Bear Grease - Ep. 265: Osceola - War and the Warrior

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

On this episode of Bear Grease, we continue our deep dive into the life of Osceola. We enter into the wartime years that continue to shape who he was and the future of the Seminole people. Dr. Patricia Wickman describes the surrounding events, reason for national popularity, and debunks some internet myths. Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo talks about what it means to be part of the “Unconquered People” and the internal conflict.  Osceola descent, Jake Tiger, explains the role of Osceola, not as a chief, but as an influential warrior and war leader. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. That was one of the most surprising things to me that I learned. What? Was that the enslaved people escaped and were running and assimilated into the Seminole tribes? No.

No. No? Will you tell me about it then? No. Okay. Talk about a big myth, honey. Okay. All right.

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 Osceola'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 thin for over 40 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 medicine people were called wallet, 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.

happened. And that's what happened. The good news is they're still here today. My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Greece 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 live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's 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 Seminole Nation was the only. We were the only people that didn't get defeated by the U.S. government.

And it was the first time that the U.S. government ever had guerrilla warfare used against them. These are the stories I heard growing up. This is Sterling Harjo. 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 ass 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 difference is 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 was white. And 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 context, in 1814, the U.S. annexed 23 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 Semeron, meaning wild, untamed, or runaways. Sterling's ancestors would walk from Florida to Oklahoma in the wake of Andrew Jackson's 1830 Indian Removal Act. However, some of his tribe, in defiance of the United States,

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 Dr. Patricia Wickman getting us up to date on Osceola. You better pay attention. We know by 1811, Tacumse had come, as I said, and by 1814, the world of the Mushuggi people in the Lower Southeast was so fragmented because of the Creek War of 1813, 14, 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 1817, that will occupy essentially the entire first half of the 19th 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 later until 1835 that Osceola 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 Osceola, is very different than inflicting war on someone else's land. Osceola would gain national and even global fame in his short life. It's really interesting to me how we pick our heroes. Dr. Wickman is from Tallahassee, Florida, and she's a national expert on Osceola. having written a heavy-hitting book called Osceola'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.

But 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, Osceola was born in Alabama in 1804, fled the Creek Wars with his mother and family to Florida in 1814, and what was known as the Seminole Wars started in 1817 and lasted until 1858, over 40 years long, like two generations of people. A Spanish philosopher once said, only the dead have been. have seen the end of war. Osceola's war would end with his death in 1838 at the age of 34. Here's Dr. 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 1565 until 1763. In 1763, the seven-year's 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 1784, all right, and by this time, the American Revolution was, you know, not only 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 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 1818, O'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 1819, Florida would be given to the United States by Spain. These wars were just battle after battle. Too many to talk about of the U.S. pursuing the Seminoles, pushing them further and further into Florida. Osceola would have been a teenager during that first war, but likely would have fought. In 1823, the consensus of history is the Seminoles were bribed and intimidated into signing the Treaty of Maltry Creek, which ceded 28 million acres of land and allotted the tribe of 4 million acre reservation,

all sold for the big amount of $221,000. 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 1830, which undid the Treaty of Moultry Creek.

It erased the reservation, and the Seminole's sure couldn't take that. Here's Dr. 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, not 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 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. And 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 Ichidi speakers called Florida the Ichibomik, the nose of the deer. And the Muskogee speakers called it Igonfosgit, which meant the sharp or pointed land. Wow. So they had a sense of

of the shape of Florida. Yeah, they did. And they also had... I guess it's not really that's surprising, but it's interesting. But they'd hunted it. They knew it. They also knew because they had been told by their medicine people, and some of those methods of people were called WALET,

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. We're 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 U.S. 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 notice that under a large forehead are 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 seminal men handsome and exceptionally powerful. I always find these old descriptions really interesting. Here's Dr. Wickman with the summary of things going to. on in Osceola's early adult life from 1818 to 1835. That period between 1817 and 1835, which will be the opening, the summer of 1835, will be the opening of the Second Seminole War. This is a period when Osceola went through his rite of passage into manhood, when he was

definitely calling ball games, when he and his mother and his sisters moved down the Peninsula, Florida, and possibly into what's called the cove of the Withalacucci. The Withlacucci River makes a bend that's almost like a horseshoe, and the land that's in that horseshoe is called the Cove of the Withlacucci, and it's where Asiola 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 he took it to two women at one time. Because that was not unusual.

Having several sisters or sororate polygyny, it's called, was a standard, particularly in an instance where there were more women than men. Osceola was described by many in writing. There were no TV cameras, but this person was. The 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 Osceola, saying, The mind of Osceola 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 and enterprising. End of quote. John Sprague said he was about five feet, eight inches high with a manly, frank, and open countenance. End of quote. Osceola 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. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut.

I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did. and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. You guys probably remember the Creek Seminole Jake Tiger over in Oklahoma. He's 26 years old and a descendant of Osceola. Here's Jake.

So this is where history kind of gets befuddled a little bit. So you only have different historical. friends that referred to Ocel 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 similar people than some of the chiefs had had in mind. You know, his ideologies that had kind of resonated with everybody else. And so they followed him.

because his narrative, which was not to be removed from traditional lands that 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 Osceola'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 1835, he was in his early 30s, hitting his prime. Here's Dr. Wickman.

We've now gone through the first Seminole War of 1817-18. we've got the burgeoning second seminal war that's going to start in 1835. A lot going on. A lot going on. 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 and 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 columns. 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 split 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 subaltern capture the dogs and delivered 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 then. And people still died. The American image of the Indians then and now,

and I can tell you experiences that prove to me that this is still the image, most of it has to do 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, 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 even by this time, is that all humans have similar motivations, and we're basically all the same.

Around 1834 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 Osceola, 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. But there's all these really great stories that we hear of Osceola during the Seminole wars. One that that really resonates with all of us. And it really kind of encapsulate the seminal mindset back then.

And it still resonates with most of us today, which is that famous story at the treaty signing of Fort Gibson Treaty, where Oslo 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 enraged at all these different chiefs that were signing their names away. So there were multiple chiefs there and they were signing this treaty. Yeah, so he walks up to that table and he reaches into his belt and then pulls out a knife and stabs a treaty and looks at all these army officials and tell them that it's, it's, we're going to war now. And there's a really good quote by, uh, by him that that was said to a general clinch and in February of 1834.

I always look back of the quote. And like I said, those things that he says, it really resonates with our mindset of being what the definitional term is, as seminal, Semaroni, is 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 so will ours.

to the last drop of the similar blood has moistened the dust of his hunting ground. That was said to General Plinch in 1834. Everyone agrees that Osceola was at that treaty signing and that he had a knife. Dr. Wickman doesn't fully buy that he stabbed it. She notes how a credible eyewitness said that Osceola 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 Osceola stabbed that treaty. Regardless, it doesn't really matter. This incident got Osceola's name into the American public. Here's a 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 Wiley 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 Ocala, Florida. And Wiley Thompson, he had tried to, to schmooze. It's a Yiddish word, but it's perfect here. He had tried to schmooze Oziola 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 Wiley Thompson, who had a gigantic ego all his own, decided that he had been insulted by Osceola, and he literally had Asiola 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 Osceola that if Asiola would agree, oh, he even gave him gifts, he gave him a silver-mounted rifle. But he finally said to Asiola, 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 Osceola 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 Osceola got out and within a couple of months he waited for his moment and the war council knew this, the war council let him go and take revenge on Wiley Thompson. And Thompson had dinner late one afternoon, and then he went outside around the Fort Stoccade to have a walk, and he was killed. And Osceola killed him.

Osceola wasn't messing around. Wiley Thompson was a U.S. Indian agent, not in the military. That's why him, like, cuffing up, Osceola 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. Osceola 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, 1835, the same year he killed Wiley Thompson, Osceola assassinated Seminole chief Charlie Amathola, who 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, like I said, Osceola and Tukumfith, they were, they weren't just

fighting for fighting because it was fun because they're fighting for a way of life. These two 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, there's different assimilation policies that were taking place. And it's already happened in that time period. You know, there's different people in tribal nations that have already assimilated.

Take David Moneack, for example, he was the first Indian graduate from West Point, who was in Muskogee Creek. And he fought for the U.S. Army. And he actually got killed during the Seminole 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 two-row-wampum-belt is those northeastern American Indians, they told William Penn in the 1700s, they present the two-row wampum-belt saying one person can't ride in two canoes at the same time.

You 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 path. 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 300 years. This wasn't a new thing. I now want to talk to Dr. Wickman about one of the most fascinating aspects of the Seminole War.

in Florida, which is how enslaved people escaped into Florida and were 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 Osceola stated this as 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 the enslaved people escaped and were running and assimilated into the Seminole tribes? No. No. No? Will you tell me about it then? No. Okay. Talk about a big myth, honey.

Okay. All right. Let me tell you. I'm all ears, Dr. Wickman. 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, while the first Spanish occupation was in process. And there is even a fort that was allowed them called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. Today it's just called Fort Mose.

And they were on the north side of St. Augustine in a position where they could be there to be part of the defenses of Spanish St. Augustine. So by the time we get around the period of the Seminole Wars, particularly all the way to 1835, when this had been going on since the late 1600s and the early 1700s in Florida, the blacks knew, ex-slaves knew, that Florida was a good place to run to.

That it was outside. It was a different country. Well, it was. Until 18. Well, until 1819 and 1821. Right, right. 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. And that would have been okay in their view of the world at that time.

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, or 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, all 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 enslaved people escaped, got here, and were assimilated in. Because that's the way it was portrayed in 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 U.S., like these Seminoles.

These are bad people. They're harboring our slaves. And our slaves are bad people because they ran away. Okay. So it was an impetus for war. 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. Okay. 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 own leaders when the Indians fought, when the Indians attacked. All right? And it was a big bone of contention between the United States government, augmented by the power

of the United States military and the Indians. Forgive me for interrupting me. No, no. Osceola also, I'm trying to think of why this myth persisted and why we liked it so much. The northern abolitionist, it helped them, and I'm on this quest of why Osceola. Osceola 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, he wouldn't have been. This is really confusing. To some Americans, the Seminoles fighting the American army beside blacks was an anti-slavery statement, making Osceola 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

Dr. Wickman, it wasn't that black and white, and it wasn't a political statement at all. The Joining of the blacks and 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 Osceola 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 seminoles. 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.

On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag, and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper,

from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're continuing to examine why America loved Osceola 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 50 years prior in 1776. Maybe we saw ourselves in this seminal leader. Here's Sterling Harjo on rebels. Right. No, but I mean, also, you know, we love bank robbers. People that stand against the system. Yeah. I mean, that's why. Bonnie and Clyde, you know, they have captured the, I mean, if you watch that movie,

it was like one of the most popular movies when it came out. Like, Warren Beatty driving around robbing banks. I mean, 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 fought against something that was immovable. Yeah. Well, and man, that is exactly why awesome. Osceola, even in his life, was nationally famous.

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 Osceola. Right. Toastened Osceola'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 is 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 in, I don't know, Idaho. Actually, they might know natives. But like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you ask somebody in Missouri, 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. Dr. Wickman lived on the Seminole reservation in Florida for over 15 years. She thoroughly enjoyed her time there, and I thought this was really interesting. What she's calling BC is, 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 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 of 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. 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. It's 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. Do 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 even that is getting pushed. That is interesting. And don't forget that there are today two separate Seminole nations, one in four, Florida and won in Oklahoma. But let's get back to the war.

We're building a case for why America loved Osceola, 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 1835 gamuts didn't work. And in 1836, 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. The Americans keep thinking that they're going to end this war. It starts in late 1835, 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 for over about 18 months. and that's it. That's all he gets. It's highly possible that during the late 1836 or 1830, early 1837, that he became ill with malaria because malaria was a problem. Dysentary 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. 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 mosquitoes, you know, with snakes. And so he's gaining publicity in the papers. Every bad thing that happens, every strike, every Indian strike, every battle that doesn't go the way it should, Osceola 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 Mellon, 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 1837. And Osceola'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.

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? Very, very different. Valor that these two leaders were...

Well, the whole entire point, as I discern 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 does. And the way that the Seminoles or 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 for, 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 land ownership. They believed that the great spirit, the giver of breath, Dishagadamish, 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. Right. 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 just. How would that have endeared, again, Osceola's mantra was, we're not leaving.

We can't go somewhere else and be who we are. What else did he have? Whitman's first corollary 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 clan 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. No, 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 they didn't really care. In our Tecumse's 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, it 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 Osceola's downfall and the nature of his relationship with the American military. We're up to 1837. Osceola wanted to talk with General Jessup, who was in charge of troops east of the east of the Swanee River. General Jessup arranged with General Hernandez, who lived in St. 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 Peyton.

And Jessup 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 parley. They were not coming to make war. And so in late October, 1837, Asiola 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's a little confusing to me. 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, terrorist 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 his people. But this was a time of way different time of military. Oh, yeah. And they've been all over Florida together. They'd cross paths in these Florida woods.

So this wasn't unusual for Osceola to go meet with the general of the U.S. military. beside which the Americans were using war as a last resort, but they resorted to it rather quickly. 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 deserve to stay there, that this was their land, and they could go in and talk, they could parlay, and that they would be allowed to, to live here. Jessup was furious. Jessop was absolutely furious at Osceola because Osceola 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 Fort Brook 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 Jessup finally said that he was sick and tired of this and that he was absolutely not going to talk anymore. And Asiola 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 truth 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. Jessup, it's Jessup. It's not just the whole United States guy. 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 Osceola?

Despised him. Nationally. So he, this goes, this word goes back. They report that Jessup under a white flag of troop captured Osceola. Osceola is this hero in America already. The noble savage who has been seduced into coming in under a white flag of truce, and he has been captured in an absolutely dishonorable way. Dishonorable way. And Americans didn't like that. The Americans despised it. 50 years later, Jessup was still answering in the newspaper to articles that were being written about him.

In late October 1837, 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 20 years since the beginning of the Seminole War, in 1836, the first Seminoles were moved to Oklahoma, and by 1839, most of the tribe had been relocated to Oklahoma. In 1842, census stated that 3,612 Seminoles lived in Oklahoma and less than 500 remained in Florida. And they never left.

On the next episode, we'll learn about the bizarre circumstances of Osceola's death, including how he lost his head, in the 1967 exhuming of his grave. It's going to 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 now. Please leave us a review on iTunes and share our podcast with a friend this week. You know, you can watch the Bear Gries Render on Meat Eaters' new podcast channel on YouTube.

Until the next time, keep the wild places wild. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.