go to the west, get out of our way. You'll be safer if you leave this land to us. And at one point they even sent a party, a delegation all the way out to Oklahoma to look at the land that was being offered to them, and they signed a treaty of capitulation out there, this delegation that was sent
out there. What they didn't know was the delegation that was sent out there had no right to make that decision for everybody else. It wasn't up to them to sign about whether the whole tribe would go or not. It just wasn't their business. So the Indians said, no, we didn't sign it, We're not going.
I think this goes back to the way that a Western mindset would have thought about land. Oh, of course it doesn't. And the way that the Seminoles all Indian people would have thought about land would be vastly different. All these people had been on this continent for maybe a generation, you know, maybe two. They viewed the land from like a utilitarian standpoint like, Oh, if there's better land over here, you'd go there. You'd take the best land you could.
You're headed in the right direction, and I will give you points, Clay, you have understood some things. You're headed in the right direction. In the case of land, they did not believe in the land ownership. They believed that the great spirit, the giver of breath dischag Michit, had put them on this land to take care of it, to use it, to get the good out of it.
But they didn't believe in owning it. Whereas the white people were ownership first, the Indians believed that they just used the land, and they had to use it wisely.
They couldn't, They couldn't.
Just would that have endeared again? Ossiolas his mantra was, we're not leaving. We can't go somewhere else.
What else did he have? What else did he have? Wickman's first car Larry to Murphy's law is everything in life is just a matter of alternatives. If you live in the land, if your whole entire world is based in those woods, if your mother lived there, and your plan lives there, and your ancestors died and their blood is in that land. Then you are a part of that land. You're attached to that land. It's more than
your home, you know, it's like your mother. You're not going to give that up and walk away from it. And the white people never understood that if they cared, and the bottom line is that didn't really care.
In our to Comess series, we talked about.
How many American Indian origin stories, basically their religions were often site specific and connected to geography. They were tied to specific pieces of land, mountains, rivers, and if you remove them, its stripped away that power and their identity. Europeans did not have this kind of connection with the land. Now we're going to move forward and head into Ostiola's downfall and the nature of his relationship with the American military.
We're up to eighteen thirty seven. Asceola wanted to talk with General Jessop, who was in charge of troops east of the east of the Swanee River. General Jessop arranged with General Ernandez, who lived in Saint Augustine, whose ancestors are still there today. I know them, that they were
going to meet. There was going to be a parley at Fort Payton, and Jessop sent out a piece of cloth that the piece of white cloth that the Indians could tear up into pieces, and they were told to make flags out of these and to come in with these flags as a sign that they were coming in for the parlay, they were not coming to make war. And so in late October eighteen thirty seven, Aziola went in and he knew that they were never going to let him come out again. He knew this, and.
He would have met with these leaders. It might it's a little confusing to me. Oh, he would have met with these leaders before and had meetings with them and left and so like in today's warfare tactics, it would be like if you had a guy that was enemy number one, terrorists number one, and like he wouldn't come meet with the President of the United States face to face and talk and then go back to those people. But this was a time of the Ay, different time of military.
Oh yeah, And they've been all over Florida together, they'd crossed paths.
In these Florida one.
This wasn't unusual for Osceola to go meet with the general of the US military.
Beside which the Americans were using war as a last resort. But they resorted to it rather quickly, all right. The Indians just didn't want to go, and they kept believing that if they showed the white people how strong they were, if they had a good battle, a good attack, if they could fight fast, they could convince the white people that they deserved to stay there, that this was their land, and they could go in and talk, they could parley, and that they.
Would be allowed to live here. Jessop was furious.
Jessop was absolutely furious at Osiola because Aziola had said to him on several occasions that he would turn himself in, that he would bring his people. Yes, yes, let me go out and gather my people and we'll all go over to Fortbrook and we'll await transport to the west. Well, no, he never did, and he wasn't going to. And if Jessop had an ounce of sense in his head or cared enough about the Indians to know who he was talking to, he never would have believed that to begin with.
But Jessop finally said that he was sick and tired of this and that he was absolutely not going to talk any more. And Osceola is sad, he is ill, he's been sick and he knew that if he was in the clutches of the white men, that he had done quote unquote some bad things to them and they would never let him out. But they had already arranged.
General Hernandez gave a signal, and I understand from his family that the signal was that he lifted his hat, and when he did, the soldiers moved around the Indians and captured them.
And this was like a what we would call like a war crime today, like this was out of bounds.
Is that right?
It was considered the fact that they were being captured under a white flag of truce meant that they were quote unquote violating a flag of truth. This was not something that an honorable soldier did.
But they at this time, it's so deep into these wars, the United States military is just like, we're laying everything aside. We just got to get this guy, Jessop.
It's Jessup.
It's not just the whole United States government, it's Jessup. And let me tell you that Jessup is going to pay for it for the rest of his natural life.
Because America didn't like that they cheated Osiola.
Despised him nationally.
So he this question. This word goes back.
They report that Jessup, under a white flag of troops captured Osciola Ossiola. Is this hero in America already.
The noble savage who has been seduced into coming in under a white flag of truth, and he has been captured in an absence.
Resolutely dishonorable by dishonorable Americans. Didn't like that.
The Americans despised it. Fifty years later, Jessop was still answering in the newspaper to articles that were being written about him.
In late October eighteen thirty seven, the great Seminole War leader, who had only known war his entire life, was captured, and he would only survive three more months. After almost twenty years since the beginning of the Seminole War, in eighteen thirty six, the first Seminoles were moved to Oklahoma, and by eighteen thirty nine most of the tribe had
been relocated to Oklahoma. An eighteen forty two census stated that three thousand, six hundred and twelve Seminoles lived in Oklahoma, in less than five hundred remained in Florida, and they never left. On the next episode, we'll learn about the bizarre circumstances of Ossiola's death, including how he lost his head in the nineteen sixty seven exhuming of his grave. It's gonna get really wild. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life podcast.
We're putting our heart and soul into this and you guys listening and sharing this podcast means the world to old.
Brent and I.
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