Bear Grease - Ep. 270: Death of a Seminole War Leader

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

The details surrounding the imprisonment and death of Seminole War leader, Osceola, are so unusual that you may find yourself saying, "I didn't see that coming." Listen along as author and historian Dr. Patricia Wickman talks with host Clay Newcomb and elaborates on how his death was just the beginning of a story shrouded in mystery. 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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. Do you think Dr. Wickman that you have spent more time looking for his head than anyone in history? I would be willing to bet you that's the case. You did it like a pro. This is not a hobby.

Oh, no. In this episode, we're talking about the tragic death of the Seminole war leader Osceola and the bizarre and gruesome treatment of his. corpse after his death. Dr. Patricia Wickman will masterfully tell the story and the details of her personal search for Osceola's

head. Our first episode in this series was about Osceola's childhood. The second one was about his years in the Seminole wars, and this one is about his death, though he still lives vividly in the American consciousness.

And that's really what I'm interested in trying to understand. Why? Why are we still talking about this guy? And for the record, I do not take lightly talking about a man's death, no matter how long ago it was. My intent is not to sensationalize this story, but rather just understand it the best I can. And to learn about Osceola and really maybe learn something about ourselves, I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. from there most of the people and there were 237 Indians who had been gathered at St. Augustine, from there they were to be taken straight to Indian territory in the West.

They would be put on ships. But Osceola would never leave Fort Moultrie. My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Greece podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in 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. The Seminole War roared from 1817 to 1858. That's over 40 years. The U.S. government was trying to remove all individuals.

from the newly acquired Florida Territory. This would be America's most expensive Indian War, costing over $50 million, with over 2,000 American soldiers losing their lives. And remember, at the start, there were only 4,000 to 5,000 Seminoles in Florida. By 1839, more than half of them had been relocated to Oklahoma. So, at most, a couple thousand people saved off the U.S. Army,

for almost two decades. That's some serious resistance. And to jump into our story about Osceola, we will start now in late October 1837, and Osceola has been captured dishonorably under a flag of truce near Fort Payton, seven miles south of St. Augustine, Florida, by U.S. military general Thomas Jessup,

who'd pay for the mistake of, treacherously capture an Osceola the way he did, with the scrutiny and ire of the American public, who Phariseeically rooted for the Seminole leader in this David versus Goliath battle against the United States. Osceola was the face of the resistance, a cunning military strategist and assassin, known as a master of guerrilla warfare in the swamps. To fail meant certain death or being exiled to Indian territory in Oklahoma over a thousand miles to the west. The year prior in 1836, the first Seminoles were forcibly removed from Florida to Oklahoma under the legislative power of Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830,

which erased all the previous treaties and erased the reservation that they had made for the Seminoles in Florida. The world of all the tribes in the east was crumbling. Dr. Patricia Wickman of Tallahassee, Florida, will now catch us up right after the capture of Osceola. You guys remember, but she was the state historian of Florida. She lived and worked on a Seminole reservation in Florida for many years, though she is not a Seminole. She loves them dearly and is an expert on their recorded history. I can't say enough about this lady. Here we go.

We're seven miles south of St. Augustine at a tiny little stockade called Fort Payton. And now they're prisoners. The Indians are prisoners. And they're being marched all seven miles up to St. Augustine to be put inside the Castillo, Fort Marion, in St. Augustine. And while they are there, they're going to be held there. This is late, almost the end of October. They're going to be held there in November and in December. And while they're there, several things happen.

There is a post-surgeon who's attached to the Army, and he's a local doctor. And his name is Frederick Whedon. And Frederick Whedon gets to know Aseola. I certainly couldn't say they become friends, but they become friendly. All right. And Dr. Weeden and his wife, Mary Weeden, go over to the fort frequently and take gifts of food to Osceola. Dr. Frederick Whedon is the name that you'll remember, because I promise you he's going to be living rent-free in your head. His father fought in the American Revolution, and Dr. Whedon himself fought in the War of 1812.

He became a contract surgeon for the U.S. military after his time as an enlisted man. Later, we'll discuss if he was a man of science or a villain. In the meantime, the Indians are in very sad circumstances. There are people from the town who are going in to see them. They want to see the Indians. Unfortunately, they begin to have problems with measles, and it kills both 13, 14 people. Osceola does not get it.

He doesn't seem to be bothered by measles. But I'm going to find out later on that he is bothered by, one other thing, which is a very serious problem, and that is lice. All right. And lice, I have learned, do not occur if you're living in the open in the wild. They occur when you're in close, confined quarters with other unsanitary people in unsanitary conditions as a prisoner inside a fort. And so, Asiola knows that he's defeated, and he does not want to go to the West, and he says

several times that he knows that Charlie Amatala's people are already out there. They've already been sent to the West, and they'll have the right to take revenge on him. This is the seminal that he killed. Yes, absolutely. For wanting to go out there. To emigrate, right. And that's the trajectory. Like when he gets captured, the trajectory is Oklahoma.

Oh, yes, absolutely. Conditions in the Florida prison in 1837 were rough. Osceola feared the retribution of members of his own tribe. He'd killed a seminal leader because that guy had planned to go and take some people to Oklahoma. He was burning bridges, Osceola was. He didn't have a backup plan. And he had no plans to go to Oklahoma. So he knows that there are people who are talking about escaping.

And indeed, while they are there, there is an escape. and the soldiers themselves report that people from the among the Indians had been allowed to go outside the fort for four days in order to gather medicines or to gather plants, that they're very specific plants that these Indians are going after. And the plants are what they needed to make medicine. Because there is a story that circulated among the Indians that they told that they made medicine inside the fort. and they watched the ants, and the ants were curling in and out through a crack in a wall that was 13 feet thick at the base. And they made themselves, with this medicine, they made themselves small enough to go out through the crack in the wall. Another story that they tell is that they made medicine to make the water standing in puddles in the quadrangle rise up as steam,

and it made it impossible for the soldiers who were guarding the sally port to see them, and they just literally marched right by them and right out the sally port. I'm fascinated by stories of supernatural activity. I'm not suggesting that I believe the Indians shrunk to the size of ants and crawled through the crack in the wall, or that they had power over the fog. But I can't say for sure that they didn't. You know, there's a supernatural prison break story.

story in the Bible where an earthquake shook loose the doors of the prison where Paul was staying. As I understand it, belief in the supernatural is the key to unlocking any potential of its power. Point being, your bias will be confirmed. If you believe in the supernatural, there's a high probability that you'll see it. If you don't, there's a high probability that you never will. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of humanity that has lived on planet Earth has had a more robust interaction with the spirit world than today's average American. For me to think that I fully understand all the power structures and laws of the universe

with my eyes and my rational thought is absurd. Science has a lot of great answers. I am a man of science. But science does not answer all the questions that we, have. But sometimes supernatural acts play out before us inside the predictable laws of physics. Now, my personal feeling, after I've read all of this, I read the U.S. Army report on this military report, my feeling is that the soldiers who were on guard duty that night, and there really should have been only two or three, I believe that those.

soldiers were either drunk or asleep or they were partisans who felt sorry for the Indians and I think they let them walk out. Captain Pitcairn Morrison was in charge of the Guard of the Indians at the fort and he made a decision that in order to put them in a more healthy place he said more healthy place and in order to put them someplace where it would be harder for them to escape he determined and and got permission to take them from St. Augustine, Florida, to Charleston. And Charleston Harbor has Fort Moultrie sitting out in the harbor. And as a consequence, they set out on the steamer point set.

And on January 1, 1838, they hit land at Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor. From there, most of the people, and there were 237 Indians who had been gathered at St. Augustine, from there, they were to be taken straight to Indian territory in the West. They would be put on ships. But Osceola would never leave Fort Mouc Tree. Osceola and the other 236 Seminoles settled into prison life in South Carolina, while waiting to be shipped to Oklahoma. The next story is one of the most bizarre things that you'll hear in this series.

When I read it, I reread it to confirm what I thought that I understood. It has to do with what the generals at Fort Moultrie allowed the prisoners to do while incarcerated. There was a play while the Indians were held prisoners in Fort Moultrie in 1838. they were taken one night to the Dock Street Theater to watch a play. And there was a big deal made out of that. And the whole town turned out. A lot of the town turned out. It didn't sound like normal prison, does it?

No. Or incarceration. Oh, no. They took them to a play in downtown Charleston. That's right. So Osceola went to a play. Everybody wanted to see them. I think it was January 6th.

I read it just today. January 6, 1838. 1838. That's absolutely right. Weeks before he died. I went to. New York, to the theater arts archive at Lincoln Center in New York, and found a copy of the play. The honeymoon, I believe, was called.

The honeymoon. They wouldn't allow me to copy it, but I sat there and copied the whole thing out, the whole play out. All right. And I found a theater company in Charleston that was willing to put on the play, to do a reading of it for us. And I took the Indians, the Seminoles, to the Dock Street Theater, and we had a reading of the honeymoon. Wow. That's interesting. A florist.

They're very close to Fort Moultrie. Sent over buckets of white carnations for the Seminoles as a gift to them, which I thought was a very sweet thing to do. That is hard to understand. It's said that the people in the audience gave. Osceola a standing ovation when he walked into the play. Isn't that wild? And hey, I've told you before that Dr. Patricia Wickman is next level when it comes to her devotion and expertise to her area of focus. But I gotta say, I have never met anyone with any more passion, knowledge, and the ability to articulate her area of study more than her.

Here is another interesting thing that happened while I'm going to be able to articulate her. Osceola was in prison. 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, 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 know something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. He became sicker.

And at the same time, he was besieged by artists who wanted to take his likeness. The U.S. government contracted with George Catlin, who was the famous Indian painter. Very famous. and sent him down to Fort Moultrie, and Robert John Curtis, who was a Charleston artist, were the two that I'm sure of who were there. And they set up in one of the casemates at either end of the room, and Osceola was between them, and he dressed himself properly. He dressed as a full warrior with all his regalia.

And he had some effectations that were different. than all the other Indians. For instance, the black and white ostrich plumes that he wore in his turban. Everybody else wore one or two on the front. He wore four or five on the back. He had a silver concho. He had a silver pen. He had a silver mirror, a silver looking glass.

If you remember our series on Daniel Boone starting at episode 14 and our episode series on David Crockett starting at episode 110. You'll remember that I'm always intrigued by what the portrait painters said about people. Before photography, this was the medium of the day that translated the character in essence of a human to the world. In these portrait sessions, people would sit for hours with these artists. Catlin wrote about his time with Osceola. I want to read what he said. commonly called Powell, he is generally supposed to be a half-breed, the son of a white man and a creek woman. I have painted him precisely in the costume in which he stood for his picture, even to a stringent. He wore three ostrich feathers in his head and a turban made of a very

colored cotton shawl, and his dress was chiefly of calicoes with a handsome bead sash or belt around his waist and his rifle in his hand. This young man is no doubt an extraordinary character. He has been for some years reputed and doubtlessly looked upon by the Seminoles as the master's spirit and leader of the tribe, although he is not a chief. In stature, he is about at mediocrity with an elastic and graceful movement. In his face, he is good looking with rather an effeminate smile. but of so peculiar a character that the world may be ransacked over without finding another just like it.

In his manners and all his movements in company, he is polite and gentlemanly, though all his conversation is entirely in his own tongue, and his general appearance and actions, those of a full-blooded, wild Indian. End of quote. We haven't mentioned it, but, Osceola didn't speak much English. Some say that he spoke some. Some said that he spoke none, but we don't really know.

I don't know what it is, but these descriptions by these painters always seem to get to me. With Boone and Osceola, their portrait painters were some of the last ones to see these guys. Boone died in obscurity in Missouri just months after the only portrait of him was ever painted. Though Catlin was just one of many, many artists who flocked to Fort Maltry to paint Osceola, the war leader would only live three days after this painting was complete. To be noted, if someone comes to paint your portrait, you better be ready to meet your maker. And so he sat there for them in the heat and then walked out into the cold and then back into the heat. And as a consequence, he contracted what I think was called Quincy, and today we would call it strep throat.

And one of the Indians who was with them, who was a medicine man, or as the whites called him, a prophet, told him that he must have nothing to do with white medicine, that they would kill him, that this was white man's medicine. and he even said at one point Dr. Weeden that he would have let Dr. Weeden attend him because he liked him but he knew that he couldn't afford to get the ill will of all the other Indians if they saw him letting a white doctor attend to him and so at the end of January 1838

he was very very ill at night the doctor went to see him, Dr. Ween. This is just days after Catlin finished his very famous painting of Osceola. I think Catlin finished on like January 26th or 27th. It was only four or five days. Yes. And Robert John Curtis, who also has a very famous portrait that I used on the front of my book. All right.

And he became much, much worse. Osceola did. And so the doctor went into him at 6 o'clock. the morning and found him almost totally unable to speak. He couldn't eat. Both of his wives were there with him, one on either side, and one of them had his head laying in her lap. Slightly after 6 a.m., after the second time that the doctor attended him, Osceola died in Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor. At precisely 6.20 on January 30th, 1838, the Seminole war leader Osceola died.

Death is such an interesting, sacred, and bleak moment in a person's life. Riches nor poverty can separate you from its sting. We do not know what lies on the other side of death, but we know there's something. I know there's something. Archaeological evidence of human burial rituals show. us that man has always struggled with death. And the mysterious exit of the human spirit leaving behind an empty cadaver like a locust shedding its exoskeleton makes it clear that what was there, the human, is no longer there. But in the case of this story, Osceola's death is really just the

beginning of the whole new one. Now, it would be almost 12 hours before he would be buried, and he is buried at Fort Moultrie. That decision was made. But there are several things that had to happen during that time. In the first place, there was only a very small skeleton staff of soldiers stationed at Fort Moultrie at that moment. Then one of them had to be sent across the bay to find a carpenter in Charleston, so they had to get the coffin and take it back. Dr. Weeden also put out a call for Dr. Staro, who was a teacher of anatomy in Charleston, and between them, they were able to take a plaster cast of Osceola's face and torso. In order to do that, they had to remove his clothes, and rigor was still setting, was

setting in at that time. Because of the death mask. Well, I'm going to show you his death mask in a minute because I have it. I have one. I'll show you. Wait a minute. You have a replica of the death mask of Osceola in your office? Yes, she does.

Dr. Wickman would later take me there to see it. It's a white plaster cast of the chest, shoulders, and face of the Seminole War leader. The features look strikingly similar. to Catlin's painting with cheekbones smooth and almost feminine. I chose not to record any audio of our conversation while looking at it or take any photos. As fascinating as this is, it just didn't feel right to record it, so I didn't, but I'll never forget it. The original death mask is now at the Smithsonian.

We're leading up to the hours before his burial at Fort Moultrie. And then at the last second, or very nearly the last second, Captain Morrison sent to them and said that he wanted all of Osceola's possessions to be taken from him and delivered to Captain Morrison. And this is the moment at which Dr. Weeden decided to take the most important specimen that he could possibly take from this famous or no one. notorious Indian, depending on what your point of view about him was, he decided to take his head. Remember when I told you Dr. Weeden's name would be living in your head rent free for a while? This is why. Without permission and hastily done in secret before they nailed the lid on the pine coffin, Dr. Weeden amputated Osceola's head, and we're still trying to understand why. This was not a new idea.

As a matter of fact, there was a pseudoscience that was prevalent in the late 18th century and the mid-19th century called phrenology. And it was a pseudoscience that believed that by studying the bumps on a person's head, you could tell what their propensities were. You could tell if they were criminals or violent or romantic or anything else. about them. And there were books written about this showing you how to look at a head.

All right. And we know that in at least one and possibly two other instances in Florida there were officers who had taken heads. So this was not new. And there were a lot of people who, when Word finally

got out and it took a while to get out in the United States, when they found out that Dr. Weeden had taken his head, they were very unhappy about it. They thought that it was a desecration. The Indians had to be kept out and kept away from the whole entire thing because they never, never would have allowed that.

Never. They wouldn't even have allowed his clothing to be taken off because it was important in their tradition that a warrior should be buried with all of his accoutrements. Everything that was his should go with him. Dr. Whedon would take his head, and he and General Morrison would split up the material things that Osceola had when he died. Remember, he was a prisoner so his wives wouldn't have had any say over how things went down.

Dr. Weeden took Osceola's carbine, his powder horn, a lock of his hair, a sketch that he had, a brass pipe, silver concho, earrings, a garter, and a knife. these things would be passed down in Whedon's family for many, many years. General Morrison took the three ostrich plumes, a turban, a silk shawl, two belts, a garter, three silver gorgates, and a mirrored hairbrush. Most of these things have disappeared. A few are still in existence, including a braid or a lock of Osceola's hair. That's still in existence. And you may remember Dr. Wickman talking about license. in that Florida prison. Well, modern analysis on that lock of hair

revealed evidence of the larval casings of lice on it. Pretty wild. Now we've got to have some discussion about Dr. Weeden. Were his actions nefarious, which it kind of seems like they were, or is there somehow an odd loophole? In Weedon's notes, he wrote that Osceola before he died,

said that he wanted his bones to go back Florida. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. And it's an interesting scenario because Weeden, this guy that would end up decapitating him, taking all his stuff, Osceola's personal belongings, and would be this, like, dishonest guy, would be the one that would be writing basically Osceola's last will and testament. See, and I find it absolutely fascinating that we can see both of these sides of the mind of a 19th century person. And on the one hand, we've got all of Osceola's fame. We've got all of his notoriety. We've got thousands of people across the United States who were sure that this noble savage had been carried to the grave headless when they found out because of an act of treachery,

because Jessup had taken him under a white flag of truce. And at the same time, we've got Dr. Frederick Whedon, a man of science, and a man who was friendly, friendly with Osceola, and he does something that most of these people who are honoring Osceola think is a total desecration. Dr. Weiden wrote, he wrote a defense of this a few years later, about five years later, when the head was transferred out of his keeping. And he said that a man of science could do these things. That there was no desecration here that he was doing this for science. You don't think he had, I mean, because it's really easy to be like, well, he was a bad guy.

No. He did this thing. You don't think he thought this was bad? No. So you don't think Whedon was a bad guy? No. Didn't he lie about it, though? Well, it's hard to tell.

And I've tried to track down a story on this and get something straight. There is a possibility that instead of coming home with that head, and we don't know how he preserved it, And this is why when I go to New York, I go to the McAllister School of Funeral Services and Embalming. Everybody else gets to go as a place. This is why. That's why you're on the Barry Grays podcast. All right. This is, it's a possibility that when he left, when Weeden left Fort Moultrie, that he went straight to New York and exhibited the head at New York.

And like this was just, this is science. This is science. This is a great Native American leader. America's enamored with native leaders. But he found out that not everybody agreed with that idea of science as the motivating factor because there was big pushback. And he came back to St. Augustine. He owned a house on a street that is now called Weeden Street in St. Augustine, not far from the house I grew up in. And he had an apothecary shop downstairs or what was being called a drugstore now then.

And he put the head on display in the front window of his drugstore. That's well documented. Yeah. Now, would there not have been a question of ownership? I mean, that's where, you know, like. You just sat with me all the way through this war and you actually think that the Indians get a say in this? Come on now. Yeah. No, I see your point.

Okay. What about even amongst the U.S. people? I mean, why would this guy, like if the whole world is enamored with this guy, like, why would Whedon get to keep it? Well, Whedon was the one who took it. And I think that Whedon took it very secretly. Wouldn't that make it nefarious, though? Of course. The action, the act of taking it and hiding it was nefarious. All right. But he mitigated that by. saying that it was an act of science. And, you know, there are an awful lot of scientists who do an awful lot of things that the rest of us don't like. This one twisted my mind into a pretzel,

trying to defend a guy that secretly cut off the head of Osceola. But I would learn that wouldn't be the only head that he cut off. He also preserved the skull of the Seminole Uchi Billy, who also fought in the Seminole Wars. I'd like to read a section of an essay for, you though, written by Theta Perdue, published in the Florida Historic Quarterly in 1991. What she said really gives some interesting context to this kind of bizarre activity. She writes, The conviction that a native way of life could not survive in North America may help explain why Whedon and Morrison removed Osceola's personal effects. These momentos of savagery had an antiquarian value because most people presumed that Native Americans were about to vanish completely off the face of the earth.

Indians represented the past in a society that was beginning to pay particular attention to the material cultures of ancient peoples. Napoleon's armies had discovered countless treasure troves in Egypt, and by the 1820s, Jean-François Champolian had deciphered the Rosetta Stone, which unlocked the secrets of hieroglyphics. These events almost certainly did not motivate Whedon and Morrison, but they did contribute to the intellectual milieu that formed and shaped scientific investigation and collection development. Whedon and Morrison may be seen as representative of the same kind of interest in material culture that led in the 1840s to the founding of the Smithsonian Institution where Osceola's death mask now rests.

Osceola's possessions, like those of the Pleistocene, the Egyptians, and the Trojans belong to history because savagery was passing from the scene. End of quote. Now that's pretty bare greasy By that I mean interesting You have to wash your hands with some bear grease Slice soap to get that off But it's still hard to stomach what Weedon did

But it does put it into context However I have a question Is this kind of gruesome stuff still going on today? You know that's a weird question So cutting a dead man's head off Yes In 1838 and putting in a glass jar was not what that would be today. It just wasn't as big a deal. It was very, it was more common.

Well, do you know, I've been to Walter Reed. I've been to see their pathological collections. And I know that they're old. They're not, to my knowledge, they're not still doing this. Because you can take photographs today, you know, and you can do drawings today. Or you can preserve specimens today. There are wet and dry methods for preserving specimens. So they're still doing this today. So that's what you're saying. I'm not quite sure. I'm not quite sure.

But I know that up into the 20th century, particularly in times of war, doctors have the opportunity to deal with things that they never get to deal with in times of peace. And as a teaching collection, it's important. What are you going to show people? How are you going to teach doctors if they don't have something they can look at, something they can see? Yeah. So maybe it's still happening. maybe more today than even then. I mean, because they're working on cadavers all the time.

Yes. I mean, people that are donating their bodies to science. And once there's consent, like once there's consent from a person, you can do whatever you want with my body after I'm dead, then it's like everything's okay. Yes. Then you can take it. And as I said, I've been in the collections at Walter Reed, and there are things in jars that I would not like to have to deal with every day. But if you're going to be a surgeon or even a doctor, any medical doctor, you've got to deal with. these things. They're reality and this is how you learn. You know, there's a famous pair of men in

England. I think they were called Burke and Hare, if I remember correctly, who were finally caught in the early 1800s because they were digging up cadavers to supply the medical schools. They were going around, they were going to hangings, you know, and catching bodies because they were supplying medical schools and they got paid. They were earning their living this way. That's all pretty wild and not a justification, but it does put the time into context. And if we're being honest, revolutions in medicine and understanding of the human body that we all benefit from today came from this era of curiosity and learning as macabre as it is. 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 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. We'll now move through a timeline of what we know about Osceola's head. Osceola's head stayed, remained in the possession of Dr. Weeden in St. Augustine for about five years. Dr. Weedon would end up being the mayor of St. Augustine. And after having the head on display for five years, Whedon's son-in-law, Dr. Daniel Whitehurst would write a letter to a very prominent figure in the scientific community. Here's who the letter was written to.

And the man's name was Dr. Valentine Mott, M-O-T-T, a very famous name. There's still today a Mott medal in science that's given out every year. There's Lucretia Mott, who was one of the great suffragettes in American history. There's Mott Apple Juice. Yes. And Dr. Mott had two teaching collections. He had a collection that he kept of specimens that he kept in Manhattan, and he had specimens that he kept specifically at his home.

And he said quite clearly that when Dr. Whitehurst wrote to him and said that he wanted to offer him Osceola's head, Dr. Mott said that it was too important and too, well known, too highly visible in society for him to place it in any public spot and he would keep it in his home. All right. And so he did. And this is documented in a letter that we have today. Yes. That Whitehurst, Whedon's son-in-law writes a letter to this famous Dr. Mott. Dr. Mott up in New York and says, and offers him and like straight up says, I'm going to give, I'm going to deliver to you basically, Osseola's head.

All right. As a sign of my esteem for everything you've taught me. And you're somebody that'll take care of this and you should be the one that has this. Yep. This is in the early 1840s or so. It's about 1842, maybe between 42 and 45. Four or five years after Osceola's death. Yes. Yes. What happens after that?

Well, the head is transported and it goes to him and it goes to Dr. Valentine Mott. And years later, several years later, several things happened all at once. There was a fire in the 14th Street Medical College. Dr. Mott's wife passed away, and Dr. Mott created for himself a catalog of his entire collection, the collection that was in his home.

The fire destroyed a good deal of what was held in the medical college. In New York. So it's a very good thing that the head was not there because I've seen a copy of the catalog that he created and had printed of all the specimens that were in his home. And the head of Osceola, undoubted, it says in parentheses, undoubted, is there. After I found that, the next thing I went looking for was Dr. Ballantyne-Mott's will. And I found out that not only was there a will, but as, of course, there should be,

there was an inventory that was taken of all his possessions at the time of his death. I got a copy of the will. I read the copy. He made his son Alexander Brown Mott, his executor. But the inventory was either misfiled or has disappeared. And as a consequence, I can't find what you might call the smoking gun. I can't find the piece of paper that would tell me, for a fact that that head at the time of Valentine Mott's death was still in his home.

I have visited the New York Historical Society. I've visited the New York Medical Society. They have a cast of Dr. Valentine Mott's hand because he was such a famous surgeon. They have some of his instruments. They have other documents, but they do not have Osceola's head. So that's where the trail goes cold. That is where the trail goes cold. That's where the buck stops.

Yes. But then that's where a whole other big can of worms opens up. Because there are too many possibilities. You know, I've contacted Philadelphia. I sent out letters to about 150 museums across the United States. Anything that had anything that's... What kind of letter do you write? Do you say, hey, per chance?

Do you have the head of Osceola and have not told anybody? Well, the first thing I said was, I'm the senior historian for the state of Florida. And when you start with that, they answer you. Okay. And I said, I'm working on Osceola, the story of Osceola. And as you may well know, his head has never been located. And I am interested to know whether you have or ever have had anything relating to Osceola in your collections. whether you have ever heard any stories relating to him or his head.

You're just doing the widest net possible. Anybody I could ask. Do you think, Dr. Wickman, that you have spent more time looking for his head than anyone in history? I would be willing to bet you that's the case. You did it like a pro. This is not a hobby. Oh, no. This was your job.

This was your... But it's what the Seminoles wanted, too. Really? They sent you on task. to do that. Well, they allowed me to put the money in my budget to go to New York, to go to Chicago. I've been to the Brooklyn Museum because Henry Abbott had an Egyptianiana collection, and I thought, well, it's possible. Henry Abbott was a doctor who knew Valentine Mott. Let's go find out if it could be there.

How would you have, would it have just been like somebody saying, you know what? Well, there's this one specimen over here. We don't really know what to do with it. And somehow you would look at it and be like, that's it. I mean, like, what did you expect to find? There are two big possibilities, three big possibilities. One is that somebody has it, but they don't want the world to know it because of the attitude about Indians today. They wouldn't want the Indian tribe to be insulted. Yeah, it'd be pretty rough material to be having in your hands today.

They didn't want to fall into disrepute as an institution. And the other possibility is that they might have known that they had. it and destroyed it or inadvertently destroyed it because they said, you know, this series of specimens is not actually within the mission of our museum. And I don't know anybody else who wants it. Let's just throw it on the pile. And then they wouldn't fess up to that today. Well, they might not even know that it'd been among those things because they might not have the accession records anymore. It's interesting. So there's actually, when you really know the systems, you understand the way that things could actually happen.

Because, I mean, in my mind, it's like, well, how could you lose somebody's head that's in a jar? But there's actually a lot of ways to lose a head in the jar. A lot of ways to lose it, absolutely. Do you think, after all your research, do you think it's still in existence? Yes. Do you? Yes. Why?

Because I can't find any reason not to believe it. Because I can't find anything that's even vaguely close to it that would lead me to believe. that it could truly be gone. I am grinning ear to ear as we're having this conversation. Mystery remains. And that's some serious gangster detective stuff, but also some very serious stuff. Searching for Osceola's head. I told you guys that Dr. Wickman was legit.

I don't know if you believe me. And she truly believes that the head is still in existence. And one of the things that I did in that process of searching through other museums was look closely for specimens, wet specimens, because that's what it would be. It would be preserved in alcohol, probably. Wet specimens that are older than Osceola's head, because I thought to myself, is it possible that it might have simply deteriorated over the years and that there's nothing left? or if I found it, I couldn't possibly recognize it. And so I went looking for other collections, and there are collections in Europe,

and the Hunterian Museum, which there is now a Hunterian in London, have specimens that are far older than Osceola's head, that are still perfectly fine, that are well preserved. So could it be extant? Yes. Is it extant? I can't find any reason to believe that it's not.

And I'm thinking of Harvard's collections. I'm thinking of Philadelphia. There are a couple of museums there that have had anatomical collections. The idea of anatomical specimen collections as a very big idea really only began to pick up speed during the American Civil War. And you can imagine that. This is 20 years before that. Yeah.

So they weren't large collections. They were usually like Dr. Mott's. They were in the possession. Either of a medical college where a man, a certain person, taught, or they were his own private teaching collection. All right. But once we got the American Civil War and so many people were dying and there were so many bullet wounds and so many, you know, legs and amputated and all these other things, then then collecting. really got underway. And then the pathological collections at Walter Reed were begun. All right? So there are pathological collections that still exist in various places, and I haven't

begun to cover all of them. Wow. When you're in the deep, dark corners of the internet, you'll find a lot of wild ideas of where Osceola's head is today. So what are the wild theories? Because I know there's a lot of unfounded, wild theories of where Osceola's head is. Well, I'll tell you two in particular that I have never forgotten. One of them was a woman in Texas who called me, and I no longer remember her name mercifully. And she called me, this is while I was still with the tribe. She was absolutely sure she lived near a river in Texas, and she was convinced, very strongly convinced, that Osceola had lived in a house on that riverbank,

and the house had collapsed on him and fallen into the river. And if I would send a dive team over to where she was, they could go into that river, and she was quite sure that we would find him. We would find his skeletal remains. Pretty off the wall. That was a good one. You guys may remember Seminole Creek Jake Tiger from Oklahoma,

I asked him if he'd heard any wild stories of where Osceola's head is. I believe it's still out there. I mean, this is where I'll probably end up sounding like a conspiracy theorist. That's what we're here for, man. Yeah. But, I mean, you'll hear his head is over in Redwoods in California, along with Sitting Bull and Geronimo as well at Bohemian Grove. If you'll ever heard about the secret society that's over in California.

where George Bush and Bill Clinton are a part of. It's a really strange thing if you read about those guys. But to me, like I said, it sounds like a conspiracy theorist, but I've talked to different people in the community, and they said, yeah, his head's over in California right now. The Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre private club in Monte Rio, California, founded in 1878, in every variety of wild conspiracies construed by man

can be found about this place. Here's Dr. Wickman with one more little story. The other was that I got a call from a woman up in Jacksonville. She was on the city council, I think, and she had a contact on one of those shows on television. It might have been America's Most Wanted or something like that. and she wanted to get the question of finding Osceola's head on that program. And the lady up in Jacksonville was really quite aggressive.

And I tried really hard to explain to her that if that head were found, that there is no question nowadays that it would be only, only within the purview of the Seminole tribe of Florida to decide what would happen to that head. And I know what would happen. I know what they would do, all right? And it's what they want to do. It's why they let me hunt for it so that they could put him back together

and he could sleep in peace. I've learned a lot in this search for Osceola's legacy. Having heard his name in John Anderson's hit song, Seminole Wind, realizing that I didn't know much about him, it's been a fascinating story about this man but also America. I want to conclude with an editorial

in an American newspaper published just days after Osceola's death on January 30th, 1838. It reads, We have heard within a day or two very bitter things said about Osceola by a few persons. In our humble opinion,

he has been to the full as much sinned against as sinning, treacherous he may have been, but we cannot forget that he was provoked by treachery and captured by treachery. We are fairly even with him. We now owe him the respects which the brave ever feel toward the brave, which the victorious cannot violate without brutality towards the vanquished, which the commonest laws of humanity and civilization enforce towards prisoners of war. We sincerely trust that no citizens,

of Charleston will so far forget the character of a Carolinian as to offer indignity to a fallen man. A tear of forgiveness and generous sympathy is much better due to the once terrible, now stricken, warrior of the Seminoles. Here's Dr. Wickman with one final thought. Here's your bottom line. Here's your absolute bottom line. The entire might of this nation was. thrown against these people. The entire might of the United States military was thrown against

these people. And here we are 200 years down the road and they are still here. And that is nothing short of a miracle. I think that the least that we owe them is to know their story and to tell it straight. enjoying this story. And I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece and Brent's This Country Life podcast. On the next episode, we're carrying on with this story. We're going to talk about the bizarre circumstances around the 1967 exhuming of Osceola's grave. No, this story is not over. Please leave us a review on iTunes and share our podcast with a buddy this week. Thank you and keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. 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, 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 2 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.